Variability of apricot cultivars traits inside "List of Recommended Fruits Varieties" project.

New apricot cultivars are yearly introduced in Italy by nurseries and growers. These cultivars come from both Italian and foreign breeding programmes and most of them have been selected in climatic and environmental conditions noticeably different from those of the main Italian apricot growing areas. So far, acquired experience on apricot has shown that environmental adaptability is hard to be foreseen and, for this reason, the introduction of cultivars in new areas often causes commercial failures. In order to reduce this problem and to help growers in choosing new cultivars, in 1992 a National Programme was launched to draw up an annual list of "Recommended fruit varieties" for fruit-tree growers. This means that each new apricot cultivar, bred in Italy or in other countries, enters the collection created by the 10 Operating Units and is assessed for its vegetative, pomological, horticultural and technological characteristics, according to a common evaluation protocol. Basing on the resulting features, lists with recommended/not recommended cultivars are filled in. In order to highlight the strong variability among Italian growing areas and the need for a proper collegial evaluation, a summary of some pomological and phenological features has been drawn up and discussed. Selected data have been collected on 10 sites all over Italy for two consecutive years (2006-2007) characterized by noticeably different climatic conditions. This last aspect could also lead to some considerations about the future adaptation of apricot cultivar to climatic changes