ISHS Acta Horticulturae 1001: II International Organic Fruit Symposium
PERFORMANCE IN THE EARLY PRODUCTION YEARS OF TWO ORGANIC ORCHARDS ESTABLISHED BY DIFFERENT METHODS: NEWLY-PLANTED AND TOP-GRAFTED |
| Authors: | M.E. Garcia, R.E. Moran, L.P. Berkett, T.L. Bradshaw, H.M. Darby , S.L. Kingsley-Richards, R.L. Parsons |
| Keywords: | apple, 'Ginger Gold', 'Honeycrisp', 'Liberty', 'Macoun', top-grafting, 'Zestar!' |
| DOI: | 10.17660/ActaHortic.2013.1001.17 |
| Abstract:
The OrganicA Project has been evaluating the performance of five apple (Malus ×domestica) cultivars, ‘Ginger Gold’, ‘Honeycrisp’, ‘Liberty’, ‘Macoun’, and ‘Zestar!’ under two orchard establishment methods used to change cultivars since 2006: top-grafting, and establishing a new orchard with nursery trees on dwarf rootstock. The top-grafted orchard, Orchard 2, was originally planted in 1988 with the cultivars ‘Liberty’ and ‘McIntosh’ on M.26 rootstock on free standing trees at a density of 716 trees ha-1. In 2006, the orchard was grafted to the five new cultivars. The new orchard, Orchard 1, was planted in 2006 in a completely randomized design with 15 three-tree replicates per cultivar. Planting stock was two year-old nursery trees on B.9 rootstock, except ‘Honeycrisp’, which was on M.26, planted at a density of 1,433 trees ha-1 and supported by a 2.4 m tall single-wire trellis. Orchard 2 used a randomized complete block design with a total of eight and eleven replications in block 1 and block 2, respectively. The blocks relate to the original cultivar (i.e., ‘Liberty’ = block 1, ‘McIntosh’ = block 2) which is now the interstem of each tree. In orchard 1, results indicate that ‘Ginger Gold’ generally exhibited better growth and fruit yield than the other cultivars, while ‘Liberty’ had the smallest trees in the study. For Orchard 2, tree survival was poorest for ‘Macoun’ and ‘Zestar!’, while ‘Ginger Gold’ showed increased fruit yield over ‘Liberty’ and ‘Macoun’. Results suggest top-grafting may be an economical and sustainable technique to change existing apple cultivars, but success of this technique appears to be cultivar-dependent. | |
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