It is well known that shaded branches don’t grow very well and any fruits on them will not be as sweet/flavorful as those on sun-exposed branches. I have seen that first hand with my nectarines last year. This year I am observing something more interesting with apricots; lower, shaded branches have lost >90% of their flower buds (as if they were winter killed), and those that blossomed fell off either as flowers or soon after they became small fruitlets! Since my trees are ~10-12’ high and are densely planted (2-4’ apart), that resulted in shading of roughly the bottom 6’ of the trees! Anyone else had a similar experience with cots? I am thinking of spreading white plastic sheeting below the trees to improve light exposure of the lower branches, but not sure if that is going to be a practical solution (could get dirty or may degrade from sun exposure)…
I have noticed a similar thing, to some degree on all fruits but worse on fruits that make really dense summer growth like apricots. Those lower limbs get so much shade that they will self-prune eventually.
There are two things I have done over the years, one is I have removed a lot of the lower growth. I have few deer problems on my apricots because I removed all of the growth they could reach years ago - it wasn’t fruiting. The other thing is to thin out the limbs, it amazing how much things open up if you take a 3-scaffold tree and turn it into two scaffolds, or remove several of the next smaller level of branching. Summer pruning also helps get more light further in, I used to do that but it takes time so I have been usually skipping it recently.