Articles
SWEET ONIONS: BREEDING, MARKET AND FUTURE
The trend for greater demands in the international market will continue as the sweet onions are introduced and promoted as a specialty item.
An extensive mild, sweet onion breeding program was initiated at Texas A&M University in 1972 with funding support provided by Texas onion growers and shippers.
A ten year grant of $500,000 was committed to create disease tolerant ‘supersweet’ onions adapted to Texas growing conditions.
After eight years of intensive breeding, ‘Texas Grano 1015Y’ was developed and released for commercial production.
A promotional program for the ‘1015’ sweet onion began and sales quickly reached approximately $30,000,000 per year in Texas alone.
To date, the Texas growers and shippers have contributed approximately $2,000,000 to the onion breeding research program and eight cultivars have been developed.
Present research is being conducted in the Texas A&M University Vegetable Improvement Center to investigate development of mild, sweet cultivars with enhanced health benefits against certain human diseases.