Abstract

SALAZAR-GARCIA, Samuel; IBARRA-ESTRADA, Martha Elva; ALVAREZ-BRAVO, Arturo  and  GONZALEZ-VALDIVIA, José. Irreversible determination of avocado flowering ‘Méndez’ in southern Jalisco, Mexico. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2017, vol.8, n.spe19, pp.3923-3938. ISSN 2007-0934.  https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v0i19.661.

During the process of development leading to flowering a vegetative apex undergoes the transition towards reproductive. At some point, the process is no longer reversible and cannot be modified with treatments that inhibit flowering. This process is known as irreversible flowering determination (DIF). The objective of this research was to determine the date, development stage of the buds and the associated temperature when DIF occurs in the winter and summer vegetative flows of ‘Méndez’ avocado in southern Jalisco, Mexico. Two orchards were selected and in each of them 10 trees were selected and 30 sprout of each vegetative flow occurred in 2014 and 2015. The treatments consisted of ringing of the bark and defoliation of sprout that were performed at monthly intervals in an outbreak of each vegetative flow per tree. In winter and summer outbreaks, DIF occurred when treatment was applied on June 26 and November 26, respectively. The buds presented an anatomical state similar to that previously found for ‘Hass’ avocado in other producing regions. DIF for winter and summer buds was associated with temperatures ≤20 and ≤18 °C, respectively, and could be modeled mathematically. From day zero (beginning of vegetative sprouting), winter and summer sprout required 1 480 and 1 239.5 cold accumulated hours, respectively.

Keywords : Persea americana Mill.; cold hours; defoliation; floral development; ringing.