Development of new nectarine cultivars with low chilling requirements, adapted to climate change

Low chilling cultivars represent the key to keep growing stone fruit in most of the temperate zones, allowing to face the effect of climate change on this sector.
Old nectarine cultivars are no longer adapted, and this problem affect growers in terms of productivity and fruit quality.
Chilling requirement is an essential factor to consider in stone fruit, especially at time of planting a new cultivar.
Breeding programs aim to develop cultivars that satisfy organoleptic requests as well as low chilling requirement that allow growers to product in their zone avoiding adaptation problems.
PSB Producción Vegetal research program is focused on development of low chilling cultivars and better adapted to adverse climate conditions, especially in warm winter fruit tree growing regions.
The process to understand the adaptation of each cultivar is carried out with different tools, such as calculation of chilling units, test field observation, GDH models for determination of warm requirement and forcing blooming tests.
This article reports characteristics and comparison between new well-adapted cultivars and older cultivars that are no longer grown.
Furthermore, it is reported how PSB program replicates a worse future scenario of actual tree growing areas, testing cultivars a large scale in field located in areas characterized by warm winter, with smaller number of chilling hours.
Cultivars such as ‘Caracas’ and ‘Copacabana’ that are well adapted to this climate condition, show performances much better than older cultivars in the same production area.

X International Peach Symposium

C. Pisani, J.-M. Campo, V. Cerbone, T. Chevaillier, S. Buffat, E. Remy

climate change, stone fruit, genetic development, chilling requirement, breeding program, chilling units, heat requirement

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2022.1352.28