BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC EFFECT FROM CULTIVATION OF DENSITY-TREES IN APPLE ORCHARD ON SEEDLING ROOTSTOCKS

During the period 1998 - 2003 in a young apple orchard (1-6 year) with trees of cultivars Florina and Freedom grafted on seedling rootstocks of Winter gold Pearmain and wild apple (standard), planted at 8 m x 7m were cultivated. Other trees called further density-trees from the same cultivars grafted on a clonal rootstock MM 106 (in the rows) and M 9 (between the rows) were grown. It was established that the trees from the two cultivars on seedling rootstocks during the third-fourth year entered almost at the same time into initial fruit bearing period with these trees on MM 106 and M 9. The combination Florina on MM 106 was with the biggest quantity of fruits. The quality of the fruits according to the Bulgarian quality standard was high at all the cultivar-rootstock combination. From the density-trees the yield was average 29250 kg/ha high quality fruits, total production of 17550 lv/ha (1 lv-1 Bulgaria Leva = 0.512 Euro), net income – 6529.5 lv/ha and rate of profitability – 59.29%. The amount of net income (margin of profit) covered the loss of planting and growing of the main trees on seedling rootstocks and the value of the drip irrigation system.