Temprate Fruits (1+1)

PROPAGATION AND CULTURAL PRACTICES

Rootstocks and propagation:-

A. Seedling rootstocks

• In India seedlings of bitter almond, wild peach and behmi ( Prunus mira) are used as a rootstock. Almond seedling rootstock from the bitter or sweet cultivars are used because of longevity and tolerance to drought, lime soils and iron chlorosis
• In winter climate and irrigated areas peach seedling are used.

B. Clonal rootstocks

• The clonal rootstocks like GF 677, GF 557, Marianna 2624, Myrobalan 2032 and Marianna GF 8/1 are being used world over.

Propagation:

• Bitter or sweet almonds seeds are sown either directly in the nursery beds during December or stratified in the moist sand for 50-60 days and then sown the nursery beds.
• The pencil thickness seedling are grafted with tongue grafting method in Feb – March or budded with T method in May.

Planting

• One-year- old grafted or budded plants having good growth and well developed root system are planted in a square, contour or terrace system at a spacing of 5x5 meter depending upon the rootstocks and soil fertility.
• The planting should be done in December – January.
• Since almond is a highly cross pollinated crops, thus every third row should be planted with a pollinizer variety to provide 33 % pollinizer.

Training and pruning

• Almond plants are generally trained with open centre system.
• After planting, the plant is headed back 70-80 cm above the ground level.
• In the summer 3-4 well spaced branches on trunk in different direction are selected while other unwanted branches are pinched off.
• The lowest branch should be selected not below 0.6 m from the ground level.
• If these branches are not selected during summer than they must be selected during dormant pruning.
• The primary scaffolds (3-4) developing within 10-15 cm from the top will form the tree crotch.
• After selecting the primary branches the leader is removed and primary branches are headed back to ½ to 1/3 of the growth.
• Summer pruning is carried out 2-3 times in order to retain shoots for main branches and to eliminate unwanted branches and water sprouts.
• The summer pruning should also be carried out in the second year to form the secondary framework scaffold.
• In the third year dormant pruning, 2-3 secondary branches on each main branches are selected.
• The shoots growing inward and interfering with the main branches are pruned off.
• Almond bears fruits mostly on spurs which remain fruitful for about 5 years and these spurs should be renewed by regular pruning after 3-4 years.
• Pruning should be done in such a manner that one fifth of fruiting wood is removed every year .
• Unwanted water sprouts and suckers should be removed .
• Trees with less than 10-12 years of age should make 22-25 cm annual growth and older trees should produce 15 cm of new shoot growth each year, therefore. pruning is done by heading back of new shoots and thinning out of unwanted shoots.

Manuring and fertilizers :-

• Almond is a heavy feeder and thus requires proper fertilization.
• The application of manure and fertilizer depends upon the soil fertility and age of tree proper fertilization schedule is formulated after leaf and soil analysis.
• The manure and fertilizer schedule recommended for bearing almond trees of 7 years or more years old are 50-60 kg FYM, 500g N, 350g P2O5 700 g K2O per plant.
• FYM along with full dose of P2O5 and K2O are applied in Dec- Jan and half dose N one month before flowering and remaining half after one month of first application.

Irrigation :-

• Irrigation is most important practice to improve the growth and yields of almond trees because summer rainfall is insufficient in the areas where almonds are grown.
• Almond trees should be irrigated at weekly intervals during April, May and June.

Orchard soil management :-

• Sod culture plus mulching of basin area is the best soil management system for almond orchard.
• The ground should be cultivated to a depth of 10-15 cm during winter and repeated in spring.
• After cultivation 10-15 cm dry grass or black alkathene mulch is used on the basin for weed control and moisture conservation.
• The weeds can also be controlled with the application of weedicides like glyphosate or or paraquat.

Pollination

• Most of the cultivars are self unfruitful and require cross pollination for good fruit set.
• Only a few varieties like Drake and Dhaber are self pollinated and capable of setting fruits with their own pollen.
• It has been observed that in even in self fruitful cvs. Cross pollination increases fruit set.
• In almond all the cultivars are not cross compatible usually two pollinizer varieties, possibly of commercial importance are used, one flowering slightly before and the other just after the main cultivars.
• Good pollination can be achieved by single row of the main cultivar and pollinizer.
• Pollination is mainly done by honey bees usually 4-5 colonies/ha are placed for effective pollination.

Harvesting and post harvest management :-

• Almond can be harvested green or dry. Nuts of thin shelled variety are also harvested at the green stage for direct consumption..
• Almonds are ready for harvesting when they change from green to yellowish with cracks or when splitting at suture starts from pedicel end.
• For dry nuts the harvesting is done from August to October
• Nuts are harvested by knocking the limbs with long wooden poles. The polythene sheet should be spread beneath the tree prior to harvesting.
• The nuts should be placed in a shady place for dehulling where these can be dried as well.
• The yield of 10-12 quintals/ ha of shelled almonds are obtained.