The Almond Board of California, in conjunction with UC researchers, has historically funded Regional Variety Trials (RVTs) across the CA valley. These trials provide a third-party mechanism to test the performance of new varieties and experimental selections across the diverse almond growing regions in the State of California and to extend that information to local growers. RVTs are an opportunity to evaluate elite material from all breeding programs around the world, public or private. RVTs are designed to evaluate new varieties or selections in a semi-commercial but replicated manner down the valley and compare them to standard varieties such as Nonpareil for multiple years. RVTs overall goal is to enhance supply diversification by identifying better almond varieties that respond to different market demands as well as provide enhanced traits such as self-compatibility and to enable growers to make informed decisions when planting new orchards.
Specific objectives:
- To collect pre-harvest, processing, and post-harvest parameters from different growing regions in the state to inform grower management.
- Make available third-party data to nurseries, growers, and handlers to evaluate new varieties in the pipeline.
These trials have collected robust horticultural data on newer almond varieties and selections being tested in California since 1974. These trials are conducted by the UC with support from the Almond Board of California. The following data are from the third Regional Variety Trial, running from 2014-present.
The following is a list of resources with information about each regional variety trial and their latest outputs. It is worth mentioning that the information obtained from this program has been instrumental to characterize the performance of the most adopted varieties across the valley (i.e. bloom date, hull split date, yield potential, crack-out%, etc). This information is updated annually.