APPLE TREE MANAGEMENT IN VERTICAL AXIS: APPRAISAL AFTER TEN YEARS OF EXPERIMENTS

Shoot growth must be reduced by an early fruiting; to do so, tree growth has to be realised in favourable conditions for stimulating flower bud formation as early as possible.

Our proposal is a simple pruning method based on various studies dealing with bearing habit (acrotony - basitony) and cultivar fruiting type. The main principles are summarised as follows:-

• The apical bud on the central leader is left unpruned in order to respect particular growth and feathering of each variety. Apical dominance is essential for wide crotches and therefore an early fruiting.
• The fruiting zone tends to move rapidly to the top of the tree producing a progressive and natural stopping of growth; this equilibrium between vegetative growth and fruiting is reached, with light pruning, between the 4th and 7th year, depending on vigour and behaviour of each scion variety-rootstock combination.
• Keeping this equilibrium implies renewing part of the fruiting branches after their natural bending induced by the fruit weight. The place and the way to renew branches depends upon the cultivar fruiting type and the growth of the scion variety which is influenced by the combination of climate and rootstock.
• Experiments in each fruit tree area are essential to determine the right spacing within and between rows according to the scion variety and rootstock. This spacing is chosen in order to leave the trees without any interference between them.

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