US (FL): Tangerines have consumer a-peel
Those are the qualities most sought-after by today’s on-the-go consumers, he added.
The two new tangerines – identified as “7-6-27” and the more ear-catching “UFGlow” – will be the first new varieties to make the second tier of the three-stage development process under the Fast Track program, which the corporation began in 2012. Fast Track has a total of 16 new fresh citrus varieties in development.
For growers, the most significant benefit of the second tier is that they can sell the fruit in the U.S. market, Chaires said. The other 14 new varieties in the Fast Track program are in the first tier — the trial phase with a smaller number of trees for each variety and a prohibition on selling the fruit.
After the second-tier stage, which lasts for five years, 7-6-27 and UFGlow will go into the third tier, or open commercialization, when the trees will become available to any grower who wants to buy them from a nursery, he said. That means growers participating in the second tier get a five-year head start on producing the new fruit for the market.
Lower royalty fees is the other benefit for Fast Track growers, Chaires said. For agreeing to set aside acreage for field testing the new varieties, growers will pay a royalty fee of $1.70 per tree on all future purchases, a 38 percent discount on the $2.75 fee charged to other growers.
Of course, the future demand for the new tangerine trees depends on how well they perform during the second-tier trial. But the tangerine varieties look promising so far, he added.
Florida fresh citrus growers created the New Varieties Corp. in 2006 because the state’s most widely grown tangerines, Fallglo and Honey, were losing favor among U.S. consumers to seedless, easy-to-peel varieties, such as the Spanish Clementine and its California cousin, the Cutie. The Mediterranean Clementine tangerine does not grow well in Florida’s semi-tropical climate, so new varieties had to be bred.
Florida growers produced about 10 million boxes of tangerines and tangelos in the 1990s and early 2000s, but the tangerine harvest fell to 2.3 million boxes in 2014-15 because of tree losses to the fatal bacterial disease citrus greening. More than 70 percent of tangerines are sold on the fresh market.
The big, unanswered question is how well 7-6-27 and UFGlow tangerines will tolerate greening, Chaires acknowledged.
Source: theledger.com
