BREEDING TREND FOR ORNAMENTAL PEACH

Ornamental peach, as a woody plant, has tremendous potential for nursery and garden industries.
Compared with fruit peach, new ornamental peach cultivars should be emphasized on ornamental values, which lead to breeding objectives on various growth habit, colorful flower, and unique leaf.
Sterile cultivars could be used to breed new cultivars without fruit.
The pillar, dwarf, weeping, twist, and compact ornamental peach cultivars could be the breeding lines for developing more combinations of flower forms and colors, as well as distinguished leaf colors.
The new genetic pool beyond identified ornamental cultivars, including germplasm from Prunus persica or similar species like P. fergensis, P. kansuensis, P. mira, P. triloba, should be introduced into the breeding lines.
These taxa will help to breed the early or late blooming cultivars with wide adaptability of habitat.
Besides selection and controlled cross, molecular breeding with identified genes could be used to breed new cultivars with disease resistance, cold hardiness, and other stress tolerances.
At Beijing Botanical Garden, the breeding programs are being conducted based on 61 ornamental peach cultivars collected around the world.
With the aid of conventional and modern breeding techniques and collaboration among ornamental peach breeders, more new ornamental peach cultivars should be introduced in the near future.

XXVII International Horticultural Congress – IHC2006: International Symposium on Asian Plants with Unique Horticultural Potential

Dongyan Hu, Zuoshuang Zhang

breeding objectives, ornamental values, Prunus persica

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.769.50