ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the various properties of peach flower buds which appear to facilitate supercooling and suggests further avenues of research. The dormant flower bud primordia of peach and a number of other woody plant species have been observed to supercool to low temperatures prior to freezing. For water within a flower bud to supercool, three criteria must be met. First, the primordium must be free of heterogenous ice nuclei. Second, the spread of ice from adjacent tissues into the primordium must be prevented and third, the complete redistribution of liquid water in the primordium to ice in adjacent tissues must be prevented. One aspect of bud anatomy and morphology which appeared to influence freezing behavior was vascular development. Dormant peach bud primordia were not connected to the remainder of the plant by functional xylem vessels. Although vascular strands were observed throughout the dormant bud, these tissues had not fully differentiated.
