NMSU Offers New Sweet Onion Variety

Date:  Oct. 8, 1997
Editor: D'Lyn Ford  (505) 646-6528, dlford@nmsu.edu

LAS CRUCES - How sweet it is to be a new variety. New Mexico State University researchers are hoping their latest fresh-market onion, called 'NuMex Sweetpak,' lives up to its name.

"This is an early-maturing, yellow variety that is low in pungency, so we call it a sweet onion," said Marisa Wall, a horticulturist with NMSU's Agricultural Experiment Station. "It's also quite firm, so we think it will pack well and be a good onion for shipping."

Because Sweetpak matures early in the season between May 25 and 30, Wall said New Mexico growers may be able to get a jump on the onion season. "With this variety, growers can get started a little earlier with harvesting and marketing their onions."

Wall said Sweetpak is a grano-type onion. "Onions with this type of genetic background are typically grown as fresh-market onions," she said. "They are not intended to be stored. We expect them to be shipped soon after harvest."

The new variety has been 15 years in the making. Wall said Joe Corgan, a retired NMSU onion breeder, was the first to work on it.

"Between 1982 and 1990, Corgan worked on this line and improved it for all of the horticultural traits in the field, such as yield, size, shape and disease resistance," Wall explained. "Then I started working with this population in the laboratory to make selections for low pungency in 1990."

Finally, the researchers took Sweetpak back into the field to make sure it would perform better than other early-maturing varieties available to New Mexico's growers.

Wall said seed growers can obtain foundation seed for Sweetpak through the New Mexico Crop Improvement Association at (505) 646-4125. Shoppers may be able to find 'NuMex Sweetpak' onions under the NuMex Sweet label in grocery stores by May 1999, she added.

Besides developing onions that mature early in the season, Wall also is working on varieties that will extend the harvest into July.

"We're really excited about the possibility of getting a low-pungency variety for that marketing season, because we really won't have competition from other onion-growing areas during July and early August for sweet onions," she said.

Wall said such an onion should be ready for growers within the next couple of years.