Fruit weight and number of fruits per cladode depend on fruiting cladode fresh and dry weight in Opuntia ficus-indica (L.) Miller variety 'Rojo pelon'

In Opuntia ficus-indica (L.) Miller, the wide range of environmental conditions in which it grows implies a great variability in fruit yield and fruit ripening, among other issues. In this research work, we studied the dependence of fruit weight or number of fruits per cladode on fruiting cladode fresh or dry weight for the 'Rojo Pelon' variety by means of the boundary line approach and using 60 terminal fruiting 1-year-old cladodes and 480 fruits of O. ficus-indica variety 'Rojo Pelon' from twenty 6-year-old trees distributed at a density of 625 plants ha(-1). Fruiting occurred on cladodes with fresh and dry weights surpassing 144 g and 14.4g, respectively. Cladodes with approximate to 144g to approximate to 964g of fresh weight produced 6 fruits or even more; cladodes with,approximate to 30 g to approximate to 70 g of dry weight increase the probability of producing 11 fruits or more. The maximum fruit weight of approximate to 116g may be related to approximate to 550 g of cladode fresh weight, and the maximum number of fruits of approximate to 15 could be strongly linked to approximate to 558 g of cladode fresh weight. The maximum fruit weight of approximate to 117 g may be considerably attributed to approximate to 61 g of cladode dry weight, whereas the maximum number of fruits of approximate to 115 can be strongly ascribable to approximate to 50 g of cladode dry weight. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.