Study of the Behaviour of Olive Cultivars Cultivated under Different Tree-Trainings: Vegetative and Productive Characteristics

摘要

As in the case of other fruits crops, the olive orchard will incorporate two principal aims: early bearing and regular production. This makes it necessary to study the vegetative and productive behaviour of both local and foreign cultivars in different planting systems in Tunisia. Different table and oil cultivars were tested to different tree-trainings and pruning systems: central leader, open vase form and free form under intensive conditions. Trees on free form, showed an important increase of their canopy. In the two others systems (central leader and open vase form), trees showed an important reduction of their canopy development. A linear relationship between the trunk basal diameter and canopy volume was found. The trunk basal diameter can be proposed as a criterion to estimate the global tree development. The natural growth habit of the different cultivars can be indicated by the height/width ratio. In the 5th growth year, the ratio varied between 0.59 on 'Souri' and 0.86 on 'Koroneiki'. For central leader axis, the ratio is higher for 'Picholine', 'Coratina', 'Koroneiki', 'Meski' and 'Manzanilla', which indicated the adaptation of these cultivars to the central axis form. The cumulative production for the three years was more important on the tree with free form than tree conducted on central axis and on vase form. However, the yield efficiency was the highest for 'Koroneiki' on the three training system: 1.4 kg/m3 of canopy on vase form, 1.15 kg/m3 on the central leader and 2.87 kg/m3 on free form. The alternate criterion was more important on 'Meski', 'Souri', 'Ascolana' and 'Chetoui' (superior to 0.6). The average weight varied from 1 g on 'Koroneiki' (oil cultivar) to 8.9 g on 'Ascolana' (table cultivar).