BREEDING PEARS FOR WARM CLIMATES IN MEXICO

Developing pear cultivars adapted to the subtropics is the main breeding goal of breeding programs in Brazil and Mexico. Because of the lack of available low chill pear germplasm, developing high quality pears adapted to Mexico requires hybridisation of high chilling pears like ‘Anjou’, ‘Gamboa’ and ‘Kieffer’ with the low chilling, low quality pear ‘Hood’. This latter cultivar from Florida has a chilling requirement of 250 chill hours; however, we found some segregant seeds from self pollinated ‘Hood’ with 0 chilling hours requirement resembling the non-dormant phenotype in evergreen ‘Tetela’ peaches and ‘Anna’ apples. This study describes the chilling requirement of seeds from crosses made between low and high chill cultivars as part of the Mexican pear breeding program, which started in 2001. We expected and found better quality in the ‘Hood’ x ‘Anjou’ crosses.