North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Ribes60@aol.com]

I have been involved in a formal University breeding program for Ribes for the past 5 or 6 years, I grow out the seedlings to maturity and also supply most of the parents for the crosses. I am also doing some "informal" breeding and selecting on my own.  Both projects are long time efforts and require a lot of detailed record keeping and follow-up. We made the first formal evaluations of the University project last year and pulled 264 of the 280 plants that were matured in that project. This seems like a lot of discards but was really pretty good.

The goal of that program (and my informal project as well) is to produce a better black currant, one that is highly resistant to mildew and WPBR and also produces large yields of high quality fruit. There is very little need for "just another pretty good cultivar". We have agreed that if it is no better than what is currently available we will not expand it. We do, however, use some as parents in the ongoing project. We have hopes of  expanding a few of the plants and sending them to other parts of the country for trials there. What works one place does not always work in other geographical areas. Quality of fruit is one of the prime goals of these projects.

I have some seedlings growing that are from Russia and they are very good, earlier that most R. Nigrum and the taste is excellent, the size of the berries is larger than average and the yields are very good. I will be expanding some of these this fall and hope to put them into limited production. Even people that have never tasted fresh, raw black currants find them palatable, usually one has to acquire a taste for them.

The "informal" project is the planting and evaluating seedlings that come up near the other plants (some years there are hundreds of them under the plants in the rows). These are all open pollinated and parentage is not really known. I am sure that if someone had the time and space this could include thousands of plants, most would be inferior to the plants available, but would be pretty good and a few would be outstanding. I can understand Phil's comment that he has killed many trees, I have also killed many bushes with no regrets, it just makes room for more trials.

I have found two plants from the informal program that have now fruited for the second year and I will expand them this year. Anyone working with a program like this has to be satisfied with some pretty small returns. I view that as a form of Fruit Exploring that I really like.


Ed
Northumberland BerryWorks
707 Front Street
Northumberland, PA 17857
(570) 473-9910