Fruit quality of processing peach cultivars in the collection of Nikita Botanical Gardens

Gene pool of processing peach cultivars (with gristly flesh) in Nikita Botanical Gardens is presented by 101 units. After the evaluation of the gene pool 27 cultivars with good fruit quality (4.0 to 4.5 points) were selected. Among them, 3 early and early-mid season (‘Dostoyniy’, ‘Usgor 1’, ‘Usgor 2’), 17 mid, 5 mid-late, 2 late season (‘Neznakomets’, ‘Voskya Ashun’) and 1 extra late season (‘Aydinovskiy Prodolgovatiy’) cultivars were determined. During the selection studies six large fruit; 17 yellow flesh; 5 with coating coloration, covering 40-70% of the fruit surface; 3 with excellent taste (‘Uspekh’, ‘Laureat’, ‘Zlatogor’) and one with the best overall score (‘Uspekh’) were selected. The most of the cultivars have round-shaped fruits (64%) with red or dark red coating coloration (46.4%). Among the selected cultivars, 19 of them are belong to North-Chinese eco-geographical group (rose-shaped flower) and 8 of them belong to Iranian group (bell-shaped flower). Nineteen cultivars present the European, 6 of them present American and 2 of them present Transcaucasian ecotype (‘Voskya Ashun’ and ‘Aydinovskiy Prodolgovatiy’).