PHENOLOGY, PRODUCTION AND FRUIT QUALITY OF NEW CZECH APRICOT CULTIVARS IN THE BELGRADE REGION

This study was aimed at evaluating of 14 new apricot cultivars created at thefaculty of horticulture in lednice in the czech republic in order to recommendthe best of them for growing in the belgrade region. the study was carried out atthe experimental station ‘radmilovac’ of the faculty of agriculture in belgradeover a period of five years (2009–2013). the experimental orchard was establishedin 2007, the rootstock was myrobalan seedling, and tree spacing was 4.5 x 3 m.the control cultivar for comparison was the clone of ‘velkopavlovick?’ cultivar(type of ‘hungarian best’), le-12/2.flowering of introduced cultivars started from three days before to one dayafter the control cultivar, while the maturation time ranged from 19 days earlier incultivar ‘leskora’ to 12 days after the control in cultivar ‘sophia’ (le-2926).compared with the control cultivar, significantly higher yield was achieved only incultivar ‘palava’, while significantly higher fruit weight was recorded in threecultivars: ‘candela’ (le-2927), ‘sophia’ (le-2926) and ‘betinka’ (le-3276).cultivars ‘sophia’ and ‘betinka’ got the best scores for fruit appearance, whilecultivars ‘marlen’ and ‘lebona’ ranked the highest for fruit taste.among studied apricot cultivars, for the cultivation in the belgrade region, thefollowing cultivars can be recommended as promising: ‘palava’ (early season),‘betinka’ (mid-season) and ‘sophia’ (late season). regarding the large size andattractive appearance of fruits, these cultivars are more suitable for freshconsumption, but they can also be used for processing.