ISHS Acta Horticulturae 410: II International Cherry Symposium
Opening Address |
| Author: | S. Sansavini |
| DOI: | 10.17660/ActaHortic.1996.410.0 |
| Abstract:
On behalf of the ISHS and its Fruit section, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to this 2nd International Cherry Symposium. Nine years have passed since a group of German researchers led by Prof. W. Gruppe organized an ISHS Workshop on the ‘Improvement of Sweet and Sour Cherry Varieties and Rootstocks’. This present symposium will reveal the enormous creative activity that has occurred since that time in the breeding and genetics of cultivars and rootstocks as well as in the selection of new hybrids with the potential to solve such problems as excessive vigour, adaptability to new training systems, self fertility and early cropping. We can take pride in the fact that scientists attending this symposium represent such diverse specialities as breeding and genetics, crop physiology, crop production and management, postharvest handling and storage, and crop utilization. It is encouraging that cherry research is gaining the depth that was previously enjoyed only by apples and a few other commodities blessed with more substantial human and financial resources. The cherry is fully worthy of this increasing attention. Through its sour species it ranges further north and through its sweet species further south than any other deciduous fruit crop in Europe. There is also the fact that the two species are never fully separate from one another. In Hungary, for example, both sweet and sour cultivars are important, the former for fresh consumption and the latter for processing. Furthermore, genotypes of each species and interspecific hybrids have been developed as dual purpose fruit. The international horticultural science community is especially interested in the information that will come from this symposium because of the growing interest in cherries as alternatives to apple and other crops in the most developed fruit growing countries. There is already interest in establishing intensive sweet cherry orchards in Catalonia and other Mediterranean regions. In Hungary the are large-scale sour cherry plantings were industrial fruit is harvested mechanically. An effort must be made to imagine what kind of plantation and management systems, and what kind of research, is needed to take best advantage of the growing number of choices in cultivar-rootstock combinations, tree spacing, training systems and crop protection tools. Only this kind of international forum brings together the full range of specialists capable of addressing such questions and I am fully confident that the coming sessions will be very fruitful in the generation of new ideas and initiatives. It is the intention of the Fruit section to continue this momentum by establishing and interdisciplinary Working Group on sweet and Sour Cherry. This Working Group will be responsible for initiating future symposia. Let me conclude by thanking the Organizing Committee, the conveners, Dr.
Bela Timon and Dr.
Istvan Gergely, and the Secretary of the Organizing Committee, Dr.
Janos Apostol.
I also wish to thank all of our other Hungarian friends who will make our stay in Budapest a pleasant one. | |
