Fruit characteristics and fatty acid composition in advanced olive breeding selections along the ripening period

Changes in olive growing techniques in the last years have shown the need for new bred cultivars able to replace the traditional ones today cultivated. In this work, seven new advanced selections recently obtained in the olive breeding program of Córdoba, Spain, and coming from crosses between 'Arbequina' and 'Picual' were evaluated for fruit traits and oil quality parameters. Fruit weight, oil and moisture content, ripening index, fruit removal force and fatty acid composition were analyzed once a month over the ripening season from September to December over two consecutive years. Analysis of variance showed that the genotype effect was the main contributor to the total sums of squares for most of the traits evaluated. However, high influence of year, harvest date and interactions was also observed in some cases. Significant differences between cultivars were observed for all the evaluated characters. Ranking correlations indicate that the evaluation in a single common harvest date could be a reliable indicator for a correct classification of advanced olive selections for the traits considered. This would avoid the need for repeated measurements throughout the season or for collection of samples at a common ripening index for comparison. The correlations observed among fruit characteristics and fatty acids could be of interest in future breeding programs for those traits and some of them confirm previous results with seedling progenies and other breeding selections. Among all the selections evaluated, UC-I-42-48 seems promising for its good fruit size, oil content and low fruit removal force. Additionally UC-I-2-35 could be highlighted for its high oleic acid content, although further evaluation will be carried out in the future to obtain a complete commercial evaluation under different environmental conditions.