We don’t seem to have a thread on this topic, so I thought I’d get it started since I’m sure there are a number of folks out there dabbling with breeding Ribes (currants & gooseberries - both domestic & wild species).
I’m currently working on a couple projects and have another planned so I’ll get this thread started.
Project #1: Sawfly resistant gooseberry - I am one generation into this project. I had accidentally acquired a wild species gooseberry which I believe to be R. curvatum. As luck would have it, it has shown incredible resistance to saw fly defoliation even when other gooseberries around it are getting hit hard. I even hand placed about a dozen sawfly larvae on it once to see if they were simply having a hard time finding it (maybe it smells different to them) or if they just don’t like the taste. By the next day almost all the larvae had left the plant and the few that stayed ate very little before later disappearing. Unfortunately, the fruit from this plant has been tiny and unproductive. It does seem to cross well with cultivated gooseberries though, and I now have about half a dozen young hybrid plants derived from it. Whatever made the parent resistant must be either a recessive trait or a trait based on multiple genes since the first generation hybrid offspring have not inherited much sawfly resistance. I do think that once I can create some sibling crosses between these hybrids, some of the F2 generation may end up inheriting the sawfly resistance.
Project #2: Flowering currant x golden currant hybrid (for fun mostly) - So far there only seems to be one clone of this type of cross circulating and it’s grown strictly as an ornamental. It’s called Ribes ×gordonianum and resulted from an accidental cross between R. sanguineum and R. odoratum. It inherited intermediate traits with flowers having a cool mixed tones of pink & yellow. The clone in circulation seems to be sterile though as no one seems to ever report that it can bear fruit. Last year I attempted to recreate the cross (sort of) by placing a white flowered selection of R. sanguineum next to a nice orange fruiting clone of R. aureum while both were in bloom. I got some fruit set from my R. sanguineum which I already knew to be non-self pollinating. A fair number of seedlings have since germinated and based on their leaf morphology, I’m confident they are hybrids! Oddly, they all have a lot of hairiness which far exceeds that of their mother, so the genes from the male parent must have unlocked a trait which was normally genetically suppressed despite being present (sort of like the hairy “liger” of Ribes). I don’t expect these hybrids to be fertile, but if any of them do prove able to set fruit at maturity that would be an awesome bonus! I mostly just expect them to be a sort of novelty.
Here’s a picture of the R. sanguineum × R. aureum seedlings with a leaf from the mother plant held up for comparison:
Note: Since R. odoratum and R. aureum have been merged to subspecies level of one single species, that may mean that the same hybrid designation, Ribes ×gordonianum, may also apply to these seedlings, but I’m not 100% certain yet.
Project #3: Ribes aureum v. aureum (orange fruited selection) × Ribes aureum v. villosum (previously known as R. odoratum) ‘Crandall’ - This project is still in the planning phase and not yet underway like the first two projects. My hope is to breed a selection that has the larger berry size and self-compatibility of ‘Crandall’ (able to set fruit without a pollenizer), with the delicious citrusy tasting orange fruit of my v. aureum selection. Also, ‘Crandall’ seems to have resistance to a bacterial (or maybe it’s fungal) issue which causes some of the flowers and growing points on my orange fruited selection to “damp off” each year, so selecting for that resistance in the hybrid offspring would be important as well.
Feel free to share any Ribes breeding projects you have going (both planned and in progress), or simply participate to add constructive discussion for the projects others are working on.
