Valencia orange
| Valencia orange | |
|---|---|
Valencia orange
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| Species | Citrus × sinensis |
| Hybrid parentage | pummelo x mandarin orange |
| Cultivar | 'Valencia' |
| Breeder | William Wolfskill |
| Origin | Santa Ana, California United States |
The Valencia orange is a sweet orange.
It was first hybridized by pioneer American agronomist and land developer William Wolfskill in the mid-19th century on his farm in Santa Ana in southern California in the United States.
William Wolfskill, an American who became a Mexican citizen in the 1820s while working in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a fur trapper, migrated to California. He was given a land grant as a naturalized Mexican citizen under Mexican government rules. An American born in Kentucky and reared in Missouri, he cultivated numerous vineyards and grape varietals, and was the largest wine producer in the region. He continued to buy land, and later had sheep ranches, as well as developing extensive citrus orchards. He hybridized the Valencia orange, a sweet orange and named it for Valencia, Spain, which had a reputation for its sweet orange trees. These had originally been imported from India.
Before his death in 1866, Wolfskill sold his patented Valencia hybrid to the Irvine Ranch owners, who planted nearly half their lands to its cultivation. The success of this crop in Southern California led to the naming of Valencia, California. It became the most popular juice orange in the United States.
Major improvements to the Valencia orange came in the mid 20th century when Florida botanist Lena B. Smithers Hughes developed virus-free strains for budwood production. These were so successful that by 1983, the Hughes Valencia bud line made up some 60 percent of all Valencia oranges propagated for cultivation in Florida.
In 1988, a woman named Merleen Smith in Ventura County, California contacted her local farm advisor on the suspicion that her neighbor was poisoning her tree, investigators found that it was a pigmented bud sport of a conventional Valencia orange tree. The orange cultivar 'Smith Red Valencia' (with red insides) now bears her name.
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Wikipedia