Sunburst

Sunburst originates from Canada, where it was developed at the renowned Summerland Research Station in British Columbia through planned crossing of Van and Stella, and was released into wide commercial production in 1983. Due to its complete self-fertility, giant fruit size, and exceptional flesh juiciness, it is one of the most popular, most attractive, and most profitable mid-season sweet cherry varieties, ideal for intensive orchards, local markets, and home gardens.

It is a fully self-fertile variety. Since it carries the genotype S₃S₄’, it is characterized by an exceptionally high level of self-pollination and abundant flowering, so it reliably, regularly, and very abundantly bears in pure single-variety orchards without any need for other companion varieties in the planting. Due to its abundant flowering and exceptionally high-quality pollen with excellent germination capacity, Sunburst is a premium universal pollinator for all other cross-pollinated sweet cherry varieties that flower at the same time. It flowers medium-early.

The tree is naturally vigorous, strong, and robust, with thick scaffold branches that form a spacious, moderately dense, well-branched, and broad-rounded canopy. It enters full bearing extremely early, often producing its first commercial fruit as early as the second year after planting. Once it starts bearing, it produces regular, stable, extremely abundant, and record-breaking yields. Due to its pronounced tendency toward overcropping, mandatory strong winter and summer, or green, pruning is required in order to thin the fruiting buds, so that an excessive crop does not further reduce fruit firmness or make the fruit undersized.

It belongs to the group of medium-early sweet cherry varieties. In our region and under continental climatic conditions, it reaches harvest maturity in mid-June, usually between June 10 and 18, in the fourth week of the sweet cherry season, around two weeks after the early Burlat variety.

Harvesting takes place in mid-June. The fruit ripens fairly uniformly on the tree and is characterized by a recognizable, medium-long, and thick green stem that firmly holds the massive fruit on the branch, making fast picking easier.

Its fresh-storage ability is moderate. In cold storage, it can be successfully kept for 5–7 days. Since it has more delicate, softer to medium-firm flesh, as a semi-crisp sweet cherry, this variety tolerates rough mechanical sizing and long-distance transport less well, so it must be picked carefully by hand and marketed within a shorter period. It is primarily intended for luxury fresh table consumption on local and regional markets, where its giant size attracts buyers, and it is also exceptional for home processing, compotes, juices, and jams.

The fruit is exceptionally large to giant, with an average weight of 11 to over 12 g, and with excellent agricultural practice individual berries can easily exceed 14 g. It has a characteristic, distinctly roundish to spherical-flattened shape. The skin is thin, smooth, and glossy, bright red at harvest, turning beautiful dark red to dark burgundy at full technological maturity, never becoming completely dark or coal-black. The flesh is light red, soft to medium-firm, compact, exceptionally juicy, and fleshy. The taste is outstanding, rich, and dessert-like, characterized by high sugar content, fine refreshing acidity, and a luxurious varietal aroma. The stone is relatively small in relation to the amount of fruit flesh and separates easily.

It is moderately resistant to diseases. It shows excellent natural resistance of the wood and flower buds to low winter temperatures during dormancy. One of the greatest pomological advantages of this variety is the high natural resistance of the fruit to cracking caused by heavy summer rains during the ripening period, making it exceptionally reliable in open-field cultivation. In humid and rainy June conditions, it requires standard preventive chemical protection against Monilinia and fruit rot, Monilinia laxa, as well as mandatory protection from birds, especially starlings, which are strongly attracted by the large fruit size.

The root system is strong, moderately deep, and branched. It uses nutrients from the soil very well, but it absolutely does not tolerate heavy, clayey, compacted, or waterlogged soils with a high groundwater level, where lack of oxygen quickly causes root asphyxia, or suffocation, and decline of the entire tree. It requires deep, permeable, light, and fertile soils on sunny and well-ventilated sites.

Our sweet cherry fruit trees are produced on highly compatible, certified rootstocks: mahaleb cherry, Prunus mahaleb, and wild sweet cherry for classic and long-lived orchards. In addition to vigorous rootstocks, we also produce fruit trees on modern low- to medium-vigor vegetative rootstocks Gisela 5 and Gisela 6, which are the globally mandatory standard for this variety, as they ideally control its great natural vigor, drastically accelerate entry into full bearing, as early as the second year, and enable the establishment of intensive, high-density commercial orchards that are easy to prune and harvest from the ground.