There’s a new mandarin orange in town: the Super Nova. For almost 50 years, the fruit has tantalized visitors to university citrus variety collections with its gorgeous dark orange color, its convenient seedlessness, its rich balance of sweetness and acidity — and its superb aromatics. Now, this mandarin is finally available commercially. And although the citrus won’t chase Cuties and Halos from markets any time soon, its excellence is outmatched only by the curious convolutions of its history and nomenclature.
It was in 1966 that Jack Hearn, an Orlando-based citrus breeder for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, crossed two sibling mandarin varieties, Lee and Nova, seeking to understand their pollination requirements. By chance, one such hybrid, then called 6-13-44, had extraordinarily fine flavor and was seedless, a rare trait among mandarins at the time. It had only one problem: The trees bore no fruit.
“In 34 years, I’ve seen it yield a good crop exactly once,” said Randall Driggers, a USDA researcher based in Fort Pierce, Fla.
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