Abstract
An accelerating worldwide trend toward planting elite cultivars is leading to genetic erosion and a narrowing of the gene pool upon which the date-palm industry is based. Large numbers of seedling dates are known in many major date-growing countries, as well as in naturalized populations in Spain and the Americas where the palm was intentionally introduced. Seedling dates growing under different climatic conditions from those of the major production areas represent potential genetic resources that should be evaluated for desirable traits. Utilizing modern biotechnology, traits such as disease and pest resistance, hardiness, tolerance of salty soils and improved fruit quality and quantity potentially can be transferred to elite cultivars to sustain and further improve fruit production. Specific examples of important seedling date palm populations in Spain, Peru and Mexico are discussed, as well as new cultivars derived from seedlings in the United States. Research on seedling date populations is recommended, along with the establishment of ex situ germplasm collections of promising specimens as living plants, cold storage of seeds or cryopreservation.
Highlights
Introduction and BackgroundBased upon archaeological evidence, the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) was domesticated some 6,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian Region (Zohary and Hopf, 2000); present-day Iraq, along with adjacent portions of northeast Syria, southeast Turkey and southwest Iran.Tree-crop domestication appears to have taken place at the advent of agriculture and is presumed to have been a slow and incremental process
This study examines relevant historical aspects of seedling date palms and their contemporary role for fruit production, as well as their germplasm potential and conservation, for the future sustainability and development of date palm cultivation
Most if not all of the other American female cultivars Nixon described have been lost to cultivation, because they apparently were unpromising based upon early assessments and are no longer grown on research stations or by farmers, or through changing agriculture land use which eliminated the palms
Summary
# Considered to be a cultivar since it is propagated by offshoots. University, Elche, Confitera is unrelated to local date palm ethnovarieties but correlates with North African material; it is not a traditional Elche date palm A study in Elche of physicochemical changes of Negros ethnovariety fruit at 16 ripening stages of maturity found that plant hormone ethylene was responsible for changes in color, firmness, soluble solids content and actidity (Serrano et al, 2001). Blanching is a ripening technique used in Elche with cvs. In the early 2000s, a pilot study was conducted to select the seedling female date palms bearing the best quality edible fresh fruit. In the Rio Segura Valley, just west of Elche, a comprehensive field study of seedling dates was carried out by Rivera et al (1997). The findings, summarized, represent the most detailed information about ethnovariety date fruits in Southeast Spain.
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