About the Lab
History and Current Research
Breeding Goals
Main breeding goals are to produce rootstock cultivars adapted to the Southeastern United States with resistance to Armillaria Root Rot (ARR) and Peach Tree Short Life (PTSL). In addition to rootstock breeding, also breeds for low chill peach scion cultivars.
Lab History
Dr. Tom G. Beckman was the USDA-ARS rootstock & low chill peach breeder from 1988-2019. He released three rootstocks ‘Guardian’ (PTSL resistant), ‘MP-29’ (ARR resistant), ‘Sharpe’ (PTSL resistant). He released 6 peach cultivars under the ‘Gulf-‘ series. and 1 nectarine.
Dr. Jeekin Lau was hired in 2023 to take over the program and build on the successful program started by Dr. Beckman. Jeekin hopes to utilize genomic tools from his computational background to bring insight to the genetic mechanisms governing the disease resistance traits studied by this lab.
Research Projects
- Traditional breeding techniques utilizing interspecific crosses to introduce traits from other prunus species into peach germplasm
- Molecular breeding approaches utilizing markers for developing Genomic Selection models to select for “difficult to phenotype” traits.
- Using genetic studies to discover genetic alleles for disease resistance and other horticultural traits.