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New Plants for Florida: Stone Fruit1
Wayne Sherman2Click here to view the print version.
Peach, nectarine, plum, apricot and cherry are called "stone fruit" because of their central hard pit. Because of Florida's warm climate, breeding programs for stone fruit have focused on developing "low-chill" varieties - those that can grow and produce fruit with very few hours of chilling or cold weather in the winter. Florida's low-chill stone fruit breeding program was initiated in the early 1950s and has succeeded thanks to two plant breeders, Ralph Sharpe and Wayne Sherman.
Peach
FAES peach breeding began with southern China varieties that had been imported originally into South Carolina, Hawaii, and Okinawa. These were crossed with the best commercial genotypes from the USDA in Ft. Valley, Georgia, and then they were backcrossed to provide the melting flesh (soft flesh) varieties upon which the low-chill industry was founded. Recent work has focused on the development of firm flesh (nonmelting) fruit for the fresh market. Nonmelting flesh peach was introduced as seed and pollen from Mexico (1969), North Carolina (1972), and Brazil (1982). Semifreestone, low-chilling genotypes also have been obtained from these three sources. Breeding has continued to select for early ripening and for elimination of the undesirable characteristics associated with nonmelting flesh, such as long fruit development period, high chill requirements, lack of red skin, off flavor, and low aroma. Since nonmelting flesh fruit is allowed to ripen on the trees, more improvements to flavor, skin color, and shape were made. Advances in tree structure, resistance to bacterial spot and leaf rust, and development of an ornamental flowering tree and novel fruit types also have been successful.Nectarine
Nectarine is actually a waxy-skin peach. A nectarine is obtained when a single gene change causes the absence of fuzz on the skin. Nectarine varieties for Florida have been developed in the peach breeding program.Plum
Subtropical plum varieties were developed by crossing a low-chill Japanese plum from Taiwan with high-chill genotypes at USDA, Byron, Georgia. Because of self-incompatibility, they were carried through 5 polycross generations to produce the Gulf series of varieties.Apricot
The search for a subtropical apricot has centered on a low-chill variety from Thailand [(P. mume Sieb. & Zucc. x apricot) F2], which produced two selections that were open pollinated and backcrossed again to apricot. These seedlings produced the first home garden apricot genotypes in 2002.Cherry
Development of a subtropical sweet cherry is less promising than that of the other stone fruits, but a low-chill selection of interspecific hybridization has been crossed with sweet cherry and the resulting seedlings may produce a home garden variety.For more information about stone fruit varieties, see the following EDIS publications:
Cir 1221 Deciduous Fruit for Central Florida
Cir 611 Deciduous Fruit for North Florida
SS-HS-504 Nursery List for Deciduous Fruit Trees
HS 765 Sustainablility Assessment of Fruit Crops for North and North Central Florida
HS 23 Dooryard Fruit Varieties
Tables
Table 1. Stone fruit varieties produced by FAES.
Fruit
Variety
Date of Release
Peach
Flordaking 1978
Flordaprince 1982
TropicBeauty 1986
Flordacrest 1988
Gulfprince 1999
UF-2000 2000
UFO 2002
Nectarine
Sunhome (red ornamental) 1985
Sunraycer 1993
UF Queen 1998
Sunmist 1994
Sunbest 2001
Plum
Gulfblaze, Gulfbeauty 1997
Gulfrose 2000
Footnotes
1. This document is part of Circular 1440, a publication of the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, the Agronomy Department and IFAS Communication Services, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Publication date August 2003. Originally pubished as a booklet by IFAS Communication Services June 2003. Visit the EDIS Web Site at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.2. Wayne Sherman, Professor, Horticultural Sciences Department. Circular 1440 is edited by Richard L. Jones, Mary L. Duryea, and Berry J. Treat, Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.
Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Richard L. Jones, Dean for Research, publishes this information to further programs and related activities, available to all persons regardless of race, color, age, sex, disability or national origin. Information about alternate formats is available from IFAS Communication Services, University of Florida, PO Box 110810, Gainesville, FL 32611-0810.
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U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Larry Arrington, Dean.
Copyright Information
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