Optimized quality and yield of plum and apple by regulation of flowers and fruitlets

Consistent cropping of high quality fruit is important for the fruit industry where technology for cost effective and environmentally friend methods for crop regulation is highly wanted. Due to alternate bearing, Norwegian fruit growers are not able to se rve the apple market regular with the amount of fruit wanted. For sweet cherry and plums, the fruit industry is expanding and is exporting high quality fruit. Many fruit cultivars frequently initiate and form too many flowers and set too many fruits to o btain regular and marketable crops from year to year. If consistent cropping is to be sustained and fruit quality maximized, the fruit set remained by the tree must be balanced by regulation of fruiting. To identify important factors which induce or contr ibute to consistency of cropping, the following factors will be studied in more detail for overcoming biennial bearing and get regular cropping: - Establish sustainable crop levels of the plum cultivar Opal with high fruit quality. - Optimize crop loads o f high quality of different commercial plum cultivars by chemically thinning of flowers and fruitlets. -Optimized crop loads of high quality of apple and peach by environmentally friendly approaches for crop load regulation (linked to the ISAFRUIT integ rated EU project). A fellowship is included which is one important part of the personal strategy at Bioforsk Ullensvang recruiting a new scientist in the area pomology and applied plant physiology. The PhD student will be working with aspects of crop reg ulation in fruit as subject for the thesis and be an official PhD student at The Norwegian University of Life Sciences. One important part of the program will include a stay at the internationally known horticultural institute at University of Bologna, It aly. The largest fruit wholesaler in Norway, Bama, will be the main business co-operator. Their member organization Gartnerhallen has appointed an advisory committee of growers and are a financial contributor