Influenza dell'intervento irriguo sul ciclo produttivo dell'olivo: nota 2.: influenza del regime idrico sulla biologia floreale e sui caratteri morfo-qualitativi dei frutti

An irrigation trial was carried out on the Ascolana tenera table-olive variety to test the possible effects of high water volumes. The following treatments were compared: A: 20 m3/tree/season at weekly intervals; B: Il m3/tree/season at biweekly intervals; C: 8 m3/tree/season at triweekly intervals. Percentage of aborted flowers and total yield per tree, resulted positively affected by frequent irrigations. Fruit characteristics like fresh weight, volume, fruit length and mesocarp thickness, instead were better on trees watered once every three weeks because of fruits from less yielding trees produced bigger fruits. No substantial difference was found between the first two treatments. Though the frequent watering, alternate bearing and statistically significant differences on flowering and fruit characteristics were found among the three years of experiments.