Peaches are widely distributed in Mexico after more than 400 years of local selection pressures and have produced a large number of homogenous populations. The main objective of this presentation is to describe the genetic resources, breeding strategies as well as the progress in the generation of new peach cultivars in Central Mexico. Approaches to describe the diversity of Mexican peaches have been based in multivariate analysis with emphasis on traits related with adaptation. Genetic resources are kept in situ on six representative ecosystems and is being used to develop homozygous lines with a high level of homoygocity, which are used as parents to generate hybrids in crosses with foreign selections and cultivars from Eastern and Western United States, Canada, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, China and Korea. The F1 are evaluated in research stations and the F2 are planted and screened on each representative ecosystem. Screening is based on adaptation to: a) soil: rootstock seed sources derived from selfing local and introduced selections; b) climate (50 to 500 hours of chilling for the subtropics and 700 to 1000 hours for temperate climates in the north), blossom season; c) resistance to Spaheroteca pannosa, Taphrina deformans and Monilinia fructicola; d) growth habit, yield and fruit quality based on target consumers.