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in the minds of fruit growers and researchers alike, to be used when and 

 where needed. Calcium as a plant nutrient is being given more and more 

 attention in this region. Calcium has long been cited as the needed 

 treatment in Delicious orchards to correct internal bark necrosis, com- 

 monly known as apple "measles." However, surface applications of cal- 

 cium have largely failed to correct this disorder, and perhaps the fail- 

 ure is due, in a large measure, to failure to get the calcium down in 

 the rooting zone of the trees. For this and other reasons, growers are 

 now encouraged to plow down calcium in the entire orchard area before 

 planting a new block of trees. The precise nature of internal bark ne- 

 crosis and its correction remains a debatable matter in Appalachia. 



The Maryland Experiment Station has closed out 15 years work on 

 chemical thinning of apples and turned the matter over to growers. No 

 single compound has proven to be the best for all varieties. On Golden 

 Delicious, the most commonly sprayed variety, we find that the combina- 

 tion of Naphthaleneacetic acid and Tween 20 is the most reliable and ef- 

 fective from year to year, and we have growers in Maryland now with as 

 much as 10 consecutive years of experience with this combination. Sevin, 

 the new insecticide, is the only compound recommended for Rome Beauty 

 and Red Delicious in Maryland, while Amid-thin is the preferred compound 

 on most other varieties, including York Imperial. Recent research has 

 shown that Sevin will thin the York variety just as well as Amid-thin, 

 but Sevin-sprayed Yorks will not "come back" with an off-year crop. No 

 satisfactory thinning compound has yet been developed for spray thinning 

 of the peach. 



New plantings of apples in the Mid-Atlantic region indicate that 

 the York Imperial variety is going to remain the dominant variety in 

 this region for some time to come. In the Spring of 1966, area nurser- 

 ies were sold out of trees of this variety, a situation which provides 

 unmistakable evidence of what is going to be around 20 years from now. 

 Rome Beauty is still being fairly extensively planted in this region, 

 whereas Stayman and Jonathan have been declining for some time. Like 

 other apple -producing regions of the nation, the Mid-Atlantic section 

 has been planting thousands of Red Delicious trees. Among the new non- 

 spur red sports of Delicious, Ryan Red, Topred, Red Prince, Red Queen, 

 and Hi-Early have proved in area tests to be outstanding strains, whether 

 grown under good coloring conditions in the mountains or under the poorer 

 coloring conditions on the coastal plain. The 3 best known of the spur 

 types, namely Starkrimson, Redspur, and Wellspur, leave much to be desired 

 as far as fruit characters are concerned. The fruits are higher in chlor- 

 ophyll than are non-spur type fruits, and quality of the spur-type fruit 

 remains inferior until the Christmas holiday period or somewhat later. 

 Through the middle to the latter part of the apple storage season, how- 

 ever, spur-type fruits have been very acceptable in Maryland tests. The 

 vegetative characteristics of the spur-type tree are very exciting, how- 

 ever, and make the choice between a spur and a non-spur type very dif- 

 ficult indeed when planting a new orchard. Golden Delicious has been 

 very heavily planted in the Mid-Atlantic region and the current emphasis 

 is on finding a russet-free Golden. Several interesting entries in this 

 race are at hand, including Sungold from New Jersey, the Milburn Gold in 

 Maryland, and the Kelly Golden from Kentucky. Of this group, however, 

 only the Milburn Golden is a true Golden Delicious, whereas the other 2 



