White Delight Peach Series David Byrne and Natalie

White Delight Peach Series David Byrne and Natalie Anderson Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 -2133, USA White Delight 1 - Late May Dr. David H. Byrne d-byrne@tamu. edu ABSTRACT In the late 1990 s, the Prunus Breeding and Genetics Program began to develop a series of low acid white fleshed peach cultivars adapted to the medium chill zone of the southern USA. This work has resulted in 4 new peach cultivars that ripen consecutively from late May to mid July in the medium chill zone of Texas. This is the first series of low acid white-fleshed peaches released for the medium chill zone of the USA. All of these varieties bloom within several days of ‘June Gold’, and have similar sizes and skin blush color but better fruit shape and firmness as compared to ‘June Gold’ (Table 1). These cultivars resulted in crosses done between adapted breeding materials with low acid white peaches/nectarines from California, Japan, and China. White Delight 2 - Mid June Parentage of White Delight Peaches All the crosses were between low to medium chill, acid, yellow fleshed peach selections from the TAMU program with high quality low acid, white fleshed genotypes from Japan (‘Chiyohime’), California (‘Summersweet’) and China (‘Zaohongzhu’). These new cultivars were developed using germplasm from multiple programs both in the USA and abroad (see pedigree diagrams). Regal 13 Marab Weight (g) 21 Mayd 105 d 25 Maycd 138 ad 6. 8 b Marbe Junc 130 ad 6. 0 c June Gold 09 01 Scarlet Pearl 16 Mara 16 Junb 165 a 7. 3 ab WD 2 06 Mare 13 Junb 141 ad 7. 8 a WD 3 12 Marac 29 Juna 148 ac 7. 1 ab WD 4 11 Marad 10 Jula 144 ac 7. 7 a Full bloom = 60 -80% flowers open, Ripe date = date when 20% of the fruit is firm ripe. Rating scale 0 – 9; 0 -4 = unacceptable, 5 = marginal, 6 = good, 7 = very good, 8 -9 = excellent for commercial use. Mean separation within columns by Duncan’s Multiple Range test at the 5% level. Items with the same letter are not significantly different. No letters within a column indicates no significant differences. WD 1=White Delight One, WD 2=White Delight Two, WD 3=White Delight Three, WD 4=White Delight Four Adaptation of White Delight Peaches The White Delight peach series bloom within a few days of ‘June Gold’ in the medium chill zone (Table 1). Based on the relative bloom times of standard cultivars, WD 1 and WD 2 need about 550 chilling units (CU) whereas WD 3 and WD 4 need about 700 chilling units for proper flowering and fruiting. All four have produced consistently in zones 2 (450 -550 CU), 3 and 4 (550 -750 CU) of Texas. Of these, only WD 2 was tested in zone 5 (350 -450 CU) where although it had a more prominent suture, it consistently ripened large crops of high quality low acid white fleshed peaches (Fig 1). FLA 5 -58 Earligrande Early Amber WD 1 Koyohakuto Chiyohime Hakuho Saotome Robin FLA 46 -95 Unknown Early Amber TXW 1591 -1 Unknown Tropic Sweet FLA 2 -12 FLA 4 -65 FLA 9 -6 N Palomar Kgold OHenry X WD 2 Babcock F 2 FLA 8 B 21 WD 3 and WD 4 Okubo FLA 68 -50 Jingyu 23 R 236 Firmness 7. 0 b 05 Mare TX 2492 -1 Tex. Royal Unknown Okitsu Unknown Summer sweet Redwing x Early. Flame 44 EB 108 Unknown WD 1 10 -12 -27 NE NJ 239 Table 1. Bloom time, ripe date, fruit size and firmness of White Delight (WD) peaches in Fairfield, Texas (2006 -2011). Full bloom Ripe date n-anderson @tamu. edu Merril Prince TX 4 D 46 W Cultivar Natalie Anderson Nectared 4 Zaohong zhu A 197 NJ 572967 7761 A 369 NJN 55 Unknown A 109 RR 122 -15 White Delight 3 - Late June Ripening and Quality of the White Delight Peaches This series consist of 4 cultivars that ripen consecutively with about 2 weeks between the first ripe dates between the cultivars (Table 1). WD 1, WD 3, and WD 4 are clingstone whereas WD 2 is a semifreestone white peach. All these have large fruit size (Table 1) and good to excellent flavor when properly managed and thinned. The mean soluble solids for these cultivars when picked mature ranged from 12. 0 to 14. 2 Brix. All have a creamy white ground color with a red blush over 30% to 80% of the fruit surface depending on the cultivar and environmental conditions. Acknowledgement White Delight 4 - Early July Terrell Fairfield College Station Floresville Figure 1. Chilling zones in Texas. The contribution of Takashi Haji of the National Institute of Fruit Tree Science at Tsukuba, Japan who supplied the pollen of ‘Chiyohime’ and of Lirong Wang of the Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute in Zhengzhou, Henan, China who supplied the ‘Zaohongzhu’ pollen are gratefully acknowledged. These cultivars would not exist without their generous cooperation.