Identification of the best apple and pear tree varieties suitable to be grown in farms and agritourism households in the south-west area of romania

Abstract

The paper presents a complex and well-documented study on the application of bioeconomic principles to apple and pear crops in households and agritourism farms in the south region of Romania, through reconsidering the application of modern ecological technologies, based on maximizing the biological characteristics of the different fruit tree varieties. Research involved several varieties of apple and pear trees, but ultimately settling upon a smaller number that best suits this crop, given the climate and soil conditions in the south of the country. In the second part we present the necessity, the opportunity, the usefulness and the novelty of the approached topic resulting from previous projects and research. We looked for several positive characteristics regarding the tree and the fruit, which could determine us to recommend those ranges of varieties to be used in the apple and pear orchards in the agritourist households and in the people s households. Among the most representative characteristics that we looked for, we may mention the beginning of the fruiting early, high resistance to diseases and pests, big fruit with nice colour, attractive to the customers, delicate or consistent pulp that is buttery and strong-flavoured, positive characteristics making them desirable by the householders to obtain fresh fruit for the tourists or for direct sale. The resistance to diseases and pests lowers the number of applied treatments, allowing thus the owners to obtain big productions having a very good taste quality and ecological quality, with smaller costs per obtained fruit kilogram. An extremely important aspect mentioned in this study is the nutritive value of the apple and pear fruits, which proved to be high, due to the high content of nutrients. Owners of different tourist reception structures requested that specialists, mainly those from the southwestern part of Romania, present simple and viable solutions for the successful practice of agritourism activity in this area, more vitiated from the point of view of the natural tourist potential, but with very fertile agricultural lands. In the chosen approach, the practice of agritourism in different types of structures is to be accomplished in farms or authentic households that are in close relation to the working farm, and not to staged agriculture, due to a great reluctance in this regard, resulting from the political conditions of the communist period, in which the activities of the so-called model farms were presented in a very cosmeticized way, with embellished productions and profits.