Yield Components in ‘Montmorency’ and ‘Meteor’ Sour Cherry

Abstract

Abstract Two sour cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) cultivars ‘Montmorency’ and ‘Meteor’ were evaluated over two seasons to determine the relative importance of different components of yield. A path coefficient analysis was performed to determine the direct and indirect effects of primary, secondary, and tertiary components on limb yield. Fruit number, fruit weight, the number of lateral buds and spurs, and fruit set were found to be the most important components affecting limb yield in both cultivars. However, the fruiting habits of the two cultivars were significantly different. ‘Montmorency’ produced 68% of its fruit on lateral buds on 1-year-old wood, while ‘Meteor’ had 70% of its fruit on 2-year-old spurs. When the data were standardized by dividing by limb cross-sectional area, ‘Meteor’ had a higher flower bud density (number of flowers/cm2) and yield efficiency (grams of fruits/cm2) than ‘Montmorency’. Although ‘Meteor’ had higher limb yields than ‘Montmorency’, the ‘Montmorency’ trees sampled had about four times more limbs than ‘Meteor’, and, therefore, higher tree yields.