The impact of weather conditions of the vegetation period on rhythms of seasonal development of highbush blueberry varieties at the introduction in Belarus

Abstract

The article presents the results of a comparative study carried out in the southern agroclimatic area of Belarus in contrasting hydrothermal regimes of vegetation periods of 2021–2023. During the study of phenology of seasonal development of 6 new introduced varieties of highbush blueberry with different ripening periods in particular early-ripening Chanticleer and Hannah’s Choice varieties; mid-ripening Bluegold and Harrison varieties and late-ripening Aurora and Rubel varieties, as well as regionalized Weymouth, Bluecrop and Elliot varieties, corresponding to the given groups of crop ripening, a significant impact of weather conditions on the timing of the onset of the main phenological phases was established. The most notable inter-seasonal differences in the timing of the phenological phases in the early and mid-ripening varieties were 9 and 11 days, respectively, while as for the late-ripening varieties they reached 17 days. However, all the tested blueberry taxa, along with the regionalized varieties, as the required amount of heat was reached increasing from the early to late-ripening varieties, managed to go through a full cycle of their development and form the harvest of berry products with distinct varietal differences in phenological rhythms, most expressively manifested during flowering and especially during fruiting. The earliest fruit ripening in new varieties of blueberries, which was 7–28 days ahead of that in the corresponding standard varieties, was identified in the Chanticleer and Rubel varieties, while the latest, with a delay of 3–5 days, was found in the Harrison variety.