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Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas
Print version ISSN 2011-2173
Abstract
ARDILA, GUSTAVO H.; FISCHER, GERHARD and GARCIA, JUAN CAMILO. Effect of stem and floral cluster pruning on fruit production of lulo plants (Solanum quitoense var. septentrionale). rev.colomb.cienc.hortic. [online]. 2015, vol.9, n.1, pp.24-37. ISSN 2011-2173. https://doi.org/10.17584/rcch.2015v9i1.3743.
Pruning in lulo crops has been little studied in terms of increasing production, especially since this species is one of the fruits with higher potential in Colombia. To find out if pruning causes the greatest number of fruits, the yield and gross income of plants were evaluated in the municipality of San Antonio del Tequendama (Cundinamarca, Colombia). The experimental design used completely randomized blocks with a factorial arrangement of 3x3+1, where the first factor corresponded to the number of stems per plant (3, 4, and 5) and the second factor was the number of clusters per plant (20, 30, 40), along with a control without pruning. The measured variables were number of fruits, fruit weight (yield) and different categories of fruit quality (extra, first to fifth category). It was found that the treatments with 20 clusters per plant developed the lowest number of fruits and total fruit production per plant, but this was compensated for by having the highest proportion of fruits in the extra category. The control produced the highest fruit number (213/plant), but it also had the highest proportion of fruits in the lower categories (third to fifth). Also, the yield of the plants without pruning (38.6 t ha-1) was significantly lower than that of the plants with 30 or 40 clusters, irrespective of the number of stems. Pruning the plants to 40 clusters, leaving 4 to 5 stems, not only produced the highest fruit yield (53.8 and 53.9 t ha-1, respectively), but also had the highest commercial production value.
Keywords : yield; fruit weight; fruit number; category; commercial value; naranjilla.