In order to compare the characteristics of different varieties of sweet cherry and to formulate corresponding pruning scheme, hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted for the 14 sweet cherry varieties that were mainly planted in Shanxi Province. The results showed that the 14 varieties of sweet cherry could be divided into two types, Hongmanao and Rainier. Fruit setting rate, branching rate, medium fruit shoot proportion, spur proportion and yield per plant were significantly different between these two types of sweet cherry. The key points of pruning management, to improve the yield of Rainier type, were to increase the fruit setting rate and spur proportion, and to control properly the long and medium fruit shoot proportion.
The excessive staminate catkin thinning （emasculation） of proterandrous walnut is an important management measure for improving yield. To improve the excessive staminate catkin thinning efficiency, the model of quadratic polynomial regression equation and BP artificial neural network was developed. The effects of ethephon, gibberel in and mepiquat on shedding rate of staminate catkin of pro-terandrous walnut were investigated by modeling field test. Based on the modeling test results, the excessive staminate catkin thinning model of quadratic polynomial regression equation and BP artificial neural network was established, and it was validated by field test next year. The test data were divided into training set, vali-dation set and test set. The total 20 sets of data obtained from the modeling field test were randomly divided into training set （17） and validation set （3） by central composite design （quadric rotational regression test design）, and the data obtained from the next-year field test were divided into the test set. The topological struc-ture of BP artificial neural network was 3-5-1. The results showed that the pre-diction errors of BP neural network for samples from the validation set were 1.355 0%, 0.429 1% and 0.353 8%, respectively; the difference between the predicted value by the BP neural network and validated value by field test was 2.04%, and the difference between the predicted value by the regression equation and validated value by field test was 3.12%; the prediction accuracy of BP neural network was over 1.0% higher than that of regression equation. The effective combination of quadratic polynomial stepwise regression and BP artificial neural network wil not only help to determine the effect of independent parameter but also improve the prediction accuracy.
