New strawberries from the University of Florida

I added these to the "New Cultivars" section in the sidebar a while ago, but this is the first article I've seen on the new U.F. cultivars, Radiance and Elyana:

Safeguarding Strawberries (American Vegetable Grower)

I saw plants of both these varieties last week, and I was struck by how odd a plant 'Radiance' is. It's got sort of a soft, floppy look, like it's just slightly water stressed.

'WineCrisp' Scab Resistant Apple

The cooperative apple breeding program of Purdue, Rutgers, and University of Illinois (aka PRI) has a new release: Wine Crisp.

WineCrisp--New Apple 20 Years in the Making (University of Illinois)

I have a sneaking suspicion that the name is a thinly-veiled attempt to capitalize on the popularity of 'HoneyCrisp', but it's not like the University of Minnesota owns the concept of crispness I suppose.

The PRI cooperative has released a lot of varieties over the years, although probably the only one I ever saw with any frequency was Gold Rush (an interesting apple in that it is far better after months of storage than it is fresh, at least in my opinion). The main emphasis of the program has always been disease resistance, especially scab resistance. WineCrisp (and many other scab resistant cultivars) use the Vf gene.

I wrote up a whole big thing on the inheritance of major gene resistance to scab, but it got involved enough that I decided not to leave it attached to this, but rather to to A) finish it, and B) take advantage of actually having something written and available that fits as a "Fruit Genetics Friday" entry, so maybe I'll roll it out later this week.

Primocane-fruiting black raspberries, revisited

I was pleased to find a note in my e-mail this morning from Pete Tallman, developer of the 'Explorer' black raspberry. I mentioned 'Explorer' two years ago (have I really been at this that long?) as an exciting development in a crop in which very little breeding has been done (and, frankly, very little breed success obtained).

Unfortunately, 'Explorer' has not really been a success. I've seen it twice, both times under tunnels: once in Pennsylvania, where it had virtually no fruit and a powdery mildew problem, and another time in upstate New York, where the plants looked healthier but fruit set was still poor, though better. I was rather disappointed, as I'd been pretty excited about the thing.

Tallman's message today explains a big part of the problem: 'Explorer' is not self-fertile. Apparently his field featured things that flowered and provided adequate pollen at the right time, so the problem was never evident under his conditions. This fits with what I saw: the tunnel at Penn State where I saw it had, if I recall, only one other variety in it, while the one in NY, where it had at least some fruit, had several.

While unfortunate, this isn't entirely shocking, as self-incompatibility is fairly common among wild, diploid Rubus, and 'Explorer' is not far removed from the wild source of the primocane-fruiting trait that Tallman discovered. (Not surprisingly, the trait hasn't persisted very long in most commercial types).

Anyway, all is not lost. Tallman has selected another primocane-fruiting black raspberry, dubbed PT-2A4, which does pass the self-compatibility test, and has other desirable traits compared to 'Explorer'. As he describes it:

"Compared to Explorer, the PT-2A4 berries are larger, higher drupelet count, and smaller seeds. PT-2A4 holds my all-time record for a single primocane black raspberry at 3.82 grams. Admittedly, that's a max berry, not an average, but I gotta track something, and average isn't awfuly interesting. Maybe with a little fertilizer this year I could break 4 grams. Unfortuantely, PT-2A4 hasn't captured the reduced thorniness of Explorer, so there remains further breeding down the road to see if I can tie that trait back in again."

He also included a link to his website, which includes a page for PT-2A4.

New grape rootstocks from the University of California

Five new rootstocks from Andy Walker's breeding program at UC-Davis (cleverly named GRN-1 through 5):

New nematode resistant rootstocks for 2008 (Western Farm Press)

I was particularly pleased to see that GRN-1 is a hybrid of bunch grape and muscadine. Despite lots of talk about Euvitis/Muscadinia hybrids, there really haven't been many releases (I can only think of this and 'Southern Home', as well as maybe a few germplasm releases).

I don't know nearly as much about grape rootstock breeding as I do about the above ground part, but I always enjoy seeing how much wild material is used, and the completely different selection of species they're dealing with: V. champinii, rufotomentosa, monticola, rotundifolia, rupestris, and berlandieri, just in these five releases. Some of these (especially the first three) rarely if ever occur in the pedigrees of fruiting vines.

Now maybe we know why they were keeping the name a secret...

Maybe it's because it's kind of stupid: The new University of Minnesota apple release is named 'SweeTango'.

An Apple Is Born (Epicurious)

Plus: We've entered a new age! YouTube trailers for fruit cultivars!
SweeTango - A Sneak Preview (YouTube)


(Much thanks to the anonymous commenter who noted this on the post below...I thought it deserved more exposure).

All I can say is I hope the apple is better than the name. It's got an encouraging pedigree at least—Honeycrisp x Zestar.