An overview of Serbian autochthonous genotype selection in Prunus genus

Fruit species of the Prunus genus are among the most represented worldwide. According to harvested area and production volume, plum and sour cherry are beside apple and raspberry the most valuable species in the Republic of Serbia. Also, peach, apricot and sweet cherry are of high importance. Germplasms of all aforementioned Prunus species in the Republic of Serbia are very heterogeneous. Numerous genotypes are characterized with high fruit quality and tolerance/resistance to causal agents of the most important diseases and therefore, some of them such as plum ‘Crvena Ranka’, sour cherry ‘Oblačinska‘ and apricots ‘NS-4’ and ‘NS-6’ have a major impact on commercial production. On the other hand, due to these properties, as well as others, a number of autochthonous genotypes have been used in breeding work as one of the parents in planned hybridization. Selection of genotypes with better characteristics have been carried out over a long time period in the Republic of Serbia and some of them, upon evaluation under the recognition procedure, were named and released as new cultivars. Also, clonal selection of the autochthonous genotypes and well-known landraces are a very useful tool for improvement of assortment structure. Therefore, selected clones with better characteristics might be used in production and further breeding work. Until these days, 11 apricot (‘Čačanska Pljosnata’, ‘Čačansko Zlato’, ‘Aleksandar’, ‘Biljana’, ‘Vera’, ‘NS4’, ‘NS6’, ‘Novosadska Rodna’, ‘Novosadska Kasnocvetna’ ‘Buda’, ‘Ruža’), two peach (‘Maša’ and ‘Lela’), two sour cherry (‘Lenka’ and ‘Prima’) and one sweet cherry (‘Canetova’) genotypes have been named and released as new cultivars. In addition, one plum, one sweet cherry and two sour cherry genotypes are under the recognition procedure for new cultivars.