Globe Artichoke Mother-Plant Management for the Production of High Quality Offshoots

摘要

The purpose of this research was to define a plant management for the improvement of high quality off-shoot (OS) production in two artichoke cultivars grown in Apulia region (Southern Italy): 'Brindisino' and 'Violet du Provence'. A mother-plant (MP) field was settled on October 2004 in a hilly area in Foggia province (Apulia, Southern Italy). They were evaluated three techniques for MP management: a) traditional (Trad): MP were treated according to commercial practice (two OS per plant were allowed to growth and to produce heads); b) apex removal (AR): removal of standard OS except one, on which the apex was removed when it differentiated from vegetative to reproductive phase; c) shoot removal (SR): removal of all standard OS. From autumn 2005 to spring 2008, six pickings (3 in autumn and 3 in spring) of standard OS (>2 cm basal diameter and 5-6 fully expanded leaves) were carried out. At each picking, the OS per plant and their position on the rhizome, leaf and root number, height, and leaf lamina shape |margin classes were: entire (E), slight lobed (SL), deeply lobed (DL)] were recorded. The OS picked on November 2005 and April 2006 were rooted under nursery conditions for 2 months and then were transplanted in field to evaluate the effect of MP forcing treatments on earliness and yield of the resulting plants. They were picked 108,000, 90,000 and 38,000 OS/ha, for the treatment SR, AR and Trad, respectively. Unrespectively of picking time, the control plants (Trad) always produced 4 OS, while in AR-plants the older the plants the higher the number of OS that, at the same time, were more deeply inserted on the rhizome, with higher basal diameter, and with higher number of roots. Especially in the first year, the SR treatment caused alternate high-low number of OS at each subsequent picking, even if the earliness in head production was anticipated by 23 days compared to the other treatments.