Vol. 8, Issue 6 (2019)

Author(s):
Priyanka Sharma, Mohinder Singh, SK Bhardwaj and HS Bhatia

Abstract:
The present investigation was undertaken to study the location based weather variations on phenology of apple (Malus domestica Borkh) cultivars in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh during 2015 and 2016. The studies were conducted at four locations with different altitudinal gradients, viz. Bajaura (1090 m A.M.S.L.), Seobagh (1189 m A.M.S.L.), Naggar (1880 m A.M.S.L.) and Arsu (2080 m A.M.S.L.) on three commercial apple varieties viz. Red Delicious, Royal Delicious and Golden Delicious. The number of days required to complete various phenological stages increased with the increase in altitude of localities studied. Minimum numbers of days for silver tip stage (54.22 days with 349.22 GDD), green tip stage (71.67 days with 484.00 GDD), pink bud stage (86.94 days with 662.54 GDD), full bloom stage (93.89 days with 749.67 GDD) and for petal fall stage (99.00 days with 807.48 GDD) were recorded at Bajaura location, followed by Seobagh, Naggar and Arsu. Significantly maximum numbers of days for silver tip stage(64.06 days with 220.82 GDD), green tip stage(81.72 days with 328.02 GDD), pink bud stage (97.00 days with 462.10 GDD), full bloom stage (103.39 days with 704.06 GDD) and for petal fall stage (109.22 days with 589.78 GDD) were at Arsu location, which was followed by Naggar. Among different cultivars, Red Delicious cultivar took minimum number of days for silver tip stage (56.58 days and 264.93 GDD), green tip stage (74.92 days with 387.44 GDD), pink bud stage (89.00 days with 526.85 GDD), full bloom stage (95.71 days with 598.33 GDD) and for petal fall stage (101.58 days with 662.14 GDD), followed by Royal Delicious and Golden Delicious.