Apricot

What is an apricot?

The apricot is one of the first fruit trees to flower: white to pale pink blossom appears on bare branches in late winter or early spring, weeks before the leaves. The fruit is velvety, orange and often blushed red around a smooth stone. It belongs to the rose family, close to plum, almond and peach.

Origin and growth

Its botanical name, armeniaca, refers to Armenia, the country from which the Romans knew it. Its true home lies further east. A genomic study by Groppi and colleagues, based on almost 600 apricots, showed that Chinese and European apricots form two separate gene pools, each domesticated independently from different wild populations in Central Asia, with later gene flow between them.

The Royal Horticultural Society describes the apricot as a small, round-headed tree of 4 to 8 metres. In gardens and orchards it is usually kept lower by rootstock and pruning.

Requirements

Winter chill. Like other temperate stone fruits, the apricot needs winter cold to flower properly, and the amount differs widely between varieties. For warm-winter areas the University of Arizona recommends varieties such as 'Gold Kist' with about 300 chill hours, 'Modesto' with 300 to 400 and 'Blenheim' and 'Katy' with about 400. A comparison between Murcia and Tuscany found that the same varieties broke dormancy differently in the two places, so a variety's chill requirement is only a guide.

Cold. The weak point is the early blossom. At full bloom, according to Washington State University, about ten percent of flowers are lost at around -2.8 °C and ninety percent at around -5.6 °C. Sites where cold air flows away downhill are safer than hollows.

Water. Most water is needed in spring while the fruit grows. Harvest falls in late spring or early summer, before the driest weeks.

Soil and light. Warm, well-drained soils, including stony and calcareous ones; full sun. Wet springs favour fungal diseases such as brown rot.

Fruit, use and harvest

Depending on variety and site, apricots ripen from late spring to midsummer. They are eaten fresh, dried, preserved or made into jam and brandy. Ripe fruit bruises easily and keeps only a short time.

Many apricot varieties are self-fertile, so a single tree can bear on its own.

Caution. Raw apricot kernels, above all bitter ones, contain amygdalin. The European Food Safety Authority calculated that an adult may exceed the safe acute dose after about three small kernels, a toddler after a single one.

In the food forest

In a food forest the apricot belongs to the low tree layer. It needs sun and air around its crown, both against frost and against fungal disease, so it does best on the sunny, open edge of a planting rather than under taller trees. Prunings and fallen leaves stay on the ground as mulch. In syntropic agriculture it would be planted together with fast pioneer shrubs that shelter it in its first years and are cut back as it grows.

In the Mediterranean climate

In Spain the Murcia region is a major apricot-growing area, and there mild winters already show their effect: researchers at CEBAS-CSIC found that for varieties with a high chill requirement, fruit set at cold or mild sites was more than double that at warm sites. Their breeding programme therefore works on varieties that need less chill.

In Sardinia the old apricot heritage has almost disappeared. According to the University of Sassari, more than 90 percent of the varieties once grown on the island are lost. Its list of the few threatened survivors names Bianco, Grappolina, Rosato and Pibirinada. The same source explains the loss of local fruit varieties mainly by changing market demands and new models of fruit growing that the old varieties did not fit.

The apricot is not on the EU list of invasive alien species.

Propagation and care

Varieties are grafted, usually onto apricot, plum or peach seedlings. Pruning is best done in summer after harvest, when wounds dry quickly and fungal infection is less likely. Young trees benefit from a mulched root zone and some water in their first summers.

How Terra Humana understands it

At Sa Medada the apricot raises one question above all: whether the mild, frost-free winter brings enough cold for it to flower. The answer will help judge which stone fruits belong on this slope. If it settles, it could become a small fruit tree on the sunny edge of the food forest. The near loss of Sardinia's own apricots is also a reason to look for what remains of them.