Early Performance of Four Sweet Cherry Cultivars Grafted on Gisela 5 and Colt Rootstocks in a High Density Growing System

Abstract

Growing the sweet cherry on different vigor rootstocks, such as Colt and Gisela 5, in a high-density orchard, causes differences in growth and productivity and later imposes the need to change the growing system including pruning, flower and fruit thinning, irrigation and fertilization. In the present research, four sweet cherry cultivars (Summit, Kordia, Lapins and Regina) grafted on Colt and Gisela 5 rootstocks were assessed for morphological traits and productivity. The parameters investigated were: vegetative growth, bearing potential, fruit set, precocity, productivity, fruit growth habit and quality attributes. Compared to Colt, the trees on Gisela 5 had smaller TCSA and the length of two-year-old branches, in the fifth season after planting. Trees on Gisela 5 had a higher number of flower buds per may bouquet compared to Colt, which confirms that bearing potential is highly affected by the rootstock. Growing the sweet cherries on Gisela 5 induced a higher fruit setting in all cultivars except in Kordia. Fruit physical attributes were affected by the cultivar, growing system and experimental year. For all tested cultivars, the yield per tree was significantly lower on Colt compared to Gisela 5. Gisela 5 performed better than Colt, which suggests that Gisela 5 should be used as a rootstock in high density sweet cherry production systems.

Wood age, rootstocks and cultivars drive the formation of productivity and fruit size in sweet cherry

“…The assumption that trees grafted on less vigorous rootstocks would have higher spur density because of shorter in-ternodes, was not proven in our research. In fact, such trees tend to form a higher number of reproductive buds per 1year-old shoot both in terms of absolute number and bud density per linear m (Milić et al 2019), so bigger sections of wood become blind before spur induction. The same trend was observed in the present study, supported by an adverse correlation (R 2 = −0.630, p < 0.01) between the number of flower buds per 1-year-old shoot and spur density.…”

“…Induction and development of generative buds and, later, fruit is driven by a large variety of factors, such as cultivar and rootstock genotype, ecological conditions, and agronomic practices in the orchard (Koutinas et al 2010). The influence of rootstocks on the flower induction, and, therefore, precocity and yield, has been studied extensively (Edin et al 1996;Lang 2000;Milić et al 2019). A large share of the research regarding sweet cherry floral organ formation is dedi-cated to framing various stages of reproductive bud development to specific dates and phenological phases of the trees (Guimond et al 1998;Fadón et al 2015), and to investigation of internal processes in the buds during dormancy (Fadón et al 2019;Götz and Chmielewski 2023).…”

Performance of Sweet Cherry Cultivars and Advanced Selections on Gisela 5 Rootstock in Young Orchards

“…The growth of fruit trees is determined by cultivar and rootstock [ 31 , 32 ]. Even with the same rootstock, fruit trees of different cultivars have different growth vigor [ 23 , 33 ].…”

Thinning Methods to Regulate Sweet Cherry Crops—A Review

“…In addition, subsequent experiments with the use of various rootstocks indicate that in addition to the rootstock and cultivar, soil, and climatic conditions are very important factors shaping the fruit quality [100,101]. Rootstock affects the number of bouquet buds and the number of flowers in the inflorescence [102]. The use of Gisela 5 dwarf rootstock significantly increased the number of flower buds compared to the more strongly growing Colt rootstock [103].…”