Hi, from what I can find, there doesn't seem to be evidence that peach pollen has any effect on the resulting almond nut. It may be an idea that came about because the offspring of a peach and an almond would produce bitter nuts as a grown tree. Abstract below:
The effect of pollinizer on sweet or bitter almond flavor was studied by tasting the
seeds obtained from 32 crosses between sweet, bitter, and slightly bitter parents. Out of
eight female parents, two were homozygous sweet (‘Del Cid’ and ‘Aï’); two were heterozy-
gous sweet (‘Marcona’ and ‘Nonpareil’); one heterozygous with an almost undetectable
slightly bitter flavor (‘Ferrastar’); two heterozygous slightly bitter (‘Garrigues’ and
‘Marie Dupuy’); and one bitter homozygous (‘S3067’, self-compatible clone obtained in
CEBAS). Each cultivar was hand-pollinated with four male cultivars: one homozygous
sweet (‘Ramillete’), one heterozygous sweet (‘Atocha’), one heterozygous slightly bitter
(‘Garrigues’), and one homozygous (‘S3067’). Since ‘Garrigues’ is self-incompatible, the
cross ‘Garrigues’ x ‘Garrigues’ was replaced by ‘Garrigues’ x ‘S3065’ (slightly bitter
clone obtained in CEBAS). Tasting of the seeds resulting from each cross resulted in the
complete absence of any influence of pollinizer on flavor, which only depended on the
female parent.
HORTSCIENCE 35(6):1153–1154. 2000.
Cultivar Pollinizer Does Not Affect
Almond Flavor
F. Dicenta1, P. Martínez-Gómez, and E. Ortega
Departamento de Mejora y Patología Vegetal, Centro de Edafología y Biología
Aplicada del Segura, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Apartado
4195, E-30080 Murcia, Spain
H. Duval
Unité de Génétique et d’Amélioration des Fruits et Légumes, Institut National
de la Recherche Agronomique, Site AGROPARC, Domaine Saint Paul, BP91,
F-84914 Avignon, Cedex 9, France
