Abstract
The aim of this research was to evaluate the vegetative growth, flowering and some attributes of physicochemical quality in blackberry ‘Tupy’ fruits cultivated in Chihuahua, Mexico. The study was carried out in San Juanito and La Finca with twenty-five replications per site. The length and number of sprouts, flowering, total soluble solids (TSS), total titratable acidity (TTA), pH, colour, ascorbic acid (AA), total anthocyanins (TA), total phenols (TP) and antioxidant capacity (AC) were evaluated. San Juanito presented the blackberry plants with the longest sprout length (169.71 cm), but their number was similar to La Finca, which also showed statistical significance with respect to the minimum temperature range (-2.9 and -1.2 °C), which manifested itself in less accumulation of cold units (658) and degree days (886). The flowering event started at 108 Julian days (April 19) for San Juanito completely evading the occurrence of late frosts, while La Finca maintained a 10% risk. The fruits harvested in the Finca showed the highest content of TA (75.7 mg cyanid-3-glucosid 100 g-1), maintaining the fruit quality without changes for both sites. The results indicate that the environmental temperature conditions of San Juanito are suitable for vegetative growth and floral development, by completely avoiding the occurrence of late frosts and obtaining fruits with quality similar to that harvested in orchards with commercial production.
Highlights
The 56% of the territorial surface in Mexico is considered arid and with low water availability, and the northern zone (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas) occupies the largest proportion of the territory with these conditions (Ramirez et al, 2011), with an interannual variation of precipitation between 200 and 800 mm and with evaporation levels of 2,000 mm (Ramirez-Legarreta et al, 2008)
Vegetative growth The growth of the sprouts showed statistical differences (p≤0.05) for San Juanito (169.71 cm), which exceeded by 20.33% La Finca with 135.27 cm (Table 1), the number of sprouts was similar between both sites
1.76 a 1.68 a Flowering The analysis of climate data available at sites near stations assessment allowed to generate confidence intervals for minimum and maximum temperatures, which shows that the average minimum temperatures showed differences (p≤0.05) in La Finca with values between -2.9 and -1.2 °C, while San Juanito, the interval for the minimum average temperature fluctuated between 0.15 and 1.8 °C
Summary
The 56% of the territorial surface in Mexico is considered arid and with low water availability, and the northern zone (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas) occupies the largest proportion of the territory with these conditions (Ramirez et al, 2011), with an interannual variation of precipitation between 200 and 800 mm and with evaporation levels of 2,000 mm (Ramirez-Legarreta et al, 2008). For the production of one ton of apple, 492 m3 of water is required (Rios et al, 2017), and if it is considered that the prevailing climatic conditions of the region are of a dry warm summer with an average annual temperature of 18 °C, with oscillations between -12 and 25 °C and precipitation of 500 mm with less than 5% of winter rain (Parra-Quezada et al, 2008), the fruit growers are in the urgent need to resort to the use and overexploitation of aquifers (Cera-Campos et al, 2019), since for 2015 the level of extraction was 311.28 Mm3 year, while the recharge is estimated to be less than 37%, generating a water deficit that threatens the future agricultural production (Rios et al, 2017), where there is the frequent problem of the occurrence of late frosts (Ramirez et al, 2011). Received in revised form: 22 Jul 2019.
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