| The peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch] is grown commercially in 23 states of the United States on about 113,000 acres (USDA, 2012). In North Carolina, peaches were historically grown in the Sandhills region of Montgomery, Moore, Richmond, and Anson counties on sandy to sandy-loam soils (Ritchie et al., 2005). Today peaches are grown on nearly 3,000 acres across the state with the exception of the high mountains (M.L. Parker, personal communication).;The peach fruit is a drupe consisting of an exocarp (outer, fuzzy skin), a mesocarp (the edible flesh), and an endocarp (the pit). The size of a peach at harvest is limited by the number of cells within the fruit and the size of these cells. Maintaining adequate moisture during the first fifty days of growth affects cell division (the number of cells), while adequate moisture during the last three to four weeks of growth affects cell enlargement (the size of the cells and therefore the fruit) (Lockwood and Coston, 2005).;In NC, the peach tree produces its first commercial fruit crop in the third year after planting, with maximum yields achieved by the fifth or sixth year, and generally lives for only fifteen to twenty years, even less on sandy soils or replant sites (Ritchie and Clayton, 1981). The focus of the first two to three years after planting is on tree growth (size) and training (shape) because initial fruit yield is directly related to tree size (Belding et al., 2004). |
