A Sustainable Approach Based on Sheep Wool Mulch and Soil Conditioner for Prunus domestica (Stanley Variety) Trees Aimed at Increasing Fruit Quality and Productivity in Drought Conditions

Abstract

In the context of extreme climate change, experts in fruit production face a significant challenge in developing new strategies aimed at increasing the productivity of fruit tree crops. In order to investigate the changes in various horticultural indices (production, tree growth, and development) as well as the quality of plum fruits, sheep’s wool mulch, a cornstarch-based soil conditioner, and a combination of the two were applied in a Stanley plum orchard. In parallel, an experimental control variation was used. The results showed that the methods used had a substantial impact on fruit yield, size, and weight, with the best results obtained when mulching with sheep’s wool and soil conditioner. Plum fruits from mulching with sheep wool + soil conditioner exhibited the greatest total phenol concentration (1.30 ± 0.09 mg GAE/g dw), followed by the reference sample at 1.16 ± 0.09 mg GAE/g dw. The antioxidant capacity assessed using the three different methods provided favorable results for the experimental variant, sheep wool + soil conditioner. The results indicate that using the three experimental versions increased the fruit yield with 27% (sheep’s wool mulch) and with, 37% (sheep wool + soil conditioner) on average compared to that of the control group, while also improving the fruit quality. The fruit weight increased with 17.26% (cornstarch-based soil conditioner) and with 48.90% (sheep wool + soil conditioner) compared to that of the control, and the fruit size increased with 5% in two experiments (sheep’s wool mulch and a cornstarch-based soil conditioner) with 19% (sheep wool + soil conditioner), compared to the control group.