Annual and multiannual production of different artichoke cultivars in northern Spain

Artichoke production in Spain is almost exclusively based on the clonal propagating cultivar 'Blanca de Tudela'. In Navarre, the cradle of the 'Blanca de Tudela', planting is most commonly carried out during the first ten days of August, with the plants spending the winter in a rosette shape with no head production, although early planting in July is becoming increasingly common, with the aim of obtaining autumn yields. Its autumn harvest is a very important aspect of this crop, due to the high price reached by heads on the fresh produce market during this season. In Navarre, due to the marketing of propagation material (cuttings), artichokes are mainly grown as an annual crop. However, in Spain's main artichoke producing regions, near the Mediterranean coast, plantations tend to last for two or three years. This paper studies the precocity and yield of four seed cultivars in comparison with 'Blanca de Tudela' over the course of three consecutive seasons, leaving the plants in the field between harvests. While in the case of 'Blanca de Tudela' production precocity was increased during the second and third seasons, in the seed artichoke cultivars, keeping the plants in the field for several consecutive seasons failed to affect their precocity, with harvests always being in spring, and very late at that. A greater degree of plant material degradation was observed over the course of the three seasons, with a gradually smaller percentage of plants producing heads. This is reflected in the commercial yield results, which drop as the plants grow older.