Effects of Fruit Thinning on Almond Fruits and Seeds

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Abstract
Thinning causes an increase in average wts. of seeds of Nonpareil almond with a decrease in variability of the wts. This is in contrast to the effect of thinning on variability in fruit-cheek diameter. Cheek diameter of seeds and its variability are less with increased degree of thinning. The result is a distinct change in shape of the seeds. That is, heavily thinned almonds are long and broad across the suture diam. and flat or narrow in the cheek diam. Correlations of final fruit-cheek diam. with seed-cheek diam. and of seed-cheek diam. with the cube root of the seed wt. are very low. Correlations of final fruit-cheek diam. with the cube root of seed wt. are much higher. When the logarithms of yield of seed in grams per 100 leaves ( Y) are plotted against the logarithms of the number of leaves per harvested fruit (X), a very striking straight-line relation results, the coeff. of X being 0.9071. If the number of leaves per fruit did not affect the size of the seeds, then the coeff. of X would be 1. If the wt. of new terminal wood in grams per 100 leaves is plotted against the number of leaves per fruit at harvest time, the 3 observed points lie almost exactly on a straight line. Thus, approx., the wt. of new terminal wood per 100 leaves is proportional to the number of leaves per fruit minus the number of leaves per fruit for which there is no new terminal wood.

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