Apple cultivation and its major challenging constraints in the Central Highlands of Madagascar

The geographical distribution of apple is limited by its chilling requirement of greater than 1,000 h under 5 °C to 7 °C (Childers et al., 1995).Currently there is a growing interest for apple cultivation in tropical areas such as in India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia (Childers et al., 1995;Roche et al., 1999;Ferree and Warrington, 2003) as potential production areas.Several apple cultivars are grown worldwide, however, a small proportion of these are grown commercially, among which some cultivars are available for subtropical climates (Turechek, 2004;Elzebroek, 2008).The leading varieties are 'Delicious' and 'Golden Delicious', which are grown in almost all apple-growing regions in the world (Childers et al., 1995;Turechek, 2004).Apple trees are cultivated in Madagascar.The climatic and the agroecological conditions of the Central Highlands are ideally suited to the cultivation of apple cultivars besides other temperate fruits (Prunus domestica, Cidonia vul-, , …).Madagascar ranks in 78 th place worldwide apple producers with about 7.2 Kt production in 2021 (World Development Report, 2020; FAOSTAT, 2021).established for intensive production around 1931 (De la Bathie, 1931).In 1958, about 500,000 apple trees were planted through layering and cutting propagation methods, I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f T r o p i c a l a n d S u b t r o p i c a l H o r t i c u l t u r e Ranaivozandriny et al. | Apple cultivation in Madagascar B. Sampling site.