European plum Opata

The variety was created in the USA by Professor Hansen through crossing sand cherry with the Gold variety, which is a hybrid of narrow-leaved peach and Chinese peach. It was regionally approved in 1947 for the Ural and West Siberian regions.

The bush is vigorous, with a sparse, rounded, wide-spreading crown. The main type of fruiting is in cluster branches. Shoots are straight, thick, red-brown, with numerous yellowish, fairly large stipules. Leaves are medium-sized, oval, dark green with a grayish tint, glossy, smooth. Older leaves are leathery. The leaf blade is convex with smooth margins. The petiole is medium length, pigmented in autumn. Flowers are small. Petals are oval, white. The stigma is positioned above the anthers.

Fruits weigh 10-12 g, with a correct elongated-round shape. The calyx is medium-sized, slightly compressed on the sides in some fruits. The ventral suture is not pronounced. The main color is pale green, the covering color is dark burgundy or brown-red with a purplish tint, dark purple, almost black, with a bluish bloom covering the entire fruit. The skin is thin and free of astringency. The flesh is pale green, tender, juicy, semi-moist, with a mildly sweet-sour, average taste. The stone is small, round, well-formed, shallowly sunken, semi-detached from the flesh. The pedicel is thin, long, with a fairly strong attachment to branches.

Fruits ripen in the second half of August. They contain 15-17% dry matter, 10.3-13.3% sugars, 1.0-1.5% titratable acids, 0.37-0.39% tannins, 5-11 mg/100g ascorbic acid, and 385 mg/100g P-active substances. The variety is of universal use.

It inherited the early fruiting trait from sand cherry — often, fruit buds form even on one-year-old seedlings in nurseries. The crown's winter hardiness is weak, while fruit buds' hardiness is satisfactory. It fruits moderately but regularly, due to winter protection under snow and late flowering, allowing it to avoid frost damage. It is better adapted to steppe conditions. Moderately resistant to Clasterosporium and Maslov's seed-eater, severely damaged by hawthorn, susceptible to rot. Partially self-fertile. Easily propagated by green cuttings.

The variety was widely used in breeding, but no successful varieties or promising hybrids were obtained with its participation, as the offspring inherited the average fruit taste and weak winter hardiness. It is capable of producing unreduced gametes, so among its seedlings, triploids are frequently encountered. In Voronezh OHI, with the involvement of Opata, promising clonal rootstocks were obtained.