This is a final research report from Hort Innovation’s historical archives. Please note that as these reports may date back as far as the 1990s, the content and recommendations within them may be superseded by more recent research.

What was it all about?

The apricot processing industry in Australia was dependent on a single variety, namely Trevatt. This reliance exposes the industry to a high risk of crop failure from seasonal conditions and the biennial bearing nature of this variety. Progress was made towards addressing this issue in previous projects titled CF09003 “Apricot Breeding lines for processing” and its predecessor FR05001 “Evaluation of apricot breeding lines for canning”. In this project the outstanding lines “Bounty” and “Line 32255”, previously identified continued to be evaluated in commercial size test planting as a final proofing stage prior to promotion to industry.

A further 11 new promising apricot lines for canning were identified. Of these 29110, 34769 35209 and 36480 appeared to have the greatest potential on data gathered to date. Canned fruit quality of these selections had ranked highly in each year of evaluation, with evaluation trees planted at Loxton carrying heavy crops of clean good quality fruit each.

The scaling up of “Bounty” production in the Shepparton area had encountered major complications with the occurrence of graft incompatibility, tree losses and soft fruit not previously seen in smaller trials. The reasons for this were unclear and SPC Ardmona (SPCA) had decided not to proceed with further planting of this variety but retained those already planted to try to find solutions to these issues.

A small number of trial trees of line 32255 and line 15742 were planted for further evaluation by SPC Ardmona (SPCA) in the Shepparton area. All other identified lines were grafted at Loxton Research Centre and would be supplied to SPCA as bare rooted trees for evaluation in winter 2017.

This work completed the screening of the SARDI Apricot Breeding Program for lines of canning potential. It was expected that at least two of the promising selections identified in this and earlier projects would need to be proven for commercialization. The addition of these new varieties as growing options reduced risk, increased supply and supply reliability for the Australian processing industry.