CULTIVAR IMPROVEMENT, GENETICS AND BREEDING OF KIWIFRUIT

The plant we think of as the kiwifruit is really a single genotype, ‘Hayward’, of the species Actinidia deliciosa. ‘Hayward’ is grown because of the qualities of its fruit: it is, however, by no means perfect and improvements in a number of fruiting and agronomic characters would be advantageous.
There is also a need for better staminate plants.

The kiwifruit has been subjected to very little selection by man and the plants grown commercially are very similar to those in the wild.
It is not easy to carry out breeding programmes with a dioecious plant that takes a number of years to flower and fruit.
Programmes under way include F1 selection, recurrent selection and clonal improvement by selection of natural or induced mutations.
Clonal rootstocks are also being evaluated.
It should be possible to develop an hermaphroditic kiwifruit cultivar with large fruit.
There are about 100 Actinidia taxa but the different levels of ploidy within the genus restrict interspecific hybridisation.

I International Symposium on Kiwifruit

A.R. Ferguson, A.G. Seal, R.M. Davison

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1990.282.43