The Zest Peach Series
The Zest peach series was released by Texas A&M University to provide firm, attractive, yellow-fleshed, high-quality peaches for the medium chill zone. These six peach cultivars would supply peaches over 6 weeks from early May until late June in the medium chill zone of Texas and similar regions.
Productivity: These peach cultivars have cropped consistently in the region where ‘TexRoyal’, ‘JuneGold’ and ‘Harvester’ are grown commercially.
Size: Medium to large depending on the number of fruit left on the tree.
Quality: Traditional tart sweet flavor. Excellent.
Flesh: Firm yellow flesh.
Ripening season: Ripen consecutively from early May to late June in the medium chill zone of Texas.
Chilling requirement: Based on the relative bloom times of standard cultivars, these new peaches need between 500 and 600 chilling units (CU). The latest blooming releases ‘Royal Zest One’, ‘Royal Zest Four’, and ‘Golden Zest’ require 600 chilling hours, whereas ‘Fire Zest One’ and ‘Royal Zest Three’ require 550 chilling hours and ‘Royal Zest Two’ requires about 500 chilling hours to break dormancy.
View the pdf here.
Fire Zest One; Early to Mid May 
Royal Zest One; Mid to Late May 
Royal Zest Two; Early June 
Royal Zest Three; Early to Mid June 
Royal Zest Four; Mid to Late June 
Golden Zest; Late June
Availability: Budwood available under license for budding.
Contact: David Byrne at dbyrne@tamu.edu or Robert G. Brummett at Robert.Brummett@ag.tamu.edu