Search
Search Results
-
Challenges – the impact of climate change on the nutritional management of Hungarian orchards
323-334Views:474The agricultural sector is increasingly exposed to both environmental and economic risks due to the phenomena of climate change and climate variability. Fruit growth and productivity are adversely affected by nature’s wrath in the form of various abiotic stress factors. Climate change and extreme climatic events are predicted to increase in intensity, frequency, and geographic extent as a consequence of global climate change. It is no doubt that frequency of unexpected climatic events and their growing rate result in an increasing amount of problems for fruit growers globally. Today, climate change impacts are the most serious problems for Hungarian fruit growers as well. It can be stated that the nutrient demand of fruit trees can be supplied only under even worse conditions.
Therefore, it is so important to know and apply adaptation and mitigation strategies in horticulture to improve fruit quality and yield. In the last ten years, at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Environmental Management at University of Debrecen expanded studies have been made to prove the importance of groundcover management in horticultural applications. In this mini review paper, is presented, how the university's researches contributed to the expansion of knowledge of preservation of soil moisture and what advice we can provide for fruit growers to face the challenges of climate change.
-
The efficacy of combining paraffin oil with conventional fungicide treatments against grape powdery mildew in Eger
173-180Views:496We aimed to test the combination of paraffin oil (PFO) with regular fungicide treatment to assess its efficacy against grape powdery mildew (GPM) in a small spraying experiment on two Vitis vinifera L. cultivars (Chardonnay and Kékfrankos) with different susceptibility to Erysiphe necator. The visual symptoms of GPM on leaves and clusters were examined at three phenological states. The harvest yield was characterized by two methods, data were analyzed with one-way ANOVA and Tukey post-hoc test. Regular fungicide treatment (CT) and its combinations with PFO showed better results in both varieties to repress GPM in 2015 relative to sole PFO treatments. Mean values of combined treatments were often lower than CT but did not differ significantly from each other. The same was observed in 2016, despite the higher pressure of GPM, and missed the third survey. No significant differences were detected between treatments in yield. In contrast, the mean cluster weight of CT and combined treatments resulted in (insignificantly) higher values in each variety and year. In summary, the sole PFO showed some disease control capability as reported earlier, but this effect was greatly affected by the given vintage. Combining PFO with CT resulted in increased protection against GPM relative to the solely applied fungicides. However, this effect was not significant in all cases. It also depended on the vintage and cultivar characteristics. The beneficial impact of paraffin oil as an additive to CT may be due to the induction of plant stress responses and/or its ability to support the adherence and absorption of the combined agents.
-
What has Harmonia axyridis to do with Dante's Divine Comedy
82-88Views:278The multicoloured Asian ladybird beetle (Harmonia axyridis (Pallas, 1773)), a former successful biological control agent in the USA and Western Europe became an invasive alien species threatening the diversity of native aphidophagous insects through competition and praying, a horticultural pest consuming various fruits and adversely affecting the wine quality and a human nuisance when occurring at high densities in buildings. Due to this dubious fame, attention has been paid to it also at national level which made inevitable to find for it a fitting name in different languages. In some cases and countries a version of the English name has been chosen however, regarding the meaning of this translated term in Hungarian, the try cannot be called fortunate. The objective of this contribution is to stress the function of common animal names in the Hungarian Sprachraum and to find a right and proper alternative with the help of etymology, mythology, classical literature, art (painting) and the experiences of Hungarian fruit and grape growers.
-
The effect of plant density to the yield results and the yield components of maize hybrids
89-93Views:302Maize is the crop that is produced on the second largest area in our country, in Hungary. It is planted on nearly 25% of the country’s growing area and it was produced on 1 090 439 hectares in 2016. Despite the continuous development of the biological basis and production
technology, the growth of the yield results is not constant, its fluctuation is significant. It can be even up to 60%, because of the extremity of the years. The exploitation of the yield potential of modern hybrids is possible if we harmonize the effects of the ecological factors and properly applied instruments of agro technology and by these we ensure their interaction to reach a favorable outcome. The applied plant density is an important, well researched, but at industrial level a not enough utilized element of the maize production.
The results of the extensive tests, done between 2009 and 2015, showed that the genotype, the year effect and the plant density are in strong correlation with each other determining the yield results. In the past seven years the examined genotypes reached the highest yield
performance at the highest plant densities. The early hybrids (RM90–95, FAO 200–300) are capable of producing them at higher plant density, while in case of the mid and late maturity varieties the further increasing of the density after reaching the optimum level led to yield depression.
According to our experimental results, the yield is in close positive correlation with the increase of the plant density. The effect of the growing season has great significance in forming the yield results and this determines the applicable plant density too.
The yield of maize is determined by a resultant of components. The main component is the number of ears per plant and the amount of kernels per ear, which is calculated from the number of kernels on an ear and the weight of them. The number of the kernels on an ear is
calculated from the number of rows on the cob multiplied by the number of seeds in one row on the cob. In dry years, at lower yield levels the yield decreases because of the shorter ears, while at the higher levels the number of kernels in a row and the thousand-kernel weight decreases,causing yield depression this way. From our examinations it turned out that the plant density reaction of a genotype is individual, every variety reaches its maximum kernel number per hectare – in other words the maximum yield - in an individual way.