Commercial producers are looking for properties that would attract buyers in supermarkets. For me personally, it’s all about the taste. I’m a big fan of apricots, but when I try fruit from supermarkets or even farmer markets I understand why some people don’t like apricots — the vast majority of commercially available fruit looks like apricot but tastes like potato.
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Channeling Jane Austen!
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So it is with almost all the stone fruit- cherries excepted here. We’re teaching newcomers to fruit that there is no reason to eat it. Plums, peaches, nectarine, apricots, plumcots nectawhatzits- all potatoes.
I will agree that we can get some really great citruses and many truly decent apples at the grocers, sometimes grapes and rarely melons. Some berries squeak through if you live close enough to the right country (here it’s Oregon).
But it seems to me to be inevitable that people will quit buying many items at the grocery store unless the supply chain catches up and starts coming up with good instead of just pretty.
Just my two bits worth. Please send me a quarter if you read this post …
;-)M
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Red skinned apricots are beauties I have a young plant (Rubista) in pot, a friend of mine has a fruit-bearing tree.
fruits taste good, however, they have a huge disadvantage, they are very short shelf life
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Another article from today
“After several years of hybridizations and field tests, we have obtained 100% red apricots, very visually appealing and flavourful. Their Brix amounts to between 12 and 15 degrees,” explains Stéphane Buffat, manager of PSB Plant Production.
I would be interested in how they are breeding these.
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They’re shiny! Like they have no fuzz
Yeah… we need to get these into the US. Be very fun to grow these things. They look like peaches.
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They probably used RedSweet Apricot, a red skinned heirloom apricot, as a breeding stock.
What is you most red skinned apricot in the US?
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No thanks to that. I’ve almost never measured an apricot that low.
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Commericial: Red Velvet Apricot, a 50\50 plum x apricot hybrid.
For the home garden:
Mesch Mesch Amrah, a 50\50 Apricot x Myrobalan plum hybrid.
And Hessee, a 50\50 plum x apricot hybrid.
Well those are the values from catalogues. Early apricots have usually around 12 and some later ones up to 18 (I have yet to see higher value than that). 12-15 seems like a normal number. Even your favorite Robada and Tasty Rich don’t have probably more than 16 on the paper but I know you can get 24 out of them with some water stress. They certainly look pretty, I have small Totem tree so I am looking forward to have some fruit in the future and I will for sure write my impressions here. I think red apricots with long storage life will be winners for customers/commercial farmers. I might be too conservative but for me apricots should stay orange 
This is information on Totem that I got from a friend
http://www.psbproduccionvegetal.com/pdf/L21-133.pdf
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I have Hesse ripening right now…flavor leans more plum to me…Its also a dark purple when ripe…
I have some of those red apricots, my personal opinion is that the US has lead to Europe with plums (pluots) and Europe takes advantage to the United States talking about apricots.
there are now several hundred new varieties of apricots in europe, different colors, very large, great taste and high hardness and different skin types (orange, white, yellow, red or even black purple), self-fertile and very low winter rest.
some red apricots:
this is my favorite, variety pricia:
This is the reddest of all, variety rubista:
variety totem:
variety fuego:
variety cheyenne:
variety ladycot:
variety swired:
variety ravilong:
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I see a lot of those are no auto-fertilidad - a minor drawback
The sites don’t say if they’re fuzzy
They look like nectarines to me
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I want a red skinned white fleshed apricot
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5 varieties if they are self-fertile and 3 not
Yeah… the Hesse Weinberger plumcot has been around since the 1950s…
[*yawn].
Yeah…if one was going to breed their own…Hesse would be a good contender because it has the skin, it just needs more cot flavor/flesh.