Fruit Characteristics of Four Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) Advanced Selections from Kentucky State University

The North American Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a tree fruit native to the Eastern U.S. which is being produced in commercial orchards across the U.S. and internationally, with a small but growing market. There are approximately 50 pawpaw cultivars available, but many of these varieties tend to be low yielding and have fruit sizes of 120 grams or less. Pawpaw varieties with fruit weighing over 120 grams are considered to have a large enough fruit size for commercial sale and processing. New high yielding cultivars with excellent fruit quality would further assist in the development of the pawpaw industry. Kentucky State University serves as the National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Pawpaw. Two goals of the Repository research efforts are germplasm acquisition and evaluation.  The repository contains over 2000 accessions from 16 different states; additionally, both open pollinated seedlings from superior genotypes and crosses of superior selections have been incorporated into the repository collection. Fruit from four KSU advanced selections (Hi 1-4, Hi 4-1, Hi 7-1, and Hi 7-5) were compared to fruit from the commercially available selection Sunflower or the basis of fruit weight, percent seed, and soluble solids. All selections except Hi 7-5 had significantly larger fruit than ‘Sunflower’, with selection Hi 1-4 averaging 310 grams per fruit. Hi 4-1 had the lowest percent seed (4.39%) and ‘Sunflower’ had the highest (8.58%).  Selection Hi 7-5 had the lowest Brix reading (19.67) while Hi 4-1 had the highest reading at 25.64. All four advanced selections show potential to be promising new releases and are being budded onto seedling rootstock for further evaluation.