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© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Fruit cracking in citrus is one of the most researched constraints in crop management. However, researchers are still clueless even today on how to curtail this important production loss through an integrated management system. Our study introduces a management strategy for fruit cracking in citrus by analyzing different production constraints. As many as 70 Bingtang orange (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck cv. Bingtang) orchards in Xinping County were investigated to determine the intensity and periodicity of fruit cracking. The results indicated that citrus cracking was in a high incidence state during production in the past two years, accounting for 48.2–50.6% of fruit drop following the physiological premature drop period, particularly exacerbating in the year with irregular rainfall (from June to September). Among factors such as soil texture, soil fertility, and orchard management, the soil sand proportion, soil calcium, soil potassium, and soil magnesium content were the main factors contributing to the occurrence of fruit cracking, with contributions of 18.57%, 17.14%, 10.00%, and 8.75%, respectively. Fruit cracking was significantly positively correlated with soil magnesium content (0.802) and significantly negatively correlated with soil calcium (0.8007), potassium (0.7616), and soil sand proportion (0.7826). The integrated management treatment (organic fertilizer to improve soil + foliar nutrient supplementation) showed better control on fruit cracking by 9.34–65.25% and an increase in yield by 4.13–37.49%, respectively, compared to the supplementation of a single element in all orchards with different production and quality traits. Our findings could thus help citrus growers optimize cultivation techniques for quality citrus production under increasingly changing climatic conditions.

Details

Title
Periodicity of Fruit Cracking in Orange Fruit and Integrated Management Intervention
Author
Shi, Xingjian 1 ; Wen, Mingxia 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Dong, Zhihao 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Zhang, Jiangzhou 4 ; Srivastava, Anoop Kumar 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Moussa, Mohamed G 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Zhang, Yueqiang 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 College of Resources and Environment, China Agriculture University, Beijing 100193, China; [email protected] (X.S.); [email protected] (Z.D.); Guangxi Academy of Specialty Crops, Guilin 541004, China; [email protected] 
 Zhejiang Institute of Citrus Research, Taizhou 318026, China 
 College of Resources and Environment, China Agriculture University, Beijing 100193, China; [email protected] (X.S.); [email protected] (Z.D.) 
 College of Resources and Environment, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot 010010, China; [email protected] 
 Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Citrus Research Institute, Nagpur 440033, Maharashtra, India; [email protected] 
 International Center for Biosaline Agriculture, Dubai P.O. Box 14660, United Arab Emirates; [email protected] 
 College of Resources and Environment, Southwest University, Chongqing 610072, China; [email protected] 
First page
389
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
22237747
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3165841285
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.