ISHS Acta Horticulturae 367: VI International Symposium on Pear Growing
THE EFFECT OF WITHIN-ROW SPACING ON NURSERY TREE QUALITY OF PEARS ON BA29 AND QUINCE C |
| Authors: | J.W. Palmer, H. Gibbs, G. Lupton, W. Cashmore, S.J. Tustin |
| Abstract:
In New Zealand, pear trees are frequently planted as poorly feathered one-year-old trees. The poor nursery tree quality is an impediment to precocity and the uptake of intensive systems. Many nurserymen rent land for only two years for fruit tree production which makes it difficult to raise a two-year-old tree in the traditional way. In addition, trees are often planted closely together in the nursery row; so the effect of within-row spacing and time of budding/grafting on nursery tree quality was examined. Spacing trials were established in the spring of 1991 using BA29 and QC rootstocks, in two commercial nurseries, one near Nelson in the South Island and one near Hastings in the North Island. Within-row spacing varied from 20 to 40 cm in 5 cm intervals, while between-row spacing was 1.2 m. Scion cultivar was Comice, except at Hastings where Beurre Hardy was budded onto BA29. At both sites there were no significant effects or trends of within-row spacing, from 20 to 40 cm, on nursery tree quality. In both trials there were gaps in the nursery rows where rootstocks failed to grow e.g. the Nelson trial had 23% missing trees. When, however, the statistical analysis was restricted to comparing only those trees that had immediate neighbours, it had only a minor effect on the results and did not alter their statistical significance. The trial at Nelson did, however, illustrate that better quality trees could be produced within two years by bench grafting the rootstocks prior to planting out in the nursery rows. In this case, two seasons scion growth could be produced within the normal two year nursery cycle. | |
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