New Scion Releases Restore NFC Juice Quality in the Battle against Huanglongbing
Posted August 2025
Researchers: Jude Grosser, Fred Gmitter, John Chater
Contact: Jude Grosser, UF/IFAS CREC jgrosser@ufl.edu
Summary:
During the past year, the UF/IFAS CREC Citrus Breeding Team has released 6 new scion selections with potential to improve the quality of Florida NFC juice in the HLB-endemic environment.
Sweet Oranges: New sweet orange releases include late-maturing selections OLL-DC-36 and OLL-DC-3-40. These two HLB-tolerant selections were derived from OLL-8, which is already one of the most HLB-tolerant sweet orange selections available. Another late-maturing selection, Valencia N40-16-7-11, is the most HLB-tolerant selection among more than 1000 Valencia somaclones evaluated in our program; thus we are calling it the ‘Last Man Standing’. All 3 of these new late oranges have exceptional fruit/juice quality. We also released the early-maturing sweet orange somaclone Hamlin N14-10, that was selected for producing juice with higher °Brix and better HLB-tolerance than standard Hamlin.
Blending Hybrids: We released two HLB-tolerant juice blending hybrids, C4-10-42 and RBA-13-18; both have higher°Brix and better juice color, and good flavor after pasteurization. They have potential to improve our NFC quality when blended at the legal 10%, helping to solve our Brix crisis.
Take Home Message:
- New high-quality processing sweet oranges with improved HLB tolerance have been released, and thus are available for CRAFT-funded projects. Better oranges make better juice!
- Two new highly HLB-tolerant mandarin hybrids with good potential for blending in NFC at 10% have been released, and are also available. These selections have great potential to improve the brix, flavor and color of Florida NFC juice.
- These new selections will contribute to the ‘Three-legged Stool’ approach for sustainable and profitable citriculture: combining good scion genetics, good rootstock genetics, and enhanced nutrition.
