Biological properties and fruit quality of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) cultivars from Romanian assortment

The paper presents a 4-year study of the valuable characteristics in 15 autochthonous and cosmopolitan sweet cherry cultivars grown in northeastern Romania, named Moldavia area. Tree’s vigour, resistance to frost and anthracnosis, the fructification phenophases, epidermis colour, organoleptic and quality traits of fruits and also fruit’s and stone’s size were evaluated. Weak tree vigour was find at ‘Tereza’, ‘Ştefan’ and ‘Golia’ cultivars. From end of flowering to harvesting time were determined 39–40 days for the early cultivars (‘Scorospelka’, ‘Cătălina’), while for the late cultivars as ‘Marina’ and ‘George’ were identified 71–83 days. Eight cultivars have presented fruits’ resistance to cracking with low values between 1.3–9.3% fruits cracked. Fruit’s weight have varied between 5.9 g (‘Scorospelka’) and 9.2 g (‘Andreiaş’), while fruit’s equatorial diameter have varied between 22.4 mm (‘George’) and 25.8 mm (‘Paulică’). The cultivars with the largest fruit’s size were ‘Andreiaş’, ‘Bucium’, ‘Ştefan’, ‘Paulică’, ‘Golia’, ‘Van’ and ‘Stella’. The values of the soluble solids content range between 14.4°Brix (‘Scorospelka’) to 20.0°Brix (‘Bucium’), the titratable acidity has been between 0.39 (‘Andreiaş’) and 0.87 (‘Cătălina’) mg malic acid 100-1 mL juice and the total content of polyphenols has recorded values between 314.93–584.95 mg GAE 100-1 mL of fruit juice. The studied sweet cherry cultivars showed high variability but some got remarked through earliness, low vigour of the tree, large fruit’s size or fruit’s resistance to cracking.