OUTSTANDING CULTIVARS OF ASPARAGUS FOR TAIWAN

Asparagus is a temperate zone plant which goes into a resting period during winter.
Almost all asparagus cultivars are adapted to the temperate zone; none are adapted to subtropical or tropical areas.
Despite this, within a few years of asparagus being introduced into subtropical and tropical Taiwan, the country had become the largest asparagus exporting nation in the world.
During that time, the most important problem for Taiwan’s asparagus production was the lack of good seeds of adapted cultivars.
After many years of observation and research, we finally bred three asparagus cultivars through mass selection methods.
These cultivars were adapted to Taiwan’s subtropical and tropical climate, and to our mother-stalk cultural method.
The tips of spears were tighter than the original cultivars.
Taiwan now grows green asparagus for domestic consumers only, and no longer exports to foreign countries, but these cultivars are valuable for other subtropical and tropical areas and can be used as basic material for asparagus breeding programs.

VIII International Asparagus Symposium

L. Hung, Y.W. Chen

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1996.415.17