Effect of high Al content in the soil on vegetative rootstocks for apple

Abstract

Proper nutrition of fruit trees depends not only on the availability of major chemical elements in the soil, but also on their inter-relationships, their existing forms in the soil and the capability of the root system to absorb nutrients. The intensity of nutrient uptake is also highly dependent on soil solution pH. In recent years, large areas of land have been increasingly underused for fruit production. This can be partly attributed to soil acidification which also leads to increased concentrations of H, Al, Fe and Mn ions in its adsorptive complex. In order to neutralize soil acidity and Al toxicity, neutralizing agents should be used to help the soil become capable of fruit production. For this purpose, the following lime materials were used: CaO, bentonite and lifos. The commonly used vegetative rootstocks of different vigor for apple M9, M26 and MM106 were planted as test plants. The impact of lime materials was evaluated with respect to the leaf assimilating surface area, vegetative growth and tree diameter of the rootstocks used. The best soil amending effect was achieved by CaO, followed in declining order by lifos and bentonite.

Role of rootstock and apple fruit tissue in antioxidant activity

“…'Hapke' is a clone of the 'Red Delicious' family distinguished by these traits (Milošević et al, 2014;Tabakov et al, 2016). For the planting of modern commercial apple orchards with 3,000-5,000 trees per hectare, rootstocks such as M.9 T337 with numerous clones (especially NAKB T333) are used in Serbia and worldwide, and also M.26 in some cases (Paunović et al, 2015;Milošević et al, 2018). As previously noted, apple cultivar and fruit tissue may have a paramount influence on fruit chemical properties, especially phenolic content and total antioxidant activity (Drogoudi et al, 2008).…”