Selva
A day-neutral type, which means it flowers on plant age rather than day length — and that breaks the seasonal logic the rest of the belt runs on.
Day-neutral
At a glance
- Bred by
- University of California (Davis programme)
- Parentage
- Cal 70.3-117 × Cal 71.98-605, crossed 1975
- First fruited
- Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, Davis, 1976
- Released
- 1983 · US Plant Patent PP5266
- Flowering type
- Day-neutral
- Time to fruit
- About three months from planting, regardless of planting date
Where it came from
Selva came from a 1975 cross of two Californian selections, first fruited at Wolfskill near Davis in 1976, was selected in 1977 as Cal 75.71-107 and released in 1983 — the same year as Chandler, from the same programme, doing something completely different.
How it behaves
Its defining property is that it fruits within about three months of planting regardless of when it was planted, and regardless of whether the plants were fresh-dug or came out of cold storage.
That is what day-neutral means in practice. A short-day cultivar waits for the days to shorten before it will flower; a day-neutral one counts from establishment. The season stops being something the calendar decides for you.
In the Indian belt
Selva appears on the lists of cultivars reported for India, though it is not one of the belt's mainstays. Its interest here is structural rather than agronomic: day-neutral behaviour is the only route to fruit outside the November-to-March window, which is exactly where the price is highest and the competition thinnest.
That is a proposition, not a recommendation. Deccan summer heat is a real constraint on any extended-season plan, and the honest test is a small protected trial rather than an acre.
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