The effects of citrus rootstocks on Valencia Late and Rhode Red Valencia oranges for some plant nutrient elements

In citrus production, the rootstocks utilization is beneficial for solving the problems caused by soil, climates, pests and diseases as well as achieving higher productivity and quality, earlier and later fruit productions. Therefore, citrus producer almost exclusively utilizes rootstocks. The major rootstock of Turkish citrus production is sour orange while trifoliate, Troyer and Carrizo citranges are utilized as well. In this study, we determined the rootstock effects on some plant nutrient element status of Rhode Red Valencia and Valencia Late oranges budded on sour orange, Troyer and Carrizo citranges in 2004 and 2005. Our results were similar in both experimental years with few expectations. The nutrient status of the two orange cultivars tested significantly differed from K and Ca concentrations in both years. However, all cultivars mean were within the range of optimal limits except Zn. The rootstock had significantly different means for all elements tested in both years. We demonstrated that the citrus rootstocks had different abilities to utilize plant nutrient elements. For N, K, Mg, Mn and Cu, Carrizo citrange has the highest means while Troyer and sour orange have the highest concentrations for P and Fe, and Ca, Zn and Na, respectively. We recommend utilizations of Carrizo and Troyer citrange rootstocks for eastern Mediterranean region citrus production as they had higher ability to utilize many plant nutrient elements playing important roles in productivity and quality