I budded Salustiana Orange unto my Moro Blood Orange. I have nice fruits this year and was pleasantly surprised to find some splotches of pigmentation scattered within the flesh.


By joereal at 2008-02-19


By joereal at 2008-02-19

By joereal at 2008-02-19

I don't know how to use the macro feature in iPhone, so forgive me for the lack of details. As soon as I find another camera, I'll get another sample and take better pics.

Normally, my salustiana are just pure "blond" colored flesh but those were grafted unto my 70-n-1 citrus tree. The one on my blood orange tree was a sample for curiosity's sake.

I was wondering if the combination of our weather pattern where we have mid 30's to high 60's this late winter and the fact that it was grafted unto Moro may have resulted in that pigmentation pattern much like those found in the blood oranges such as the unreleased Vaccaro Blood, Sanguinelli a pignu, and Burris blood valencia, the fruits of which which were sent to me by Marc last year.

Has anyone observed this type of pigmentation pattern in their Salustiana fruits, or some reference to it. I could not locate such information in the web, but have been searching only for 30 minutes. Usually I can nail down an information from reliable websites in under 5 minutes. This time I haven't found one about this salustiana pigmentation in the popular search engines.

Joe,
The Arizona Chapter of the CRFG will be budding salustiana onto C-35 rootstock this spring, but no members of the group have this variety.
However, it has been written by the local agricultural extension to be the most consistent pigmented variety for our arid climate. You might reference the University of Arizona publication below.

http://tug.bara.arizona.edu/desert.pdf

Patrick

That's the only reference that I had and made me decide to add it unto my pigmented orange tree about three years ago. And for the two fruitful years, I never saw the splotches of red pigmentation until this year. It is not the consistent dark red pigmentation that they have described. Perhaps one more year and it would be as consistent as my other blood oranges. Thanks for bringing up the reference again.

Joe,
I spoke with one of the University of Arizona Citrus Research Scientists, and have confirmed that an error exists in the publication stating that the Salustiana sweet orange is a blood orange. This explains why its fruit was blonde colored for its fruiting years on one of your trees. It is very interesting that it had blood specs when grafted onto your blood orange cocktail tree. I would be interested in knowing if the salustiana bud was grafted to a blood orange limb or the rootstock. Apparently the blood orange stock in some way gave pigmentation to a variety that isnt known to show any pigmentation.
Patrick