Evaluation of the quantity of flower buds, flowers, fruits and weight of harvest, their quantitative relations and variability on 24 genotypes of apricots in a 6-year period

Abstract

Almost all analysed genotypes were able to form a number of flower buds sufficient for a potential regular harvest. When the conditions for the formation of flower buds on apricots were very good, the variability of the quantity of flower buds was very low. The correlation between the ranking of genotypes according to their percentage of flower buds which perished because of frost was proved to be significant only in the years with average damages due to frost. When damages due to frost were very important the differences between genotypes disappear. Genotypes with highly frost resistant flower buds were Vynoslivyj and Lemeda (LE-962). The lowest variability of quantity of flowers was observed in the years with a very rich flowering (in 1999 for example). Among all evaluated characters, the highest variability was obtained when studying the harvest weight in kilos per tree. The highest average harvest for the all evaluated period was observed on the species Vynoslivyj (20.39 kg per tree). When the weather conditions were good (in 1995, 1996 and 1999) highly significant coefficients of correlation were found out between the quantity of flower buds, the quantity of flowers, the quantity of fruits and the harvest weight per tree (r=0.53++ to r=0.99++).