Ponkan

Ponkan (Hokkien Chinese: 椪柑; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: phòng-kam); Citrus poonensis; "Chinese Honey Orange") is a high-yield sweet Citrus cultivar with large fruits in the size of an orange. It is a citrus hybrid (mandarin × pomelo),[1] though it was once thought to be a pure mandarin.[2][3]

Ponkan
Ponkan tree, Florida
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Plantae
(unranked):
Angiosperms
(unranked):
Eudicots
(unranked):
Rosids
Order:
Sapindales
Family:
Rutaceae
Genus:
Citrus
Species:
C. poonensis
Binomial name
Citrus poonensis

Description

"Pon" harkens to the "Poona orange" of original stock[4]and "kan" means citrus fruit. The fruit is very sweet, round in shape and about 7–8 cm (2.8–3.1 in) wide in size. Trees are heavy bearing every other year, and sometimes the limbs break due to the heavy yields. Growers resort to propping the limbs up with sticks at times, though if the limb bends gradually down and grows in that position it will do better in future years.[5]

Trees can be propagated by seed, as they breed true, or grafted onto other rootstocks, trifoliate orange being the most popular. Andrew Willis of Apopka, Florida, promoted the Ponkan heavily in the early 1900s.

Ponkan is also noted for having a loose rind that is very easy to peel.

Cultivation

Ponkans are widely grown in the United States, Brazil, Japan and China. In Taiwan, it is an important citrus crop often cultivated as high-end fruit and exported mainly to Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada.[6]

It was originally introduced to the United States by Carlo Roman in 1880. His original grove is still in production near Hawthorne in Putnam County, Florida. The city of Teresópolis in Brazil holds an annual Ponkan festival.[7]

See also
  • Dekopon, variety of seedless oranges produced as a hybrid between Kiyomi (Citrus unshiu × sinensis) and Ponkan

Notes
  1. Velasco, Riccardo; Licciardello, Concetta (2014-01-01). "A genealogy of the citrus family". Nature Biotechnology. 32 (7): 640–642. doi:10.1038/nbt.2954. PMID 25004231.
  2. Wu, G. Albert; Prochnik, Simon; Jenkins, Jerry; Salse, Jerome; Hellsten, Uffe; Murat, Florent; Perrier, Xavier; Ruiz, Manuel; Scalabrin, Simone (2014-07-01). "Sequencing of diverse mandarin, pummelo and orange genomes reveals complex history of admixture during citrus domestication". Nature Biotechnology. 32 (7): 656–662. doi:10.1038/nbt.2906. ISSN 1087-0156. PMC 4113729. PMID 24908277.
  3. Barkley, Noelle A.; Roose, Mikeal L.; Krueger, Robert R.; Federici, Claire T. (2006-04-20). "Assessing genetic diversity and population structure in a citrus germplasm collection utilizing simple sequence repeat markers (SSRs)". Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 112 (8): 1519–1531. doi:10.1007/s00122-006-0255-9. ISSN 0040-5752. PMID 16699791. S2CID 7667126.
  4. Irwin, Mark. Loanwords in Japanese. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. P 63
  5. "Mandarin Orange". purdue.edu.
  6. Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, Republica of China n (11 March 2021). "Ponkan". Counsel of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. Taiwan.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. Festa da Ponkan, Teresópolis (Portuguese) Archived 2010-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
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