The behaviour of some apricot cultivars with late blooming in south-eastern Romania

The breeding of apricot trees for different features is concerning many researchers over the world where apricot grows. In Romania, the programme for apricot breeding started in 1952. The main objectives were: enlarge the harvest season, high quality of the fruit, good taste, resistance to transport, tolerance/resistance to the main diseases, etc. Also, the creation of new apricot cultivars with late bloom and high resistance to the return frost was one of the aims of the breeders. A good starting point for this work was the apricot germplasm found from the Research Station for Fruit Growing (RSFG) Constanta which had more than 600 genitors. Standard breeding techniques as cross pollination, self-pollination and open pollination were used and more than 18000 hybrids have been evaluated and 380 genotypes were tested. From these 14 apricot cultivars were homologated. Two of them 'Auras' and 'Augustin' showed late bloom (7 days after 'Goldrich' cultivar that was used as control) and good average yields (12.5 and 14.0 t ha^‑1, respectively for a density of 625 trees ha^‑1). Also, the new apricot cultivars mentioned proved to have high fruit weight, flesh firmness, very good aroma, red skin and good commercial aspect.