Growing technology of crowned trees of columnar apple cultivars at Russian research institute of fruit crop breeding

Abstract

Relevance. Selection of columnar apple cultivars and development of adapted elements of their cultivation technology are one of the promising areas of the research work of the Russian Research Institute of Fruit Crop Breeding. The result of 36 years of the target selection work was the creation of 5 columnar apple cultivars accepted in the State Register of breeding achievements: ‘Priokskoye’, ‘Poezia’, ‘Vostorg’, ‘Girlianda’ and ‘Orlovskaya Yesenia’. All cultivars are characterized by high precocity, productivity and immunity to scab. The special habit of the columnar shape of the apple tree determines a special type of planting that is characteristic only for it, providing for super-dense placement of trees.Results. Our research experimentally demonstrates the possibility of reducing the total number of plants per hectare while maintaining a high density of fruit wood in the orchard. These technologies will significantly reduce the amount of necessary planting material, therefore, reduce the initial cost of laying a columnar apple orchard. Thus, when growing columnar cultivars in the crown of a 3–4-98 semi- dwarf rootstock with a tree planting density of 3333 trees per hectare, the number of columnar branches corresponds to the plantation with a density of 20,000 columnar trees per 1 ha. The study of this technology showed that the cultivars entered fruiting in the third year after grafting of 2-year-old skeletal trees; the yield of the studied columnar cultivars for the first 10 years of fruiting averaged 81.6 t/ ha. Annual fruiting was observed throughout the entire observation period. Another promising option is to grow columns in the form of crowned plants on a dwarf rootstock 62–396. The crown on average consists of 5 branches, while the total number of columnar branches reaches 12 500 PCs/ha. The proportion of trees that entered fruiting in the third year after grafting depended on the depth of seedling planting. For normal planting, it was 28%, which is twice the same value for deep planting (15 cm below the root neck).