Natural Growth Habit of Sweet Cherry Maiden Trees

Abstract

Natural growth habit of maiden trees of standard and newly released sweet cherry cultivars grafted on either Prunus mahalebor Giessen rootstocks were examined during two production seasons. Trees on Giessen rootstocks were less vigorous than those on P.mahaleb. The performance of the trees, assessed by measuring the total number of lateral shoots (TNS), tree height (TH), and trunk diameter (TD), was qualitatively consistent over the two seasons. Among the ten cultivars on P.mahalebrootstock there were two groups of cultivars distinguished by branching behavior with two outstanding cultivars, namely 'Van' (mean: 8.1 TNS/year) and 'Bing' (mean: 1.9 TNS/year). Comparison of values for these quality characteristics, especially for TNS, between the cultivars grafted on different Giessen rootstocks, showed that the cultivar per sewas the main factor influencing branching behavior. A morphological description of maiden trees of newly released sweet cherry cultivars from Cornell University is given. For trees of most of the cultivars, the correlations between TNS and TD were significant, where as those between TNS and TH were not. The possibility of using TD as a parameter for estimating a tree's ability to produce lateral shoots is discussed.