Breeding of Guose Tianxiang, a new late-maturing and high-quality plum cultivar

The new plum variety, Guose Tianxiang, offers exceptional practical guidance and represents a pioneering milestone for the plum industry within the field of fruit tree breeding. Addressing a key bottleneck prevalent in both domestic and international plum production—namely, the generally poor storability and transport tolerance of native Chinese plum varieties, while introduced foreign varieties often lack sufficient flavor intensity and cold hardiness—the research team precisely focused on this critical pain point. They adopted a strategy of directional hybrid breeding, carefully selecting the maternal parent Wanshu Xiangjiao Li and the paternal parent Qiuji for cross-breeding. Through persistent efforts, the new plum variety Guose Tianxiang was successfully developed with superior comprehensive traits. This variety remarkably combines the inherent flavor advantages of Chinese plums with the excellent storage characteristics of foreign plums, achieving a breakthrough complementarity of key traits. In terms of commercial fruit characteristics, Guose Tianxiang plum performs exceptionally well: its fruit firmness reaches a high value of 7.5 kg · cm- 2 , significantly enhancing the fruit's resistance to compression damage; its shelf life at room temperature stably exceeds 7 days. This core characteristic of hardness fundamentally breaks through the inherent limitation of traditional high- quality plum varieties, which is prone to softening and spoilage, leading to small storage and transport ra dii and restricted market circulation. It lays a solid foundation for long-distance transportation and cross-regional sales of the fruit. Furthermore, its soluble solids content reaches 13.2%, with a balanced sugar-acid ratio and a rich, pure flavor, perfectly meeting the core demand of consumers in the current wave of consumption upgrading for high- quality and great- tasting fresh fruits. Regarding stress resistance and adaptability, Guose Tianxiang plum also shows significant advantages: This variety exhibits strong cold resistance (with a freezing injury index of only 26). These excellent resistance characteristics greatly expand its suitable cultivation area, allowing its range to stably extend northward to the central and southern parts of Liaoning Province. Compared to ordinary plum varieties, its adaptable latitude has increased by 1-2 degrees, effectively filling the gap in high-quality plum varieties for large-scale cultivation in the cold northern regions of China. In terms of maturity period and market supply, the positioning of Guose Tianxiang plum is precise: As a very late- ripening variety, its fruits mature in late August, coinciding with the gap period when the supply of most other plum varieties on the market is nearly finished. The promotion of Guose Tianxiang will reshape the plum industry structure in Northeast China; through its differentiated competitive advantages, it can significantly improve the economic return per unit area, which is of great importance for optimizing China’s plum variety portfolio and promoting the highquality development and efficiency enhancement of the specialty fruit industry.