Adara (often called “Puente” in California), is a versatile plum (prunus cerasifera) rootstock and interstem which also produces tasty fruit of its own.
Beginning in the 1980’s, it was initially selected at an agricultural research center in Spain for use as a sweet cherry rootstock. It was selected for its ease of propagation, tolerance to flooded conditions, and good performance even when grown in heavy clay and calcareous soil with alkaline pH 8 to 9. All other commercially available sweet cherry rootstocks do very poorly in these conditions.
In addition to its use in Spain, in recent years it has also been undergoing extensive tests at Wolfskill research station in California as an alternative rootstock for the commercial prune industry.
Adara is graft compatible with many prunus species including European plums, Asian plums, sweet cherries, peaches, nectarines, pluots, apriums, apricots, almonds, and nanking cherries. However, compatibility depends on the specific cultivar. This compatibility makes it an excellent interstem for a multigrafted “fruit salad” tree or for changing over a tree to a different species. For example, a plum orchard could be changed to a sweet cherry orchard by top working the plum trees with Adara interstems. I have read a report of one person who successfully chip budded sweet cherries to Adara scions while simultaneously grafting the dormant Adara scions to plum rootstock. This made the change from plums to cherries very fast. One gentleman that I recently visited has a plum tree with over 130 cultivars and 21 different prunus species grafted together on one tree due in large part to Adara interstems.
The patent for this cultivar has expired and there is no commercial source available to the general public in the USA. However, some scions have appeared intermittently at the annual CRFG scion exchanges under the name “Puente”. I was fortunate enough to obtain some of this material recently.
I am curious to know if any of our current forum members are experimenting with this cultivar and what their experience has been. Also, I hope to be able to offer some Adara scions next year if there is any interest. If you are interested in this cultivar, what would you use it for?
Links:
Research report from Spain. Includes some graft compatibility charts.
Prune Research Report pages 52, 53, 54