Location: Fruit and Tree Nut Research
Title: A Special Peach Cropping Year for Breeding at the USDA Byron StationAuthor
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Submitted to: University of Georgia Peach Blog
Publication Type: Popular Publication Publication Acceptance Date: 9/19/2024 Publication Date: 9/19/2024 Citation: Chen, C. 2024. A Special Peach Cropping Year for Breeding at the USDA Byron Station. University of Georgia Peach Blog. N/A. https://site.extension.uga.edu/peaches/. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Peach evaluation is winding down in 2024 with few edible fruits on trees in variety and seedling blocks at the USDA Byron Station. 2024 was a special cropping year for peach breeding at the station. First, peach fruit set was incredibly heavy on a majority of seedling, selection and cultivar trees at the station, at a level which had not been seen since 2013. The heavy crop load may have resulted from both winter and spring weather this year that was extremely favorable to peaches. As a result, thinning was inadequate naturally or manually and evaluation data was collected from trees that were able to express a variety of deviations or habits in fruiting and vegetative growth. The data collected this year would also facilitate continuing attention to those well-sized selections with “ideal” or commercially desired cropping load and little need for manual thinning. Secondly, fruit sizes varied greatly among different selections with heavy fruit set. Although heavier fruit sets often correlated with smaller fruit sizes, some selections sizing well over the past evaluation years had heavy fruit set but continued to size well in 2024, which provided valuable information on their performance in a very different production year. Third, vegetative growth appeared to be reduced on trees with heavy fruit set, which might negatively impact fruit set in the next year and tree health in the long run. |
