SEED GERMINATION TIME AS A CRITERION FOR THE EARLY SELECTION OF LATE FLOWERING ALMONDS

The breeding of new late-flowering almond cultivars is a long process, due mainly to the long juvenile phase of the seedlings. Early selection methods would improve the efficiency of breeding programs. In this work, we investigated the use of seed germination time to find the late-flowering almonds among 136 seedlings representing six progenies from controlled pollinations performed in 2002. Germination time for seeds with mesocarp and endocarp removed was recorded during stratification, and time of leaf budbreak and flowering were recorded in the fourth and fifth leaf. Within the six progenies evaluated over two years, correlations between seed germination and leaf budbreak of the seedlings ranged from 0.02 to 0.43, and for the pooled data averaged 0.48. Correlations between seed germination and seedling flowering time ranged between 0.06 and 0.55, and for the pooled data were 0.50. These indicate a relationship between times of germination of the seeds and flowering of the resulting seedlings, and so if breeders generate a large number of fruits per cross where they expect important segregation of the flowering time, selection of the seeds that take longer to germinate will be translated into a certain degree of delay of the flowering in the selected population.