Maurice Adin Blake: Father of the Modern New Jersey Peach Industry

Abstract

Professor M.A. Blake spent his 40-year career with the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station studying many aspects of peaches. His early efforts centered on pruning, disease control, and general orchard management practices. Later he studied peach tree physiology, fruit tree nutrition, fruit development and ripening, and postharvest storage. He inherited a young peach breeding program from Professor Charles Henry Connors and ultimately introduced 48 peach and nectarine cultivars. To better describe and identify peach cultivars, he published methods to classify peaches based on the characteristics of the trees, leaves, flowers, fruits, and pits, and these characteristics are used today in plant patent applications. He was the first plant breeder to evaluate cold hardiness and study the inheritance of cold hardiness with controlled laboratory freezing methods. Blake published extensively on a wide range of peach topics in scientific journals, experiment station bulletins and industry newsletters. When Blake joined the Experiment Station, the New Jersey Peach industry was struggling, but largely due to Blake’s efforts New Jersey became one of the top five peach-producing states.