B-17

'B-17' is one of the numbered acerola clones that came out of the Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station selection work of the mid-1950s, when researchers there were screening trees for ascorbic acid content and productivity following the 1946 discovery that acerola is among the richest natural sources of vitamin C. It is an acid-type selection rather than a dessert type, valued because the sharper fruit tends to carry the highest ascorbic acid concentrations. Despite its research-code name it has stayed in the nursery trade for decades, and UF/IFAS still lists it alongside 'Florida Sweet' as one of the two improved cultivars worth planting instead of a seedling. Growers choose it where the fruit is destined for juice, syrup, freezing or vitamin C rather than fresh eating. Its fruit is noticeably larger than that of ordinary seedling acerolas.