By: Jake Price, Mary Sutton, Doug Collins, Jacob Kalina, Josh Dawson, Holly Anderson, Michasia Dowdy, Sara Curry, Ben Reeves, Tucker Price, Justin Shealey, and Sydni Ingram
The Tango Rootstock trial has been through some environmental challenges but it is going strong! The Tangos, planted on 10 different rootstocks with 9 repetitions in 2020, endured an extended severe freeze at the end of 2022 followed by a category 1 hurricane, a tropical storm, and a category 2 hurricane. Before the freeze in 2022 the trees had a nice yield but only about half was harvested and recorded due to the freeze at Christmas that year. The remaining fruit froze and quickly dropped from the trees before it could be harvested (Figure 1). The result is partial yield data for 2022.
After the freeze, the trees were damaged (Figure 2) leading to greatly reduced yields in 2023. This year the trees were hit with a category 2 hurricane which knocked off or damaged fruit and lowered yields. Trees with severe freeze damage lost limbs due to the high winds and fruit load. Hopefully next year will be normal.
In 2022 and 2023 fruit were ready to begin harvest by mid-December but this season the fruit was late to color. We actually harvested fruit on January 7 to give the fruit more time to color. I do not know if the late maturation was related to hurricane stress, warm fall temperatures, fertility or something else. The Brix this year was considerably lower despite being sampled three weeks later than prior years. The acid levels of Tango are higher than satsumas which gives them a “tangy” flavor compared to a satsuma. Satsumas normally run about .75. The average acid level of Tango’s this year was .90. As the fruit remains on the trees, the Brix increases and the acid lowers.
Last year I tested Tango’s from a tree at my house in early March and the Brix was over 15 and the acid was .80. The fruit was delicious and looked great almost making me declare Tango my favorite fruit. Average yield for 2024 was the majority of the total yield shown in the chart below (Table 1), with the average yield being 63 pounds of fruit per tree which is not shown on the chart. The chart shows the performance of each of the rootstocks to date but no conclusions can be drawn about which rootstocks are best for Tango’s. However, there are some very good candidates. The only two I would not recommend at this point are US-852 and US-1279 due to their poor performance after the 2022 freeze.
| Table 1. Brix for 2022, 2023, and 2024 along with the average Brix for each rootstock (Acid is shown for 2024 only and the total yield of each tree of that rootstock is shown). | ||||||
| Rootstock | Brix 11/19/2022 | Brix 12/14/23 | Brix 1/6/25 | Average Brix | Acid 1/6/25 | Total Yield |
| US-1516 | 11.2 | 12.4 | 10.4 | 11.33333 | 0.89 | 73 |
| 16-6 | 11.2 | 12.1 | 10.4 | 11.23333 | 0.94 | 45* |
| US-1777 | 9.3 | 11.1 | 9.8 | 10.06667 | 0.88 | 89* |
| US-1282 | 10.2 | 12.2 | 10.1 | 10.83333 | 0.85 | 109* |
| US-852 | 10.4 | 11.4 | 9.6 | 10.46667 | 0.95 | 79 |
| US-942 | 10.6 | 11.6 | 9.7 | 10.63333 | 0.95 | 104 |
| UFR-6 | 10.8 | 11.6 | 10.3 | 10.9 | 0.81 | 75 |
| US-812 | 10.6 | 11.2 | 10.2 | 10.66667 | 0.91 | 110 |
| UFR-17 | 10.8 | 11.7 | 9.8 | 10.76667 | 0.92 | 90 |
| US-1279 | 10.8 | 11.5 | 9.8 | 10.7 | 0.92 | 75* |
| Avg. of All Rootstocks | 10.59 | 11.68 | 10.01 | 10.76 | 0.9 | |
| *Average yield calculated from 8 trees due to severe damage or death to one tree. | ||||||
*Average yield calculated from 8 trees due to severe damage or death to one tree.
I do believe that in most years Tango’s can begin harvest in mid-December. Fruit holds on the tree for many weeks and harvest can be delayed well past Christmas. None of the fruit at the trial have frozen this year and the fruit look good. We picked all the fruit and some were not fully colored but we picked them while I had a crew in order to get the yield data (Figure 3).
