Volume 25 Number 2 Article 5 Pages: 37-41
Year 1971 Month 4
Title: Peaches for Warm Climates
Authors: R.H. Sharpe and W.B. Sherman
Citation
Abstract:
Peaches that can fruit with very little winter cold have been available to the plant breeder for many years.
Their fruit has been of very limited commercial value because of small size, soft flesh or other undesirable qualities.
A breeding program to develop now low chilling peach varieties adapted to central Florida was initiated in 1952, after tests disclosed that varieties from other areas were not adapted.
Numerous crosses were made, and some 20,000 seedlings were grown from 1952 to 1961. Only one variety was released from these selections.
Another 20,000 seedlings have been tested for deirable fruit qualities and quite a large number of rootstock types since 1961.
No commercially satisfactory selections were obtained in the first two or three generations of breeding, because of poor fruit characteristics of the low-chilling-requiring parent plants.
In subsequent generations, selections used in breeding have been closer to commercial quality, and a useful new variety can be expected from perhaps each 4000 seedlings.
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