Breeding Zizyphus jujuba Mill. cultivars with high quality fruits in Nikita Botanical Gardens

Breeding new jujube cultivars with high taste qualities has been carried out in Nikita Botanical Gardens since the 1950s.
Cultivars for fresh use might be large- or middle-sized, quite attractive with juicy nice sour-sweet or sweet pulp.
Cultivars good for candied and dried fruits must have large-sized fruits, small stones, high content of sugar, and mealy pulp.
Selection of seedlings of the open pollination and method of traditional hybridization were used to get cultivars with high-quality fruits.
Besides hybridization, a method of radiation mutagenesis with γ-irradiation was applied to increase the intraspecific changeability of hybrid seedlings.
Dry jujube seeds without endocarp were treated with cesium-137. Dose rate NDASH 1560 r min^‑1, irradiation dose ranged from 5 to 10 KR. Seeds of 7 jujube cultivar forms were involved in the experiment.
It was found out that irradiation of jujube seeds stimulates fruit-bearing of all study cultivar forms.
Four years later the number of fructiferous plants in study groups was higher than in a control one NDASH 3.5-46%. γ-radiation before sowing favored getting much-starting selection material.
Preselection conducted according to fruit size, the concentration of biologically active substances, and crop capacity made it possible to mark out 96 plants for specified investigation.
Cultivars ‘Tsukerkovy’, ‘Meteor’, ‘Sinit’, meant for fresh use, are characterized by the highest-quality fruits.
The large-fruited cultivar ‘Koktebel’ is recommended for candied fruits.

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

I. Chernobay, E. Shishkina, T. Litvinova

Zizyphus jujube, fruit, breeding, γ-radiation, new cultivars, taste quality

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2021.1315.36