COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF PRODUCTIVITY AND FROST RESISTANCE IN GRAFTED AND OWN-ROOTED CHERRY TREES

Abstract

The results of many years of research on the productivity and winter hardiness of cherries in an experimental plantation established in 2002 according to 5×2.5 m scheme at the laboratory site of the Federal Horticultural Research Center in Izmailovo, Leninsky District, Moscow Region, are presented. The objects of research were grafted and own-rooted trees of 4 promising varieties: Volochaevka, Oktava, Malinovka, Apuchtinskaya. It was found that productivity depended both on varietal characteristics and on the method of growing the planting material. The maximum productivity was characteristic of own-rooted trees of the Apuchtinskaya variety (12.6 kg/trees), which is 1.6 times higher than that of grafted trees of the same variety. The advantage of ownrooted  trees in terms of productivity was also revealed in the Volochaevka variety (7.8 kg/trees and 6.6 kg/trees). The productivity of the Oktava and Malinovka varieties was at the level of 4–5 kg/trees, the grafted trees of these varieties were more productive by 13 and 32 %. When analyzing the specific feathers of fruiting, significant differences between the variants were noted only for the Apuchtinskaya variety. In the best variants of the experiment in the varieties Apuchtinskaya and Volochaevka, the average yield for 13 years of full fruiting was 6.2–10.0 t/ha. The assessment of the frost resistance of grafted and own-rooted plants was carried out by the method of artificial freezing of annual branches when simulating the damaging temperatures in the controlled conditions of the TH-6 JEIO TECH-1000 climatic chamber. A higher frost resistance of generative buds was established in own-rooted trees of the Apuchtinskaya and Volochaevka varieties.