Agronomical Evaluation of Artichoke Cultivar Propagated by Seed

摘要

In the last years seed propagated cultivars, hybrids or open pollinated, have been introduced in several countries. Yield, earliness, harvesting time and qualitative head traits of six new seed grown cultivars, compared to two vegetatively propagated ones, are reported in this paper. Two year trials were carried out in Policoro, southern Italy; the cultivars 'A106', 'A109', 'Concerto', 'Madrigal', 'Opal', and 'Tempo' were sown in the first week of June in polystyrene trays. The seedlings were grown in a cold greenhouse until the stage of 3~(rd)-4~(th) true leaf and then transplanted in open field. In comparison, Violetto di Provenza (V.P.) and Romanesco C_3 (RC_3) were planted in the same date using rooted offshoots and micropropagated plantlets respectively. Three GA3 treatments at 5 mg L~(-1), were applied to the foliage at three week intervals; heads were harvested from October to May. Yield, biometric traits and dry matter of primary and secondary heads were recorded at each harvest. The refuse of small buds trimmed before processing, height of the inflorescence complex and atrophic heads were also determined.The results showed the different sensitivity to GA3 treatments among the seed propagated cultivars. The harvests started from end October for 'A 106' and 'Opal' that resulted the earliest, whereas 'Madrigal' and 'RC_3' were the latest and produced from end January. The highest yield was observed for 'Opal' and 'Madrigal', with 203.000 heads ha~(-1) on average, followed by 'Concerto' and 'V.P.' with 170.000 heads ha~(-1), while for the 'RC_3' were harvested about 77.000 heads ha~(-1). High heads quality and low refuse percentage after trimming for the process, were observed for the cultivar Madrigal.