For those who are living in the European continent, has anyone tried this hybrid fruit called sharafuga? It’s a cross between a peach, plum, and apricot.
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Sharafuga is not a variety, it’s how Europeans call Floyd Zaiger’s Peacotums (a.k.a. Color-Cots). Zaiger’s Peacotum (Color-Cot) varieties available in Europe include Bella Cerise and Bella Royale. All of these are called there sharafuga.
In the US, Zaiger and Dave Wilson market these varieties as “Color-Cot Interspecific Apricots”:
http://www.davewilson.com/product-information-commercial/product/color-cot-interspecific-apricots.
The varieties include: Bella Cerise, Bella Gold, Bella Rose, Bella Royale, and Bella Sun. All of these are available only to commercial growers, except for Bella Gold which is sold to home growers as Bella Gold Peacotum.
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Hi Ulises.
From the aspect of the photograph that you show, and also for the Cyrillic writing (Russian) , I am almost sure that the interspecific hybrid you are talking about is the “Globus” variety, developed in the Crimean agricultural improvement station.
This variety:
- Globus
https://www.shop.zahradnictvolimbach.sk/en/plum-mirabelle-trees-for-sale/globus-plum-apricot-hybrid
As I know you are a lover of interspecific hybrids (as I am), I will tell you that in Europe there are quite a few varieties available, but not all of them are “high quality”.
Currently there are several European breeders with interspecific hybrid development programs, among them Provedo nurseries, which has quite a few varieties, but has not yet commercialized them.
As I am very friend with the manager of this nursery “Luis Aliseda”, he sent me three years ago the first two varieties of his interspecific hybrid program, so that I could test them in my orchard .
Next year they will bear fruit and I will be able to show you the quality of the fruits, which promise to be excellent.
They are these two varieties:
- Ebony-88
- Ebony-85
I give you a link so you can see the manager of the nursery, my friend Luis Aliseda, and what these fruits are like (the link is in Spanish, and you have to translate it).
https://www.provedo.com/es/ciruelas-evocan-al-albaricoque/
There are other interesting varieties like these two:
- Pink Candy
- Flavor Candy
Regards
Jose
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Looks interesting. I wonder how it would do in northern Wisconsin?
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Hi northwoodswis4.
This fruity variety has good harvests in cold climates (it is a Russian variety).
Look at these are its characteristics:
Spontaneous interspecific hybrid of Russian plum and apricot. Very valuable for excellent taste, high frost resistance and very good resistance to fungal diseases. Suitable for organic or no-spray culture.
Crossing: Obilnaya (interspecific plum hybrid) x Gibrid 2 (apricot), breeders G.V. Yeremin, S.V. Zabrodina, A.V. Isachkin, 2002
Vigour: moderate, crown broadly spherical, medium dense
Blossom: partialy self-fertile, blooming flowers are resistant to mild frost. Other stone fruits (apricot, Russian plum or plum) are required for pollination.
Fruit: large, weight 50 - 70 g, round, peel firm, shiny, stone small. Suitable for direct consumption as well as processing. Resistant to fruit cracking, easy to transport. When stored in the refrigerator, they do not change color and the quality remains stable for up to three weeks.
Fruit color: dark purple to black
Pulp: yellow at first, pink-orange when fully ripe, juicy, dense, freestone
Taste: excellent dessert taste, sweet with mild acidity and apricot flavor
Harvest season: first half of August
Yeald: high and regular, start to produce fruit in the 3rd year after planting
Disease and frost resistance: excellent
Usage: due to its adaptability, the variety is particularly suitable for gardeners and for areas where other apricot varieties cannot be grown due to the late spring frosts.
This winter I will buy two trees of this variety, and I will have graft cuttings available .
Regards
Jose
Regards
Jose
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Ulises, I have a photograph of the Flavor Candy , is other interespecific variety abailable in Europe , is this:
- Flavor Candy (marked with a red arrow) :
Regards
Jose
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I wonder when or if it will be released in the U.S.? It sounds promising.
I’m pretty sure i had bella gold at one time. I don’t remember it much so i doubt it was anything special. I’m pretty sure mine was potted. I’d have to dig thru old posts/photos.
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Hi northwoodswis4, the interspecific hybrids in general (pluots, plumcots, pluerrys, colorcots etc …) have a very early flowering so that in areas at risk of spring frosts despite being delicious varieties, they are varieties not very recommendable , however, the Globus variety is a very late blooming so it is not affected by spring frosts.
This variety is very suitable for you, you would have to pollinate it with a late flowering plum variety.
The Russian hybrid Globus is a variety with little commercial interest so it will hardly reach the United States, so the only way to obtain it is by grafting.
As I said in the upper message, in winter I want to buy 2 trees of this variety, and normally the Slovak Limbach nursery sends trees of good size and branched, so I will have graft cuttings available ( for a well clever person , with a few words is enough hahahahaha), and you know where the private message icon is.
Regards
Jose
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Jose, thanks for the scion offer, but I don’t think it is allowed, nor a good idea, to send them from Spain to Wisconsin. If they are ever offered for sale here, I might try one.
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Jose,
I appreciate your input here on the forum, but please do not encourage sending scions from outside the U.S. It’s illegal activity via U.S. law, and can be dangerous, especially for stone fruit. Spain is known to have the Sharka virus present in stone fruit, along with the rest of Europe. The United States spent millions of dollars years ago eradicating plum pox. This doesn’t even count the extreme cost to many commercial growers who had to destroy entire orchards, and were compensated a fraction of the losses they incurred.
This is a reoccurring phenomena here. Several years ago we had HLB introduced from Asia. It decimated the Florida citrus industry and now has a foothold in the California citrus industry.
The Spotted Lanternfly is the latest foreign pest that has arrived here. These new pests cost our fruit industry millions.
I understand the thought that you may think your scionwood is completely clean of diseases/insects, but all it takes is one pest to hitch a ride (insect or disease) which could result farmers spending countless hours and currency to battle a disease or insect which has no resistance here or natural predators here.
There are many examples of this happening. I recall reading one person was even prosecuted for bringing in citrus wood in California, which was contaminated with HLB.
As a commercial grower myself, this has very serious potential consequences for me. It would be disastrous if my peach orchard contracted plum pox.
This warning has been mentioned before to you, so please stop soliciting illegal international scionwood trades. You have requested international trades on multiple threads. These will start to be deleted. If you continue to request international trades, more corrective actions will follow. It is simply too serious an issue to ignore on this forum, which has international scope.
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Hi Olpea, I fully understand what you are telling me, but in this case the cuttings of the Globus hybrid do not come from my orchard, they would come from the Slovak Limbach nursery, which is a highly reputed nursery and sends the trees with a phytosanitary passport, and certificate " virus free ".
The Sharka virus is practically eradicated in the European Union.
there are another matter is much more dangerous, and yet you don’t pay attention (and I have already warned it in some post).
For a few years in the United States, you have had a great passion for the varieties of European fig trees, especially the varieties from the Island of Mallorca (in the Balearic Islands), and I will explain why.
The bacterium Xylella Fastidiosa, which originated in California, was introduced in the European Union, but in the Balearic Islands, two mutations of this bacterium have arisen , which are much worse than the original strain, and you have no presence of these two strains in the United States, so the damage would be terrible:
- Xylella Multiplex
- Xylella Pauca
Fig trees are a perfect host for this bacterium.
You just have to look at the post of fig trees, and you will see varieties like these:
- Martinenca Rimada
- Paratjal , and Paratjal Rimada
- Bordissot Rimada
- De la Reina
- Calderona
- and other varieties native to the island of Mallorca ( there are hundreds of varieties ) .
If they are native varieties of the Island of Mallorca, how do you think they have reached the United States?
And this matter, It’s really dangerous, and you didn’t pay attention to him.
Containment measures
The areas to apply these measures must be approved by the Commission. They are currently applicable to southern Apulia (Italy), Corsica (France) and the Balearic Islands (Spain), as the bacteria is already widely established in those areas and eradication would not be feasible.
But not only some americans have taken fig cuttings from Mallorca to the United States, but you also have specific fig tree forums, and these varieties from the island of Mallorca are spreading without any control.
Regards
Jose
P.S. : I will avoid sending graft material to the USA
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Jose,
I completely agree with you that live fig plant material should not be exported from the U.S. In fact I think all international plant exchanges should go through the proper channels. The U.S. has a way to safely import plant materials from other countries by way of first shipping the material to the USDA for testing. The process takes a considerable amount of time, but it is the safe and legitimate way to do it. I’m sure countries in Europe have similar plant security measures to import plant material.
All it takes is one piece of infected plant material with disease or a small insect egg and it can decimate an industry.
Off the top of my head, here are some of the plant insects diseases which were imported into the U.S:
Codling moth
Oriental fruit moth
Japanese beetles
Plum pox (currently eradicated in U.S.)
Spotted wing drosophila
Spotted lanternfly
Sudden oak death
Dutch elm disease
Citrus greening/HLB
Those are just the major pests/diseases off the top of my head, which have caused major disruptions in the U.S. I’m sure you could also come up with a list of imported diseases which have affected European countries. So I would agree with you that international trades should be strongly discouraged, unless gone through the proper channels. Of course not all diseases and invasive insects are the result of illegally shipping live plant material, but many are.
When plum pox first arrived in the U.S. there is little to no doubt that it arrived as the result of live plant material being illegally brought into the U.S., since that is the only way the particular strain of sharka found in the U.S. could be spread long distances. Once established it can move quickly through aphids, but that’s not how it crossed the oceans.
This is a curious statement to me. I’ve not read anything indicating sharka virus is close to being eradicated in the EU. I’ve not even read the EU has engaged in any serious attempt to eradicate the disease. From what I’ve read, the EU is focused more on developing varieties through breeding and/or genetic engineering to combat the disease.
Without serious and intense eradication efforts it’s hard to imagine any real progress would be made to eradicate sharka. The U.S. spent millions of dollars, inspecting trees, cutting down orchards, removing individual fruit trees from backyards, and removing wild fruit trees, which are also vectors of the disease. Canada tried to eradicate sharka. After spending millions of their currency, they finally gave up. Everything I read indicates sharka is becoming more widespread in the world, not less.
I don’t know about the Slovak Limbach nursery, but a phytosanitary certificate means very little in the U.S. All nursery plant material traveling between states in the U.S. is required to have a phytosanitary certificate, but this doesn’t offer much protection. It’s only a visual inspection of the nursery. They don’t even visually inspect every piece of material shipped.
Sharka can infect some varieties of stone fruit which show no symptoms, but still carry the disease. That’s why live stone fruit plant material should go through the USDA to import in the U.S.
On a related note, I’ve received trees from a highly reputed nursery, with phytosanitary certificate, which were infected with crown gall bacterium, but showed no symptoms. I know this because I planted them in a virgin lawn area, then moved the tree a year later, only to find the tree was covered with crown gall. This same nursery has sent me a couple trees with small but visible crown gall. Last year they had to cancel a bunch of orders because many of their trees were visibly infected with crown gall. This is from a nursery which sells over a million fruit trees per year, mostly to commercial growers.
Again, I think the prudent thing to do is to discourage international trades on a public forum. If you see anyone offering live fig plant material for overseas trade, please flag it so admins can remove the post. Likewise, thank you for avoiding sending live plant material to the U.S.
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As far as other forums we here cannot do anything about their activity. All we can do is control our forum. This year the black fig fly was found in California. The users on ourfigs had been pushing the USDA to invoke stricter controls. Users on ourfigs actually are working with the USDA on this. Overall the government response has been terrible. Commercial nurseries are selling infected plants still. You can read about it on their forum if you wish.
It is true a lot of fig wood from Europe found its way to California. Although now the USDA has been helping some to bring wood over. Mostly with the nursery in France (FDM) I have five of their figs now that made it here legally.
Also the irony of how BFF (black fig fly) got here. It cannot be passed in cuttings so illegal importers of wood are not the cause. Fresh figs from other countries imported legally were infected. It’s all over and dozens of California ourfig members have reported finding the larvae in their figs. I hate to see people dissing other forums when the truth is they mapped the spread of BFF for the USDA and members have imported cuttings via the quarantine process legally. The fact a few bad apples refuse to follow rules has nothing to do with the forum itself. As a matter of fact if you suggest illegal activity on ourfigs you will be removed as a member.
Speaking of figs Richard who is a member here also has been arranging for genetic testing and the complete mapping of all fig varieties. He is working to contract the work out. It’s taken a long time because of COVID but things are moving now. Various universities will be involved in doing the work. All are very excited about it.
We also have a breeding project going on too. We are trying to cross the best figs and get some new genetics going. I’m testing a handful of seedlings from a specific cross myself. Seeds germinated last week. I excited to participate in this project.
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I wish it was true that the Sharka virus was eradicated here, but unfortunately that is not even possible. Every cultivated or feral P. domestica tree around here is infected. Every tree I bought past 10 years from a nursery came infected, including trees I bought from nearby Romania.
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Holla Jose
I am a collector of interspecific hybrids from Portugal and I also collect all kinds of fruits for our climate.
I am sure we will have a lot to exchange
How can I contact you?
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Let’s not forget that Crimea is not Russia, it is temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory.
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Hi Heldervalente.
Contact me is the easiest thing in the world.
Send me a private message so we can chat about the varieties we have and in which we are interested.
Regards
Jose
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Just sent you a message,its great that we are so close
Im sure there will be a lot to talk about Jose
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I was in puglia working with olive farmers right after Xylela started creating problems on the olive trees.
It was hard to see millions of trees being cut down no matter if sick or not, with orders from the government and sometimes with the presence of riot police,.
In the region we talk about olive trees with an average of 200 years old, many with more than 1000.
It was a total disaster.
A friend told me that Sharka is still active in few parts eastern europe but i am not sure where.
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