Shamel: Washington Navel Orange 



443 



"AUSTRALIAN" NAVEL ORANGE 



This peculiar form of the Bahia Navel seems to be the product of a bud sport or mutation 

 similar to the one that produced the original seedless navel. The branch here shown is 

 from a standard Bahia Navel orange tree in the grove of Col. Frederico da Costa, Matatu, 

 Bahia, Brazil; similar specimens can be found in almost any part of the world where the 

 variety is grown. On the whole, this "Australian" mutation is inferior to the standard 

 type which produces it, and wise growers therefore do not propagate from buds of limbs 

 bearing this sort of fruit. (Fig. 5.) 



trees of the best types have also been 

 topworked with budwood from the 

 undesirable types, successfully demon- 

 strating without any possibility of 

 doubt that it is possible to transfer type 

 characteristics from one tree to another 

 by the use of buds selected on the basis 

 of performance records. Propagations 

 have been made from all of the common 

 budsports and these propagations have 

 been so successful as to prove the fact 

 of the origin and development of these 

 diverse types from bud mutations. 



At the present time there are exten- 

 sive commercial individual tree per- 

 formance records being kept by navel 

 orange growers in California for the 



purpose of locating the drone trees of 

 the undesirable types. These inferior 

 trees are being rapidly topworked, using 

 budwood from trees selected on the 

 basis of performance records. Some of 

 the leading nurserymen have adopted 

 the principle of propagation from select 

 trees, propagating only from those trees 

 producing large, regular, and valuable 

 crops of the standard or best type of 

 fruit as shown by actual performance 

 records. It has been commercially dem- 

 onstrated in this way that a valuable 

 type of the navel orange can be isolated 

 through bud selection based on per- 

 formance records. 



It is also believed as a result of the 



