Fruit growing
and viticulture of South Russia

Annotation

The fruits of the sweet cherry plant (Prunus avium L.) with a high percentage of water quickly deteriorate, so research is constantly being conducted to extend access to fresh sweet cherries in the intercrop. Now in the Guba-Khachmaz region, emphasis is placed on new varieties of sweet cherries, especially Ziraat 0900 and Lapins, grown here on medium-sized rootstock Maxima-14 of French origin. The advantages of these varieties include high yield capacuty, as well as the fact that their fruits have an ideal shape, taste and color with a pronounced shine. Little is known about their properties such as responsiveness to different conditions of post-harvest storage, and orientation in this matter to literary data may be unjustified, given that in many respects they are formed under the influence of edaphoclimatic conditions of the growing region. The main objective of this study was precisely to increase awareness of this issue. In addition to the above two varieties, the experiments, for comparison, also included the fruits of the sweet cherry variety �Cow Heart�, grown in this region traditionally on a tall rootstock (wild). The fruits of the three aforementioned varieties were harvested 5-7 days before their full ripening. They were stored in closed plastic bags for 1 kg (25x40 cm in size, 0,05 mm thick) for 3 weeks at a temperature of 0 ... + 2 ºC and a relative humidity of 90-95 %. During storage, changes in the taste and color of fruits and pedicels were evaluated, as well as the natural decline and yield of standard fruits. Before and after storage, the content of dry soluble substances, total sugar and vitamin C and titrated acidity were determined. Storage of sweet cherries under these conditions led to significant natural losses, which, depending on the variety, amounted to 5.1-9.8 %. The yield of standard fruits of the Cow heart variety was 80.0 %, and it was significantly higher in the Ziraat 0900 and Lapins varieties � 89,9 and 88,7 %, respectively. Thus, the sweet cherries of the latest introduced varieties Ziraat 0900and Lapins turned out to be more suitable for cold storage without freezing than the sweet cherries of the Cow Heart variety, which appeared in Azerbaijan many decades ago and belongs to the old Western European cultivars.