Climate Change Effects on Apple and Sour Cherry Phenology in a Gene Bank Plantation of Hungary

The trees observed were grown at Újfehértó, Eastern Hungary in a gene bank with 586 apple and 3 sour cherry cultivars. Each of the cultivars was monitored for its dates of: the beginning of bloom, main bloom and the end of bloom phenophases separately. In the present study, the interactions between the above mentioned phenomena are presented and numerically defined. Results presented proved that the dynamics of weather variables exert measurable effects on the development of fruits. We can find significant correlation between the maximum temperature of March and blooming time of the apple and sour cherry cultivars. If the temperature is increasing in the future the development stages of fruit trees will also shift to an earlier time. It is a serious problem in fruit farming, because the early climatic risk of frost occurrence is generally higher than that of in later times of a year. So, we will need to use more effective protection technologies and new extreme weather tolerant fruit varieties in the future. We should also pay more attention to the time intervals between the blooming and maturity, because the length and appearance of phenological phases have significant influences on quantitative and qualitative parameters of fruits