If your interested is grape breeding, I’ll have a limited amount of assorted Munson hybrids next year from Grayson collage and some from @Blake ‘s nursery (all in cutting form now). I am also interested in grape breeding, but unfortunately haven’t done any myself. The only grape that has produced is a 4 year old concord (my first fruiting plant besides annuals).
I’ll probably just plant open pollinated seeds because I know nothing about grape pollination.
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Regarding munson grapes, I think it is important to note that they are very much a mixed bag. Some of them have useful traits certainly, but not all of his varieties are particularly healthy or resistant, and many of the ones that do have disease resistance are not strongly resistant to all diseases. Sometimes they have decent resistance to one or two diseases, and terrible resistance to others. Many of his varieties failed for good, solid, viticultural reasons, not just due to the general political climate of prohibition etc. after his death.
Now his book is a must read for any would be grape breeder, and his work with wild species was outstanding and is very relevant to this day, but many of his cultivars are rare for a reason imho. You have to remember, when he was breeding there was no such thing as plant patents, and often times, in that time period, the approach was to release something after some very limited testing, sell new plants at the highest price possible to early adopters, and if it was good great, it would become more widespread, and if it wasn’t, people would stop buying it or planting it and it would disappear. Testing was not nearly as extensive as it usually is before varietal release today. The public was the guinea pig. Varieties were often introduced and discarded very rapidly, which is a big part of why he introduced so many.
Really, you need figure out what traits are most important to you and go from there. Certainly Munsons material is worth looking at for some traits, I have and do use some of it myself, but it’s important to be clear eyed about what it can give you and what it can’t.
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Have you personally bred any varieties that are worth propagating for either wine, table, or market? I’m mostly interested in breeding things like grapes (zero experience, lots of reading and dreaming) for the increased disease resistance. I might even be willing to grow the wild grapes for eating if it means it’s less work.
We are in central northern ky, ohio valley technically, I found at least three types of wild grapes next to my driveway last evening. Labrusca, aestivalis, and riparia. I used an identifier app so it may not all be accurate. The aestivalis leaves are pretty distinct so I think that one is correct. I transplanted a few to the garden to graft over, or let them grow out and fruit. There’s hundreds, if not thousands of vines in our 10 acres of woods. I was told that one reason the germans settled the area was that there was plenty of grape stock growing for wine making.
Do you have any info like above on labrusca? This is all awesome info, thank you for documenting your work.
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I’ll be in touch
I looked at your profile, and given your area in northern KY, the most likely wild species to be in your area are vitis vulpina & vitis aestivalis. Vitis riparia may also be in the area, and vitis labrusca could be, but it’s sorta on the edge of it’s native range.
I didn’t do a post on vitis labrusca specifically, because it’s not native to my area, and I don’t have pictures of wild vines or much direct experience with the species as a result.
I have used hybrids of it in further breeding work, but not the pure species itself. However, based on how the hybrids perform and also some general knowledge of the species, not first had experience with the wild type, I would expect at least some individuals of the species to have resistance to downy and powdery mildew, black rot and and anthracnose. They are documented as having lower tolerance to phylloxera than many species, but if they do grow in your area, clearly it is adequate for your region. I would not expect much pierces disease resistance, but you are far enough north that disease is unlikely to be a problem.
You asked if I have developed improved cultivars. To that I would say it depends on how you define that. I don’t have finished cultivars that meet my fruit quality and disease resistance standards and are ready for release no. I do have some breeding lines I have developed with good to outstanding disease tolerance and fruit quality that is improved over the wild type, but would still need more breeding work to become a releasable cultivar. They still have issues like berry and cluster size still too small, female flowers, fruit acidity too high etc. I might have a selection or two with female flowers(easiest type to use in breeding) and high general disease resistance that would potentially be suitable for use in your area.
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Awesome, I look forward to the day you are rewarded for your efforts, whether it be through a patent or some other means. One of the vines I found had deeply lobed young leaves. Though I’m sure they will change when mature. I will wait this season and see how they develop to better determine what they are. In any case I’m looking to take what we already have growing and make it better.
Last questions: Any recommended crosses to make with the aestivalis variety, and have your results been predictable in any way?
And what are your thoughts on using these wild vines as rootstock?
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I was partly aware of that stuff.
I am only going to be collecting stuff the next few years and keep the plants that do well. Then in the future I’ll take the plants that do well and then start crossing them.
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Not really, because so much depends on what your goals and personal preferences are. Use what strikes your fancy and has some of the characteristics you would like in the offspring. There is a huge number of different potential parents you can use, and depending on if you are going for wine grapes or table grapes, your parent choices are likely to be very different. Only general observations I would make, is the less vinifera there is in the background of the parents, on average, the easier it is to get good disease resistance, but the harder it is to get good fruit quality. The reverse is also true. High vinifera content makes it easier to get good fruit quality, but much harder to get good disease resistance. Most offspring tend to be intermediate between the parents for most traits, both in quality and disease resistance. The tricky part is finding offspring that strongly express a high percentage of the desirable traits you want, and as few negative traits as possible.
When it comes to using aestivalis as a rootstock, I wouldn’t recommend it. Aestivalis tends to root somewhere between poorly and very poorly from cuttings, so it is not often used for that purpose. Also, in general, you don’t want to use a rootstock if you are planting hybrids with enough resistance to grow on their own roots. Own root is better if the vine can handle it. There can be specific situations where rootstocks are advisable for some hybrids, and anytime you plant pure vinifera it should be grafted on to some rootstock. In general, you’re probably better off sticking with one of the commercial rootstocks if you need to use a rootstock.
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I did some research last year on the use of copper in organic wineries in Europe. Not surprisingly, writers close to the industry say that it is not a problem, because elevated levels in soil do not linear correspond to levels in grapes. That is true, because soil has components that chelate copper and hold on to it strongly, and uptake by vines is regulated. But for soils it also means that you’ll never get rid of copper again, if it has accumulated over generations. Some vineyards in Europe have 1.5g copper per kilogram soil, for comparison, soils in my area have about 20mgs. And most Italien wines have copper levels that exceed the guidelines of the EU. Copper is an essential trace element, but at elevated levels it is neurotoxic and triggers inflammation (due to redox cycling through switch between copper (I) and copper (II).
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You have some great details on the sugar content and acidity levels of these wild varieties, could you make any additional comments on the flavor profiles? Lambrusca and muscadine I feel like most people in the southern US have a sense for, but these other wild ones are something else.
Do they tend to be mild and mostly just taste “like grapes” or do some of them have unique or just intense flavors in some direction or other?
Also, thank you for writing all this down! It’s really uncommon to find good information on wild breeding material for any species, and for American grapes specifically I don’t know that I’ve seen much at all.
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Rombough Seedless (Esprit x Interlaken). Bred at Aurora, Oregon by Lon J. Rombough. is supposed to taste a little like wintergreen. I don’t know if that is the same as the variety that you already have but they sell cuttings at bunchgrapes.com, it’s probably difficult to get in australia
It is impossible to get in Australia but at least I know my hybird was not a one off. Mine is not seedless though.
Flavors for wild grapes fall into a couple main groups, and within those main groupings there can be sub variations on the general theme.
First are those species that generally are herbaceous untill very ripe. Good examples in this class will lose much or even all of the herbaceous notes when well ripened and become mostly jam and dark fruit, blackberry plum, etc, bad examples will still have a whole lot of herbaceous notes mixed in with the dark fruit flavors even when well ripened. The species in this class include riparia, acerifolia, rupestris, cinerea(in all its form/sub species) vulpina, palmata. Some of the variations on the herbaceous theme can be grassy or minty flavors that aren’t bad in moderation, to really unpleasant herbaceous flavors. Different species and individuals within these species will express herbaceous flavor to different degrees, and sometimes the herbaceous flavor in one species is a little different than the herbaceous flavor in another species, but herbaceous flavors in some form are generally prevalent in all these species.
Species that range from moderately herbaceous to neutral to moderately fruity flavors would be species like monticola and arizonica, and reportedly also Californica, although I haven’t tried that one, and it doesn’t offer a lot of resistance traits to the breeder so I have no reason to.
Species with no herbaceousness even when not very ripe and that tend towards neutral flavors with some light fruity elements, like faint blueberry, would be species like mustangensis(once you get past the acid) and shuttleworthii, as well as the naturally occuring hybrid species like champinii and doaniana( the last two hybrid species can occasionally have some herbaceousness but generally not).
Species with strong fruity aromatics and no herbaceous flavors would be species like muscadine, labrusca and some examples of vitis lincecumii.
Then you have the aestivalis species complex, which is probably the most diverse species complex in north America. Depending on the sub species and region, they can be large berried with high aromatics and strong blueberry/blackberry notes, to neutral flavor, to small berries and herbaceous tendencies, to sort of odd earthy flavors, and even some rather unpleasant chemical like flavors. Tons of variation region to region and to a slightly lesser extent, even plant to plant within a region with this species complex.
When you make hybrids with cultivated varieties, the flavors can change a lot, and even flavors that are unpleasant at high concentrations in wild grapes can present differently in diluted form and when combined with other flavor elements.
That’s sort of a broad general overview of flavors in wild north American species. If you have anything more specific in mind let me know.
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This is fascinating, I’ll have to read more about the species you list and come back with my questions.
This include the post oak subspecies?
I’m guessing other qualities like how easy or difficult they are to juice, how well they set jellies, etc. also varies a lot?
The post oak variety of aestivalis is vitis aestivalis var. Lincecumii. Whether or not it gets full species status dances around a lot. For a number of years it was considered a full species, then downgraded to a sub species, and then most recently, some molecular work was published elevating it to full species status again. Regardless, what matters from the breeders perspective is that it is obviously a distinct form with unique traits, but also obviously closely related to aestivalis. Same situation with cinerea and berlanderi.
The lincecumii, aka post oak form of aestivalis tends to have large berries for a wild type grape, tends to shell off the vine easily as it ripens, and can have strong flavors fairly often. Some pretty good, and yes that can include strong blueberry, and some kinda nasty flavors at times IMHO. It just depends on the individual vine.
I have no idea about variation in how they set jellies, but I would imagine they would all do so adequately. As far variation in fruit firmness, most tend to be soft and all are slip skin, but texture of the pulp and amount of juice proportionately can vary by species. For example, lincecumii tends to have a firmer, more dry pulp than something like riparia for example. There is also variation in the intensity and chemistry of the pigments in the skins species to species, etc.
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Gotcha. Norton is mostly aestivalis right, but from a Virginia population? Are any named cultivars derived from hybrids of from linceccumii?
Reading up on all this stuff, sounds like a lot of crosses have been made, and some varieties have a pretty long pedigree (like Blanc du Bois it seems). Any idea on if those crosses were made with improved or at least higher quality wild species or if most of them were basically just whatever happened to be growing nearby or available? There’s a good bit of that in cold hardy citrus, and a lot of the established names could actually stand to see substantial improvement if they were recreated with better starting materials.
Makes sense. I recall seeing something a while back about the kinds of glucoside anthocyanins in European grapes being especially stable, whereas most, but not all, American species, while often strongly pigmented, tend to have high concentrations of more unstable forms that readily oxidize. You mentioned juice is one of your goals, does the level of pigmentation or resistance to oxidative browning factor much into your work or is that more a wine making and health nut concern?
Also, not sure if you’ve mentioned this before, but are you mostly collecting and crossing these American grapes or are you using vinifera as a source for fruit quality?
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Gotcha. Norton is mostly aestivalis right, but from a Virginia population? Are any named cultivars derived from hybrids of from linceccumii?
Norton is thought to be at least half aestivalis, and likely from the Virginia region yes. It is also thought to very likely have a smaller contribution from labrusca, and of course, certainly a vinifera component.
TV munson used lincecumii extensively in his breeding, and a number of his cultivars have that species in the background. His better hybrids, as far as fruit quality, with the species, like Carmen, etc did not inherit sufficient pierces disease resistance for the deep south however. A few have decent PD tolerance and lincecumii ancestry, such as meunch.
Any idea on if those crosses were made with improved or at least higher quality wild species or if most of them were basically just whatever happened to be growing nearby or available?
Often crosses were made with what was thought to be a better than average example of a wild grape, typically selected by the breeder or an associate, however, due to regression to the mean and the like, and the fact that all wild grape species tend to have low fruit quality traits compared to cultivated vinifera types or hybrids based on them, I wouldn’t get too hung up on fruit quality in wild grapes. While some interesting fruit flavors can show up from wild species crosses, typically, disease resistance is a bigger focus of the selection work.
You mentioned juice is one of your goals, does the level of pigmentation or resistance to oxidative browning factor much into your work or is that more a wine making and health nut concern?
Oxidative browning doesn’t factor into mine, largely because I am more concerned with disease resistance, but I do make an effort towards higher pigmented types for red grape juice. Introgressing the pigmented flesh trait into labrusca types(labrusca color is often a little weak) because that is an easy doubling of the pigment present in any given grape, and just eyeballing for darker colored juices. I don’t go into more depth with that aspect though, because disease resistance is the highest priority, and if you select very heavily on that, in a high disease pressure environment like mine, you limit how strongly you can select for other traits effectively.
Also, not sure if you’ve mentioned this before, but are you mostly collecting and crossing these American grapes or are you using vinifera as a source for fruit quality?
I do cross some pure north American species for parent development, but most of my crosses contain at least some vinifera ancestry. You need at least some vinifera ancestry for the perfect flowers trait, which is critical, and vinifera is also important for low fruit acidity. Even the lowest acid wild species are more acidic than vinifera, and the most sour types can be considerably more sour than lemons. Vinifera is also the only good sources for really firm/crisp flesh, the non-slipskin trait, seedlessness, and can also be a really good source for cluster and berry size. For reasons like this, pretty much everyone breeding bunch grapes uses at least some vinifera ancestry, though how high or low that percentage is depends on the area you are breeding for, and your goals.
As a broad generality, the higher the vinifera content of a hybrid the easier it is to get good fruit quality, but the harder it is to get strong disease resistance, and the lower the vinifera content of a hybrid, the easier it is to get good disease resistance, but the harder it is to get good fruit quality.
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