ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
Marcia Wood, (510) 559-6070, [email protected]
August 29, 1997
Mouth-Watering New Fruits
Flavorful new peaches and nectarines from California should please growers
and shoppers alike. The treefruits are the latest from the Horticultural
Crops Research Laboratory in Fresno, where scientists have produced 26
flavorful new fruits in the past 25 years. The lab is part of USDA's
Agricultural Research Service.
The Fresno lab's most recent varieties include Spring Baby, Spring Gem and
Autumn Red peaches, and Crimson Baby and September Free nectarines. Spring
Baby peaches are deliciously ripe by the first week of May. Spring Gems
ripen at the end of May. Cuttings of the new fruits are available to
growers. Consumers may begin seeing them at markets in about 5 years.
"Embryo rescue" techniques perfected by the Fresno scientists enable them
to produce fruits that ripen earlier in spring than before--a welcome
treat for winter-weary consumers. Embryos from early-season parents are
usually too small to survive on their own, so researchers rescue them from
the developing stone, or pit. In the laboratory, the embryos thrive on a
gel-like bed of nutrients until they grow into plants.
For a mid-August harvest, the researchers produced Autumn Red peach. Sweet
and juicy, Autumn Red meets the demand for "fully blushed" peaches--yellow
skin with an attractive, dark red tint.
Crimson Baby nectarines, ready to pick in late May, are large and
round--unaffected by size and shape problems that often ruin other
early-season nectarines. At the end of the season--about the end of August
or first week of September--growers can harvest pleasantly firm,
top-quality September Free nectarines. In orchard trials, trees bearing
the red-blushed fruit were consistently vigorous and productive.
The August issue of the agency's magazine Agricultural Research carries an
in-depth article on the new fruits. The story also is on the World Wide
Web at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/fruit0897.htm
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Scientific contact: David W. Ramming, USDA-ARS Horticultural Crops
Research Laboratory, Fresno, Calif., phone (209) 453-3061, fax (209)
453-3088, [email protected]
Photo used in Agricultural Research magazine for this story: #k6084-1,
Autumn Red peach. View at website. Contact ARS Photo Unit by phone at
(301) 344-2958 or e-mail to [email protected]
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