COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NUTRIENT AVAILABILITY IN INTEGRATED AND ORGANIC APPLE ORCHARDS

Abstract

Nowadays, there is an increasing interest in environmental friendly fruit growing systems. Regarding this, the most frequented environmentally-benign fruit management systems are the integrated and organic systems. Although there are several differences between these growing systems only few information is available about their nutritional aspects, mostly in eastern Europe. Our experimental site (eastern Hungary) gave excellent possibility to carry out a comparative study to investigate differences between these growing systems because the plantations are situated side by side. The aim of our two-year study was to compare the nutrient status of the soil-leaf-fruit system in integrated and organic apple management systems, and take an effort to improve nutrient supply in environmentally friendly apple orchards. For leaf and fruit analysis four cultivars were selected. A traditional Hungarian cultivar: ‘Idared’, and three resistant cultivars ‘Rewena’, ‘Reanda’ and ‘Retina’. It was found that the seasonal patterns of examined nutrients were similar in both growing systems but the availability of these nutrients was more stable in the integrated orchard than in the organic one due to the fertilization management. Results suggested that applying chemical fertilizers in integrated orchards provided higher nutrient uptake, yield and resulted better fruit quality than in organic orchards where only natural nutrient sources are allowed. Detailed soil, leaf and fruit results are discussed in the paper.