A comparison of apple varieties based on yield and production efficiency under north western plain zones of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Apple is largely cultivated in India's northwestern Himalayan area, which also encompasses the nation's mountainous north-eastern regions as well as the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. This research was conducted during 2019-2020 and 2020-21 at Horticultural Research Centre, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) and the number of treatments was 3, each replicated 4 times. Each treatment consists of one plant. Total 12 plants were selected for study. The plants were planted at spacing of 5x5 m. The obtained results showed that the no. of fruits per plant (176.62), no. of branches per plant (28.5) was found to be significant. On the other side canopy spread (4.84 m), stem girth (33.87 cm), plant height (4.06 m), number of flowers (1020.75), fruit size (length) (57.12 mm), fruit size (width) (52.61 mm), fruit weight per fruit (76.62 gm), ), fruit weight (5 fruits) (383.12) were found to be non-significant. The results of present study indicate that the basis of their vegetative behavior, Dorsett Golden appeared to be superior variety in terms of tree morphology and other as moderate. Further, it can be concluded that variety Dorsett Golden had more productivity and the fruits of ANNA and HRMN-99 were having more marketable fruit traits. The current study revealed the diversity of the apple cultivars analysed in this experiment, highlighting the significance of safeguarding these precious genetic resources and pursuing additional study to ensure their conservation, exchange, and utilisation in upcoming breeding initiatives for the development of novel, improved apple varieties.