SummaryA statistical approach has been applied to study the nutrient composition of flowers in a peach orchard with 50 peach trees suffering from different degrees of Fe deficiency. Flowers from each individual tree were analysed in five crop seasons. The existence of a consistent nutrient balance over years in peach flowers, with nutrient concentrations depending to some extent on the levels of other nutrients, was revealed by a principal component-type analysis. The analysis produced a dominant first principal component, which explained 21% of the total variance. The second component explained 13% of the variance, with further components explaining less than 9%. A regression analysis revealed that the first principal component was closely related to chlorophyll (Chl) concentration determined in leaves 120 d after full bloom, as it explained 59% of average Chl concentration variance (between 40 and 52% in single year analysis), which is equivalent to a correlation coefficient of 0.77. A multiple regressi...
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Igartua et al. (2000) studied this question.