BREEDING APRICOT CULTIVARS FOR DRYING IN AUSTRALIA

Apricot breeding in Australia primarily aims to produce apricot cultivars for the dried fruit industry. The programme aims of producing high quality cultivars with improved levels of TSS, size and firmness, while retaining excellent colour and taste characteristics seem universal of apricots for any purpose. Significant progress has been made toward these goals, with the first cultivar ‘Rivergem’ being released in 1998. The cultivars ‘Riverbrite’ and ‘River Ruby’ were released to Australian growers in 2005 with excellent prospects for further future releases. Microsatellite (Simple Sequence Repeats, SSR) techniques are being used to assist in cultivar identification, genetic diversity studies and the development of a marker-assisted selection programme.