Ayça Akça Uçkun1*, Murat İsfendiyaroğlu2 and Elmas Ozeker2
1Olive Research Institute, Izmir, Turkey
2Faculty of Agriculture, Ege University, Bornova, Turkey
*Corresponding Author: Ayça Akça Uçkun, Olive Research Institute, Izmir, Turkey.
Received: May 04, 2020; Published: May 31, 2020
Olive is a very important and useful fruit species that is cultivated economically in the Mediterranean regions. Yield and quality effects of olive oil and olive fruits are increased by many methods, one of them is fruit thinning. Fruit thinning is an application to control periodicity as well as increasing fruit yield and quality in olive cultivation. In addition to olives, it is currently applied in apricots, peaches, apples and pears. In recent years, potassium salt of naphthalene acetic acid (K-NAA) started to be used intensively in thinning of various fruit crops. In this study, the effects of chemical fruit thinning by using naphthalene acetic acid as potassium salt (K-NAA) on fruit yield and quality of the table olive varieties Domat, Gemlik and Memecik was determined. NAA was applied at 120, 160 and 200 ppm at 12, 16 and 20 days after full bloom, respectively, and at 100, 120 and 150 ppm at 3 - 5 mm fruit length. It was determined that 160 ppm at post-bloom and 120 ppm at fruitlet stage gave the highest increase in yield. The highest yield was obtained from Memecik and the lowest yield from Gemlik. In terms of quality parameters such as fruit weight (g), flesh/pip ratio (%), yield per unit trunk sectional area, fruit width (mm), and fruit length (mm), 160 ppm at post-bloom and 120 ppm at fruitlet stage gave the best results. This research is very important as it is a method to reduce alternate bearing and to increase yield and quality in olive.
Keywords: Olive; Thinning; NAA; Yield; Quality
Citation: Ayça Akça Uçkun., et al. “The Effects of Chemical Thinning Applications on Yield and Quality Characteristics in Different Olive Varieties" Acta Scientific Agriculture 4.6 (2020): 45-48.
Copyright: © 2020 Ayça Akça Uçkun., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.