Relationship between fruit quality of 'Pink Lady' apple and meteorological factors in Chinese Weibei Highland areas.

[Objective] This study explored the relationship between fruit quality of 'Pink Lady'apple and meteorological factors in order to provide a theoretical basis for apple industry and agricultural zoning.[Method] In 2005-2007,based on the multiple statistical analysis,the relation was studied between fruit quality of 'Pink Lady' apple and meteorological factors,such as annual average temperature,effective accumulated temperature,annual precipitation etc,in the three major regions of apple industry of Fuping,Baishui,and Luochuan in the Weibei Highland areas in China.According to the regression equations,the optimum values regarding the local key meteorological factors were calculated for production of the best quality in the 'Pink Lady' apples.[Result] The results showed that total sugars,total acids and anthocyanin varied among the 'Pink Lady' apples sampled from the three regions of the Weibei Highland in China.The quality of 'Pink Lady' apple expressed better in Fuping than that in Luochuan.Total precipitation from Apr.to Oct.,annual effective accumulated temperature,average temperature diurnal range from Apr.to Oct.,and annul daylight duration were the principle factors that affected the fruit quality of 'Pink Lady' apples.Among them,annual effective accumulated temperature,and total precipitation from Apr.to Oct.were the two most important factors.Annual average temperature of 12.2 ℃,effective accumulated temperature reaching 3 210 ℃,annual average daylight duration of 2 573 h,daylight duration from Apr.to Oct.reaching 1 680 h,average precipitation from Apr.to Oct.reaching 484 mm,average temperature from Apr.to Oct.being 15.5 ℃,and average temperature diurnal range from Apr.to Oct.being 10.8 ℃,were the optimum values of the meteorological factors for expression of the highest quality of 'Pink Lady' apples.[Conclusion] Regression equation was obtained to efficiently analyze the effects of meteorological factors on quality in the 'Pink Lady' apples in this study.