Anyone in here is interested in breeding Nectarines with apricots?
I am.
This is my Nectarcot, a cross between Flavor Top Nectarine, seed parent, x F1 Moorpark Apricot, pollen parent. The seedling resembles exactly like a Nectarine tree.
Since it’s a hybrid, the leaves should look something between the two parents, however, they resemble like a nectarine tree. And this phenotype is not only inherited in my hybrids, but also in other hybrids from different breeders. This is a Nectarcot tree from a comercial grower from South Africa. Notice that the leaves don’t have any apricot phenotype in them
I have also seen a couple of peach x apricot hybrid trees from online European Nurseries that they resemble like a peach tree and not any apricot trait in their foliage.
So anyone in here could help me out to kill out my curiousity?
Can you breed a nectarine/peach with apricots to see if they resemble a nectarine/peach tree then post them on this topic?
It’s a good experiment since they are closely related. Proof though will be in the fruit.
I plan to add some Apricot this year myself and may look at this. I’m not that big a fan of Apricots though. I probably would like hybrids and make just work with them in the first place. Such as Apriums. I for the moment have my hands full so nothing anytime soon.
This is another peach x apricot hybrid, with peach been the seed parent, that resembles a peach tree rather than an apricot.
It was confirmed that it had apricot in its parentage via DNA analysis.
The leaves of the nectarine x apricot above look like nectarine, while the peach x apricot above look like a peach. In both of these cases the plants resemble the female parent and don’t show traits that you may expect from a cross between the two.
I have heard of a few wide crosses where the reciprocal cross look remarkably different. Often they take after the female parent.
I am not sure why this happens, and why it only happens in some crosses but not others. Perhaps that is happening here.
I can experiment with nectarine apricot and peach apricot crosses to see what may happen. I have been crossing plumerries (plum cherry hybrids) , growing out crosses of Nadia and Candy Heart to see what they become. Each one is different as they emerge from dormancy. One has only leaves, one has blossoms and leaves, the other is still completely dormant. I could not imagine doing this 50K times the way Zaiger does.
Since they are hybrids, I was expecting them to look something in between, like the plumcots, for example. The leaves resemble the plum at first, then they take the apricot shape, and finally like both parents once they reach maturity.
I’m also planning to cross my Nectarcot with Flavor Train Peachplum just for fun and out of curiousity. I’m just curious to see what the leaves would look like. Watch, the fruit would probably look and taste like plums, just like all plum hybrids.
The peach-like leaves are also visible on my peach x almond hybrids despite that the almond is the seed parent. If I showed my peachmond to the average gardener, they would probably think it’s just a peach tree and not a cross between a peach and an almond.
Having now tasted a number of plums and pluots. I can say that pluots are definitely better. They do taste mostly like plums, but their is a richness there that is missing from most plums. It is subtle, not extreme but there all the same. The nectaplum had no taste the first two harvests and I was ready to pull the tree. But the 3rd year it was very good. I could detect no plum in it.It tastes like a good low acid white nectarine. most peaches and nectarines have a fairly rich taste to start. My neighbor is in her late 70’s and I gave her some pluots, just told her they were plums. She said they were the best plums she ever had. My other neighbor thought Arctic Glo nectarine was a plum. It has such deep red flesh, much more than say Indian Free. So in my opinion the plum hybrids are much better than regular plums, and my friends and neighbors concur.And some of the nectarines like Arctic Glo are quite unique. Zaiger certainly improved the fruit a lot.
I’m happy just to work with these fruits and see what else is possible.
Since Flavor Delight aprium is blossoming right now, I will try to pollinate Arctic Jay nectarine which is just beginning to blossom. My Blenheim, Tilton and Moorpark apricots are still dormant, cannot do anything with them right now.
It’s more about chilling requirement. Some of the very low chill nectarines and peaches bloom earlier than normal chill apricots, sometimes much earlier. Now there are very low chill cherries and apricots/apriums. They also bloom very early. My earliest bloomers in the greenhouse are two apriums but I think I could find nectarines and peaches that are even earlier.
There are some unknown factors involved with chill we still don’t quite understand. Why we came up with all the different chill models. An example is some low chill stone fruit is long chill adaptable whiles others are not.
Yes it probably does. But really all I know is that some of the stuff I’ve tried lately blooms extremely early. That’s OK in my greenhouse but not outdoors. I’ve had January bloom outdoors three yrs running. With an average last freeze date in April.
