- 3 - 



are seedlings. From experience thus far gained in this matter, it is 

 clear that Golden Delicious trees do vary in susceptibility to russet, 

 and that russet-free selections can be made and propagated to advantage. 

 More will be heard of this in the future. 



The modern debate over the close planting of dwarf trees in the new 

 apple orchard has raged in Appalachia as it has elsewhere, and the truth 

 has yet to be learned. The extent to which dwarf plantings have been 

 made in the Mid -Atlantic region has to this point been modest, but people 

 are interested and plantings are being made. Plantings seen by the wri- 

 ter on EM IX have generally been failures under Mid -Atlantic conditions. 

 More interest, however, was centered around EM VII in the beginning, an 

 interest that now has given way to MM 106, a similarly-sized stock that 

 presumably provides better anchorage and produces fewer suckers. Such 

 non-vigorous roots tocks have proved disastrous, however, when combined 

 with such varieties as the York Imperial, and this has led to current 

 interest in more vigorous stocks such as MM 111. Coupled with this in- 

 terest in more vigor is a fascination with close-planting of spur types 

 on either seedlings or vigorous clonal stocks with the idea of "mold and 

 hold" pruning and training to keep the trees in bounds. Stories of fan- 

 tastic tonnage coming out of the West on close planting have stimulated 

 interest in this sort of thing, and a few growers have succumbed to the 

 press releases and have close plantings in the ground. Many undoubted- 

 ly lead only to disaster because they are planted on thin soils that can- 

 not deliver the water to sustain the plantings in a normal year. Others 

 will come to the same end because of failure of management. It should 

 be pointed out that neither growers nor researchers have yet learned how 

 to "mold and hold" in Appalachia. We have seen it in this nation and in 

 Europe, but until it is done successfully here, such a practice must be 

 viewed as experimental. 



Fruit production in Appalachia today is in a state of rapid transi- 

 tion. The critical labor situation dictates the trial of practices that 

 were unheard of just 5 years ago, and the intense exploration of ways 

 and means to facilitate the biggest job of all, that of harvest. Growers 

 themselves are doing as much experimenting as researchers in new plant- 

 ing distances in stock and scion combinations, in an effort to arrive at 

 long-term answers. There will be many failures, but there will be suc- 

 cesses too. In the view of the writer, successes of the future will re- 

 sult from the combination of the provision of adequate soil water, and 

 the application of superior management. 



*************** 



THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMIDITY 

 DURING POST-HARVEST HANDLING OF FRUIT 



William J. Bramlage 

 Department of Plant and Soil Sciences 



l\rhile the importance of temperature during handling and storage is 

 usually vv^ell recognized, the importance of humidity is often overlooked. 



