EVALUATION OF THE TREE VIGOUR AND ANNUAL GROWTH OF SOME ROMANIAN WALNUT GENOTYPES FROM RIFG PITESTI COLLECTION

The walnut crop has a long tradition on the territory of Romania. One of the problems of walnut crop is tree size (about 25-30 m high), which makes difficult some technological practices (pruning, spraying and harvesting). The low vigour of the trees is not the most important objective in walnut breeding program, but it is necessary to find the genitors with this trait. The goal of this paper, is to evaluate the trees vigour of 32 Romanian walnut genotypes, from germplasm fund of RIFG Pitesti, Romania in order to identify the most valuable genotypes that will be recommended for spread in commercial orchards or use as genitors in breeding works. The results obtained have highlighted the fact that in walnut collection from RIFG Pitesti there is a large phenotypic diversity. The genotypes 'Sibișel 252', 'Claudia Ioana', 'Ciprian Ion', 'Geoagiu 265', 'Germisara', 'Jupânești', 'M 44-39', 'Orăștie', 'Roxana', 'Sarmis', 'Sibișel 44' were noted with low vigour. Also, 'Dacus' - generative rootstock has had a low vigour and can be recommended for grafting of walnut cultivars intended for intensive orchards.