MOSTAFA A. FATHI’s scientific contributions

... Summer pruning under intensive systems of planting contains growth, maintains a balance between vegetative and reproductive growth, improves fruit size and fruit production to obtain high yield and quality fruit (Hussein Moatamed, 2012). This technique is also used for breaking apical dominance and increasing twigs and spurs formation of apples (George et al, 2002), increasing fruit set (Fathi and Mokhtar, 1998), and increased the percentage of retained fruit to perfect flowers (Ebied, 2005). Summer pruning can also effectively reduce the measured plant growth during the current year (Dejong et al, 2004). ...

Reference:

Yield and quality performance of apple under varied summer pruning intensities in the North-Western Himalayan region

... Winter pruning improves tree growth, fruit coloration, acidity, sugar content, and storability and increases fruit weight (Marini and Barden, 2004;Tahir et al., 2007). Summer pruning further improves fruit coloration and size but decreases yield and causes poor fruit storability (Fathi and Mukhtar, 1998;Goldschmidt, 1997;Tromp, 2005). Covering the soil surface in orchards instead of using herbicides can prevent weeds, change soil environmental conditions, improve availability of nutrients to trees, enhance vegetative growth, increase yield, and improve fruit storability (Rubauskis et al., 2002;Tahir et al., 2005). ...

Reference:

Improving the Productivity, Quality, and Storability of ‘Katja’ Apple by Better Orchard Management Procedures