Abstract:

The shoot branching patterns of the two-year-old branches of peach trees (Prunus persica (L.) Batsch cv. Elberta) were compared with different pruning measures. The branches were divided into a basal non-branching zone, a proleptic branching zone, a sylleptic branching zone and the part removed. We used the hidden semi-Markov model to capture the branching patterns. The final results showed that theoretical probability distributions of diverse lateral shoots of the parent branches calculated on the basis of the parameters of the hidden semi-Markov chain model were in good agreement with probabilities extracted from the observed data. This paper described the quantitative effects of pruning on branching architecture of a parent branch, taking into account of branch morphology. Results suggest that the hidden semi-Markov model could be used as an effective tool to describe the branching patterns. In addition, the application of hidden semi-Markov models to predict the effects of pruning on peach tree branching pattern based on growth parameters was discussed.

Key words: peach tree (Prunus persica), pruning, stochastic process, Markov chain, plant architecture