The effects of heading and benzyladenine applications on branching of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L. cvs. ‘Siah Mashhad’ and ‘Dovomras’) trees in nursery

Abstract

This experiment was carried out to study the effects of mechanical and chemical treatments for developing the lateral shoot and increasing the quality of one year old sweet cherry (Prunus avium L. ‘Siah Mashhad’ and ‘Dovomras’ cvs) trees in nursery. In the first experiment, heading treatments (0, 40, 60 and 80 cm above ground) and in the second experiment, benzyladenine (BA) treatments (0, 200, 400, 600 mgL-1) was investigated. BA treatments were sprayed in mid-June when growth scion shoot were 60-65 cm above the bud union in three times at 7-day intervals. At the end of the growing season, the tree quality were measured on the basis of their diameter and height of trees, number and length of lateral shoots. A factorial experiment was laid out in a completely randomized block design with 3 replications where each plot contained 10 trees. Results showed that all of the treatments increased the number of lateral shoots in comparison with the control. Heading in 60 cm was the best treatment for improving total number of lateral shoots. ‘Dovomras’ had better response to heading treatments than ‘Siah Mashhad’ cultivar. The result of second experiment showed that there were significant differences between cultivars and BA treatments. ‘Siah Mashhad’ had better response to BA than the ‘Dovomras’ cultivar. BA treatments had more significant effect on the number and length of lateral shoots than heading treatments. Repeated BA treatments induced lateral shoots more than a single treatment. Key words: ‘Dovomras’, feathering, lateral shoot, ‘Siah Mashhad’, tree quality.