FLORAL ANALYSIS AS A NEW APPROACH TO EVALUATE THE NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF OLIVE TREES

The main objective of this work was to evaluate if inflorescence analysis could be considered as an alternative to foliar diagnosis in determining the nutritional status of the olive orchards. Olive leaves from ‘Arbequina’ and ‘Chetoui’ cultivars in irrigated and rained systems were sampled within 8 phenological growth stages (dormant inflorescence bud, cluster development, petals whitening, fruit set, fruit development, stone hardening, fruit color break, and fruit ripening) from different sites of Tunisia during 2006 and 2007. Inflorescence samples were taken at petal whitening stage. Results showed that when ignoring the site of experimentation, some significant correlations were obtained between leaves and inflorescence during both years for ‘Arbequina’, at the stone hardening stage: standard date for leaf sampling, for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and manganese (Mn). Further work is required to assess the possibility of using inflorescence analysis to diagnose the nutritional...