Abstract
ABSTRACTThe production of high quality fruits is a necessary factor for the adaptation and production of plant species with economic viability. Thus, an experiment was conducted from July 2012 to January 2013 to evaluate the fruit quality of the ‘Eva’ and ‘Princesa’ apple cultivars as a function of nitrogen fertilization in Petrolina, PE, Brazil. The experimental design consisted of randomized blocks, with treatments distributed in a factorial arrangement 2 x 4, corresponding to apple cultivars (Eva and Princesa) and nitrogen doses (40; 80; 120 and 160 kg of N ha-1), with four replications and three plants in each plot. The fruit characteristics, such as fruit mass, skin color (luminosity, chromaticity, and colour angle), size (width and length), pulp firmness, titratable acidity (TA), soluble solids (SS) and the SS/TA ratio, were recorded. Nitrogen doses do not affect fruit quality of studied apple cultivars. The fruit quality attributes are different between apple cultivars: fruit firmness, SS/TA ratio, fruit mass and fruit diameter are superior for Princesa cultivar, while the fruit length for Eva cultivar is superior.
Highlights
Apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) is the main temperate fruit crop and its production in Brazil is concentrated in South region, especially Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul states, where 94% of the Brazilian apples are cultivated (IBGE, 2014).Due to the economic importance of apples, some studies have been conducted aiming to grow apples under different conditions from those required by this crop, detaching the researches under tropical climate in Ethopia (Ashebir et al, 2010) Kenia (Njuguna et al, 2004), China (Liu et al 2010)
Titratable acidity (TA) and soluble solids (SS) were significantly higher for ‘Eva’ in comparison to ‘Princesa’ apple cultivar (Table 4), which could be caused by endogenous factors of genetics of both cultivars since ‘Eva’ is grown for fruit yield while ‘Princesa’ is used as a pollinator cultivar (Nachtigall, 2004)
Despite the ‘Eva’ have presented significantly superiority for SS, the SS/titratable acidity (TA) ratio was higher in fruits of ‘Princesa’ (Table 4) that occurred due to the strongly lower TA of ‘Princesa’ fruits
Summary
Apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) is the main temperate fruit crop and its production in Brazil is concentrated in South region, especially Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul states, where 94% of the Brazilian apples are cultivated (IBGE, 2014). In Brazil, apple cultivation has expanded for nontraditional regions of growing temperate fruit crops (Petri et al, 2011) detaching the research works performed successfully in semiarid climate of São Francisco Valley (Lopes et al, 2012, 2013; Santos, 2013; Oliveira et al, 2013) and west region of São Paulo State (Chagas et al, 2012) and Minas Gerais state (Oliveira et al, 2014). Despite the importance of nitrogen to the apple tree associated to its recent adaptation for different agroecological systems, nowadays the fertilizing recommendations for this crop are based on other states such as Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. For the effective supply of plant demand and an efficient N fertilizing it is necessary to consider the different climatic, soil and cultivar adaptation for Lower Basin of São Francisco Valley, a fact the highlights the importance of research works developed under field conditions.
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