COMPARATIVE STUDY REGARDING GROWTH PARAMETERS OF SOME ROMANIAN AND FOREIGN CHERRY VARIETIES GRAFTED ON LOW-VIGOR VEGETATIVE ROOTSTOCKS IN THE INTENSIVE CHERRY ORCHARDS

Intensive planting systems, utilizing dwarf rootstocks is necessary in modern sweet cherry orchards. Such systems are highly productive and also easier to manage and to harvest than the more extensive systems with larger trees. The experiment was set up at the Research Institute for Fruit Growing Pitesti, an intensive cherry orchard established in the spring of 2009. The experimental plant material consisted of Romanian ‘Bucium’ and ‘Maria’ cherry cultivars grafted on ‘IP–C7’ Romanian vegetative rootstock and foreign cherry cultivars of ‘Ferovia’ and ‘Kordia’ grafted on ‘Gisela 5’ vegetative rootstock. Rootstocks used for the experiment are low-vigor vegetative ones. Biometric parameters studied were: trunk cross section area, trunk circumference, total length of shoots, total number of shoots and average length of shoots. The values obtained are relatively close to each other, which demonstrate that at least two years after planting, Romanian ‘IP-C7’ rootstock and the Romanian cultivars studied have corresponding increases similar with varieties grafted on ‘Gisela 5’ valuable foreign rootstock. ‘Bucium’ cultivar grafted on the Romanian ‘IP-C7’ vegetative rootstock has the highest average growth of shoots (61.69 cm) while the highest average values of trunk cross section area (1284.76 mm²) were recorded for the ‘Ferovia’ cultivar grafted on the ‘Gisela 5’ vegetative rootstock. Studies have shown that at least two years from planting there were no signs of incompatibility between cultivars and rootstocks.