Cultivar-Specific Nutrient Removal in Intensive Nectarine Orchards: Preliminary Implications for Nutrient Management

This exploratory study examined fruit production, dry matter content, mineral composition, and estimated nutrient removal in three nectarine (Prunus persica var. nucipersica) cultivars during the 2025 growing season in a commercial intensive orchard in northwestern Romania. ‘Big Top’, ‘Venus’, and ‘Cora’ grafted onto GF 677 rootstock were tested under uniform orchard management circumstances, which included fertigation with a water-soluble NPK 15-15-15 fertilizer. ‘Big Top’ had the largest fruit yield (34.82 t ha−1) and average fruit weight, whereas ‘Cora’ had the highest dry matter content and mean concentrations of N, P, K, Ca, and Mg in the studied fruit tissues. ‘Venus’ generally displayed intermediate values. ‘Cora’ also had the highest estimated nutrient removal per ton and hectare of harvested fruit, while ‘Big Top’ had the lowest values. Potassium was the biggest component of estimated nutrient removal across all three cultivars. These descriptive patterns demonstrate the need to take into account fruit mineral composition as well as yield when evaluating nutrient removal. However, the mineral analyzes did not include fruit stones; therefore, the values do not represent total whole-fruit nutrient export. Given the study’s single-year, single-site design, the findings should be viewed as preliminary, as they do not establish statistically significant cultivar effects or warrant cultivar-specific fertilizer recommendations. To examine the consistency and practical applicability of these findings, additional multi-year investigations using thorough fruit analyzes and adequate statistical evaluations are required.