Impact of foliar fertilization on apple and pear trees in reconciling productivity and alleviation of environmental concerns under arid conditions.

Drought and heat stress are significant factors limiting fruit crop yield in arid conditions. Foliar fertilization is a common practice of supplying fruit crop production with mineral nutrients, especially under limited soil nutrient availability conditions. To evaluate potential effectiveness of the foliar application of macro-, micronutrient and growth regulators on dynamics of physiological parameters of the pear and apple cultivars under abiotic stresses, three-year experiments were carried out under arid conditions at the Russian Research Institute of Arid Agriculture during the 2015-2017 growing seasons.