Orchard Performance of Hungarian Apricot Cultivar on Eleven Rootstocks in Central South Bulgaria Conditions

Preliminary Results Regarding the Behaviour of Some New Apricot Cultivars in București Area

“…Apricot is an important fruit crop for the southern and western regions of Romania with a long tradition of cultivation (Bălan et al, 2008). Several breeding programs are active in Europe (Asma, 2012 (Gouble et al, 2020), field trials are essential and the results over few testing years need to be used when the introduction of a new cultivar is decided (Stănică et al, 2010;Stănică and Eremia, 2014;Tabakov and Yordanov, 2012;Zaman et al, 2018). In fruit trees, the field performances of a new cultivar, regarding the tree vigour, growth, yield and fruit quality, besides its genetic heritage, are essentially influenced by the rootstock (Duval et al, 2012;Krška et al, 2012;Tabakov and Yordanov, 2012), planting system and tree canopy (Stănică et al, 2012;Matei et al, 2013;Stănică and Eremia, 2014;Negru, 2019;Negru and Peșteanu, 2019).…”

“…Several breeding programs are active in Europe (Asma, 2012 (Gouble et al, 2020), field trials are essential and the results over few testing years need to be used when the introduction of a new cultivar is decided (Stănică et al, 2010;Stănică and Eremia, 2014;Tabakov and Yordanov, 2012;Zaman et al, 2018). In fruit trees, the field performances of a new cultivar, regarding the tree vigour, growth, yield and fruit quality, besides its genetic heritage, are essentially influenced by the rootstock (Duval et al, 2012;Krška et al, 2012;Tabakov and Yordanov, 2012), planting system and tree canopy (Stănică et al, 2012;Matei et al, 2013;Stănică and Eremia, 2014;Negru, 2019;Negru and Peșteanu, 2019). Besides the traditional Open Vase canopy, used in classical low-density plantings, in the modern commercial apricot orchards, canopies with one, two or three vertical axes are more diffused (Meland, 2001;Musacchi, 2008;Stănică, 2019. The vertical axe canopies have some important advantages (Robinson et al, 2011;Dorigoni et al, 2011;Stănică, 2019), being closer to the natural tree growth tendency (Lauri et al, 2011), easy to conduct and maintain, and giving the possibility of annual renewal of the fruit shoots (Neri et al, 2010).…”