The citrus trade market welcomes cultivars with different characteristics such as being totally seedless or having fewer seeds, having thin and vividness skin, high ratio of sugar to acid, being watery, easy peeling and relatively large fruit. Furthermore, a wide range of cultivars should be available according to fruit ripening time from very early (precocious) to very late (serotinous). ‘Yashar’ mandarin is a hybrid obtained by crossing of the ‘Minneola’ tangelo and ‘Changsha’ mandarin. The fruits of this cultivar grow in the northern regions of Iran, and it ripen in May, thus, they are considered the late-ripening mandarin cultivars. One of the deficiencies of this cultivar is that it is full of seeds (25-30). Two separate experiments were performed to reduce the number of seeds in ‘Yashar’ mandarin. In the first experiment; the effect of pollen grains of different citrus cultivars (‘Valencia’ orange, ‘Hamlin’ and sour orange) and a free-pollination treatment as a control group was evaluated. In the second experiment, the effect of foliar application of copper sulfate at the rate of 25 mg·L^-1 was conducted in stages 30, 60 and 80 % of open flowers. One free pollination treatment as a control group was evaluated as well. The results showed that the highest index of fruit technology (multiplication of the percentage of the extract in the soluble solids divided by 100) was obtained by pollination with ‘Hamlin’ and sour orange pollen grains. The foliar spraying with copper sulfate, when 30 % of the flowers had opened, among all the treatments evaluated in the study, reduced the number of seeds in the Yashar mandarin cultivar.

While peach tree is very sensitive to waterlogging, there are no works on the effect of the flooding over only part of its root system. The objective of this work was to investigate physiological and growth responses of Nemared rootstock to partial flooding of roots. Treatments were performed for 6-days: control trees, half-flooded, and fully-flooded. Both flooding treatments negatively affected the vegetative growth, stomatal conductance, chlorophyll content and leaf water potential. The response observed in the half-flooded treatment was intermediate between the control and fully-flooded treatment. The fastest response of stomatal conductance to soil flooding, before differences among treatments in leaf water potential were perceived, suggested that there should be a stomatal closure mechanism that responds to a signal that arises from flooded roots. The importance of this work, lies in showing the negative effects of unnoticed and partial floods, frequently occurring in peach trees.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are beneficial microorganisms that form symbioses with vines, showing improvements favorably in the growth and nutrition of seedlings after rooting them. This work aimed to evaluate the effects of AMF species inoculation and phosphate fertilization on rooted cuttings of vine rootstocks in a greenhouse. Woody rootstock cuttings from 'IAC 766' Campinas vines were prepared to promote rooting. After 45 days, the cuttings were transplanted and subjected to treatments that consisted of the inoculation of different species of AMF and fertilization with two doses of phosphorus (simple superphosphate) plus the control. The treatments were randomly assigned following a completely randomized design with eight replications for each treatment. After 90 days, growth parameters, macro and micronutrient content (shoot and root), root colonization and mycorrhizal effect of the extracted nutrients were evaluated. The inoculation with AMF species influenced the growth parameters, root colonization and extraction of macro and micronutrients from the cuttings of the 'IAC 766' rootstock, highlighting the inoculation with species of the genus Acaulospora, either individually or associated. Phosphorous fertilization affected growth parameters and extraction of macro and micronutrients, but these were to a lesser degree compared to that verified by the inoculation of AMF species.