B-15

'B-15' is another of the Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station acerola clones from the same 1955-56 evaluation series that produced 'B-17'. In those trials 'B-15' was singled out as superior in both ascorbic acid content and productivity compared with the other numbered clones under test, including 'A-1' and 'B-17'. It is a historically important selection because it helped establish that acerola vitamin C content is strongly heritable and that clonal propagation, not seed, is the only reliable way to reproduce a good tree. It is essentially an industrial or vitamin-C selection rather than a dessert cultivar. It is now rare in the nursery trade and is more likely to be encountered in germplasm collections and older literature than in a retail catalogue.