TESTING WOOD ASH FERTILIZING EFFECT ON APPLE STOCKS, IN TREE NURSERIES.

Because wood ash resulted from furnace facilities destined to solve the problem of wood debris, are cumulated in large amounts, the problem of an alternative to their storage is increasingly important. A using possibility, if free of harmful constituents, is their administration as soil fertilizer/amendment may be taken into consideration. This experiment was conducted in order to emphasize the effect of using ash resulted from oak debris burning in facilities destined to this aim, as soil fertilizer, administered within an apple tree nurseries, on apple stocks. The trial was developed in the Vâlcele village, County of Cluj, during 2013-2016. The developmental evolution of apple stocks was recorded (diameter, height, slenderness index), function of fertilization and phytosanitary treatment with one conventional product solutions, together with main climatic data (air temperature, relative humidity, and wind velocity). Ash composition was analyzed at the National Research - Development Institute for Industrial Ecology Bucharest, by XRF spectrometry. The IBM-SPPS Statistics 20 was used for raw data processing. Our results show that best output of our trial, concerning the development of physiological traits of the apple stocks, resulted when unconventional fertilization with ash, was administered. The differences between some of the experimental traits were statistically assured at the statistical threshold of 1%. When analyzing the pathogens attack, we find best solution for the experimental variant where phytosanitary treatment was applied, and conventional fertilization was administered, the differences between experimental variants being statistically assured at different statistical thresholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]