Effect of Fruit Thinning Methods on the Characteristics of Date Palm Fruits (Tali's Cultivar)

Abstract

This study was conducted in one of the palm groves of Tamzawa city - Wadi Al-Shati area in southern Libya during the 2023 season on fruitful palm trees of the Thalis variety. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the response of date palms (Thales) to some thinning treatments on the natural date characteristics of the study variety, which were as follows: T0 treatment without shortening or removing the inflorescences (control treatment), T1 treatment with shortening of 30% of the inflorescence lengths, and T2 removal of 30% of the number of inflorescences from the center of the inflorescence. The most important results obtained are as follows: The two tested thinning treatments (T1, T2) led to an increase in fruit weight by 31.49% and 23.28% and pulp weight by 32.71% and 29.01% and Fruit size by 52.15%, 26.07%, respectively, compared to the control treatment (T0). Length and fruit thickness followed the same trend as the previous parameters with an increase of 44.27%, and 19.50% in length and 12.51% and 00.04% in thickness compared to the control treatment (T0). While the seed weight were not significantly affected by the two thinning treatments. The specific gravity of the fruits took the opposite direction to the thinning and control treatments, as the thinning treatment gave the lowest value of 0.920 g/cm3 for treatment (T1) and 1.043 g/cm3 for treatment (T2), while the control treatment (T0) recorded 1.083 g/cm3, that is, the highest value of specific gravity. The results also showed that thinning the inflorescences, whether by shortening or removing them by 30%, led to improvement in the fruit characteristics of the Talis variety under study; and that the treatment of shortening the inflorescences from their length (T1) gave the best results, consequently it could be recommended to thin the fruits by shortening them by 30%.