Frost resistance of peach hybrids in the southern steppe of Russia

The climatic conditions of the southern zone of industrial Russian horticulture are rather unstable.
Here, from time to time, extreme winters and spring recurrent frosts occur.
In the assortment of fruit crops there are few peach cultivars, well adapted to such environmental factors.
Therefore, research of peach frost-resistance and the problems of creating very winter-hardy cultivars are important and urgent tasks.
Assessment of hybrid peach seedlings was performed in the steppe zone of the Crimea at the Steppe Branch of the Nikita Botanical Gardens near Simferopol.
The aim of these studies was to identify the most frost-resistant hybrids, which had the least damage to generative buds, and also to determine the best hybrid combinations for further peach selection on winter hardiness. 272 peach seedlings of 26 F₁ hybrid families were studied.
In January 9, 2002, the negative air temperature dropped to -23.2°C. This year was the most indicative for studying the frost resistance of generative peach buds.
Evaluation of damaged flower buds was carried out according to methods developed in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, processing of the obtained data was carried out by standard statistical methods.
As a result, it was found that the damage degree of peach buds varied from 0 to 91%, depending on the origin of hybrids.
A total of 35 very frost-resistant seedlings (1-10% of damage to the buds) and 108 – frost-resistant (11-30%) were detected. 100 hybrids proved to be moderate frost-resistant (31-60%), 28 – poor resistant (61-90%) and one – not resistant (more than 90%). Most frost-resistant hybrids were obtained in the combinations ‘Valiant’ × ‘Krimskiy Feyerverk’, ‘Start’ × ‘Arm Gold’ and ‘Start’ × ‘Ognennyiy’. It was recommended to use the elite clones ‘Tovarishch’, ‘F₁26-76’ and ‘F₁2130’ as parents in further breeding for peach winter-hardiness.

XXX International Horticultural Congress IHC2018: II International Symposium on Plant Breeding in Horticulture

T.A. Latsko

cultivar, peach, hybrid families, seedlings, winter resistance

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2020.1282.42