Prospects for the use of European peach cultivars in Nikita Botanical Gardens

Unique natural and climatic conditions of Nikita Botanical Gardens (NBG) helped this research establishment to successful activities in the fields of introduction, breeding, and development of southern horticulture.
Common peach (Persica vulgaris Mill.) is one of the most promising fruit crops cultivated in southern Russia.
In the Republic of Crimea, peach is being cultivated on an industrial basis.
It covers here an area of 2.6 thousand ha, which amounts to 50.8% of the total area of fruit crops.
Nikita Botanical Gardens has specialized for 200 years in the introduction of fruit crops from different regions of the world.
The peach gene pool of the NBG has been completed using the involvement of cultivars and forms from different natural areas, as well as by breeding new cultivars.
European cultivars make up 8.76% of the total number of cultivars in the collection.
Our purpose was to explore the peach cultivars collection under conditions of the southern coast of Crimea and to select the sources of biologically valuable properties for use in the breeding for good commercial qualities of fruits.
The research involved 57 cultivars, coming from the following European countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Moldova, Russia, Rumania, Serbia, Slovakia, France, Czech Republic, and Ukraine.
The work has been conducted according to the “Programme and Technique for Research on Varieties of Fruit, Small-Fruit and Nut Crops”. It resulted in the comprehensive assessment of European peach cultivars and in the selection of promising cultivars from Moldova, Italy, Rumania, and France.
The breeding has been successfully used in such cultivars as ‘Favorita Morettini’ (Italy), ‘France’, and ‘Domergue’ (France). By using the genotypes ‘France’ and ‘Domergue’ the cultivars ‘Sokrovishche’ and ‘Zaglyadeniye’ were obtained.
By involving the Italian cultivar ‘Favorita Morettini’ new peach cultivars ‘Granatoviy’, ‘Pontiyskiy’, ‘Rumyaniy Nikitskiy’, and ‘Yubileyniy Ranniy’ were obtained and patented.

I International Conference and X National Horticultural Science Congress of Iran (IrHC2017)

O. Fedorova, A. Smykov, Iu. Ivashchenko, N.V. Mesyats, T. Shishova

peach, cultivars, introduction, climate, hybridization, pomology

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2021.1315.3