An overview of plum breeding at Fruit Research Institute, Čačak

Abstract

Plum breeding work at the Fruit Research Institute, Čačak, which has been implemented since founding of the Institute in 1946, has led to the development of very important European plum (Prunus domestica L.) cultivars. Namely, cultivars such as ‘Čačanska Lepotica’, ‘Čačanska Rodna’, ‘Čačanska Najbolja’ and ‘Čačanska Rana’ are well known worldwide and have been grown in commercial orchards, as well as used as parents in different plum breeding programmes. Planned hybridization was used as the most important method in breeding. During the programme realization, the main breeding objectives were fruit quality, high productivity, early and late ripening time, tolerance to ecological conditions as well as diseases, especially Sharka virus. In the previous period, 14 cultivars were developed. Thereafter, four cultivars were released in the last eight years: ‘Nada’ in 2012, ‘Divna’ and ‘Petra’ in 2018 and ‘Lana’ in 2020. Along with planned hybridization, clonal selection of the most important autochthonous cultivars has been carried out. Clones with larger fruit, better fruit quality and tolerant to stress factors and diseases are singled out and will be used in further breeding work or will be introduced into production, especially as a raw material for the brandy production. Therewith, research is also focused on plum floral biology which includes pollen quality and pollen tubes growth in the pistil observations, as well as cytoembryology with the aim of determining the degree of self- (in)compatibility and the most suitable pollenisers for self-incompatible cultivars.