Creating new varieties of columnar apple trees for the plantations of the intensive type

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of improving the apple assortment by creating new columnar varieties that combine in their genotype compact growth habit, high productivity, fruit quality, scab resistance and resistance to adverse abiotic environmental factors. The researches were held in proper genetics and breeding lab on the base of apple hybrid fund in the Breeding and Genetical Centre affiliated to I. V. Michurin Federal Scientific Center in 2008-2017. More than 20 000 seedlings were used as biological objects of researches. The seedlings were obtained as a result of diallel crossings and topcross-crossings of old russian apple varieties of domestic origin, promising donors and sources of high winter resistance, columnar growth habit, and scab resistance, all of them were selected in the Breeding and genetic center of I. V. Michurin Russian Research Institute of Genetics and Breeding of Fruit Crops and introduced. The experimental researches were based on methods of observations, as well as hybridologic analysis, modeling of stress-factors and comparison of the obtained data with the use of genetic & statistical methods. During hybridization, cultivation and study of hybrid seedlings, elite forms and varieties, the conventional methods of breeding and variety were used. New highly productive (25-35 t/hectare), winter resistant (-38…-40 °C), disease resistant, with high fruit quality columnar apple varieties Gotica, Geyzer, Stela, Strela, Kaskad were included into the State register of breeding achievement admitted to use. The highest economical efficiency was marked in columnar varieties Kaskad, Strela, Geyzer. The pro fi t per hectare in production of Kaskad variety was 413,4 thousand rubles with its pro fi tability in 248,7 %, this fact signi fi cantly exceeds the level of reference varieties.

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