Evaluation of Some Valencia cvs. Performance under New Reclaimed Soil Conditions

Aims: The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of three imported Valencia cultivars (Citrus sinensis (L.) Osb.) namely ‘Campbell’, ‘Olinda’ and ‘Delta’ all were budded on Volkamer lemon (Citrus volkameriana) and grown in sandy soil under drip irrigation system.

Study Design: One way completely randomized design was used for the experiment.

Place and Duration of Study: The experimental was carried out during two successive seasons 2014- 2015 and 2015- 2016 at a private citrus orchard in South El Tahrir, El Beheira governorate, Egypt.

Methodology: The study covers some morphological, anatomical and physiological characteristics for the three investigated cultivars. Yield, fruit quality, total indoles, total phenols, total carbohydrates and minerals concentrations were determined.

Results: Anatomical study showed that the ‘Campbell’ leaves gave the higher values of most tissues measurements under study i.e., palisade thickness, mid vein thickness and main vascular bundle length and width comparing to ‘Olinda’ and ‘Delta’ cvs. Moreover, fruitlets structure demonstrated that, the highest values of flavedo thickness were observed in ‘Delta’ and the highest value of segments width was obtained by ‘Olinda’. Likewise, histological characters of the leaf of three cultivars and their fruitlets structure seemed to be reflected on their growth, yielding and fruit quality. Generally, the results revealed that, ‘Campbell’ produces the highest yield and best fruit quality parameters, whereas ‘Olinda’ fruits gave the highest fruit juice percentage which is an extremely important parameter for its industrial processing.

Conclusion: Thus, it could be concluded that ‘Campbell’ proved as reliable high yielding cultivar with good fruit characteristics followed by ‘Olinda’ with advantage for juice processing under the prevailing agro-climatic conditions of South El Tahrir district, Egypt.