الفهرس 
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Abstract
This investigation was carried out during 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons on eight years old peach trees grown in a commercial orchard located at Sedy Salem District, Kafrelsheikh governorate, Egypt. This study included two separate experiments, the first evaluated and compared vegetative growth, flowering bud fertility, maturity, yield and fruit quality of three peach cultivars newly, Florida Prince, Early Grand and Desert Red under North Delta condition. The second was designed to study the effect of thinning out and heading back pruning, fruit thinning and their interaction on improving yield and fruit quality of Florida Prince peach cultivar specially fruit size and colour beside, their effects on vegetative growth tree, nutritional status and yield.
The evaluation of the three peach cultivars exhibited that “Desert Red” cultivar produced highest yield, but its fruit reach maturity later at the third week of May. However, “Early Grand” cultivar obtained least number of fruits per tree and intermediate yield (kg) per tree with highest fruit quality particularly fruit weight, size TSS and anthocyanin content, but its fruit maturity occurred at early May. Furthermore, “Florida Prince” cultivar started vegetative and flower buds very early, produced highest significant number of flower buds, most of them born on the basal part of the shoot and obtained the longest shoot and internode. It recorded the highest fertility index. Therefore, produced highest number of fruits per tree with low quality. In addition, this cultivar reached full bloom early on the end of January and fruit maturity occurred by early April and thus is considered early harvest cultivar.
Increasing productivity and improving fruit quality of “Florida Prince” cultivar by using some agriculture treatment such as pruning and hand fruit thinning increased the exportation to abroad markets to get grower maximum return.
The tested thinning out and heading back pruning treatments and hand fruit thinning levels revealed significant variation in vegetative growth, nutritional status, yield and fruit quality of Florida Prince peach trees. Therefore, the interaction (To x HB x FT) which was significant in most cases exhibited the most important data in the present work.
Thus, thinning out 50% of the number of one year old shoot and heading back 25% from the length of 1 year old shoot with fruit thinning at 15 cm apart, which considered the best combination treatment. This treatment not only improved vegetative growth and nutritional status but also produced maximum yield as kg/tree and the highest number and percentage of large sized fruit with high quality specially fruit weight, size, colour and its content of TSS, vitamin in C and anthocyanin.