It’s slightly sweet with little flavor. Black are much richer in flavor.
Yes, sort of. Not as good. I use them mixed with other berries. Alone would be boring.
Oikos is in my state, so it could be the same ones? I got mine directly from the wild across the Detroit river in Ontario where they grow.
The anthocyanin and carotenoid biopaths are also part of the flavonoid biopath in many fruiting plants. In other words, genes that disrupt production of colors in the fruit also tend to disrupt production of flavor compounds. Pink tomatoes for example do not produce a yellow pigment that makes red tomatoes have an orange/red color. The gene for pink tomatoes happens to do a double whammy on one of the flavonoid biopaths resulting in reduced flavor potential. While this is bad from one perspective, many people love the flavor of pink tomatoes because they tend to be sweeter with a milder flavor.
With raspberries for me I love the taste of yellows. My wife does not like them. I don’t care really if they are less nutritious not like I’m going to stop eating every red raspberry I grow. I can eat both. Yellow is a color, just not dominant. When I crossed a yellow with a red I was hoping for an orange, since they already exist, but I got one that is pink. Although it is orange and once fully ripe is pink.
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Bumping this old thread. Has anyone attempted to create a primocane-bearing purple raspberry by crossing a primocane black (we have what, two of them? Niwot and Ohio Treasure) with a primocane red?
That’s a good goal, but since we have so few black-red crosses, it might require changing ploidy level to cross? I don’t know? I can tell you the primocane trait is dominant. So only one cross is needed, and a little luck.
My next project is to make a yellow cap primocane fruiting cultivar. I’m fairly hyped about it. I’m looking into your proposal too. Also a twist on it. A yellow instead of a red.
I will collect pollen from Lynn’s Black. Lynn’s Black is my best cross so far Check it out here. When Anne or Fall Gold has a primocane crop I will cross pollinate. It may not work?. I’m researching the ploidy levels of reds and blacks but have found nothing. Help from anybody appreciated.
I got lots of ideas for Rubus breeding, but not much material to work with yet. Primocane/Everbearing is a top priority in my projects. The trait even exists in a diploid blackberry, so there’s lots of potential for complex hybrids. A diploid thornless primocane “loganberry” (maybe even a white-fruited one) sounds like a good idea to me.
Reds and blacks are mostly diploid. There are tetraploid reds, but they seem few and far between. I tried looking up ploidy for some cultivars (like Caroline), but I failed to find it. Ultimately I just decided to assume that a given cultivar was a diploid unless otherwise stated (and hope that I wasn’t wrong in my assumption).
Thanks. I would think you would see more hybrids.
I was out in the garden and noticed my yellow/brown cap has open flowers. Time to collect pollen! I will tomorrow. Check my others too.
I’m Keen on finding a Salmonberry Raspberry hybrid.
I know that it’s been done in England.
i have salmonberry planted right next to the thimbleberries. maybe ill get lucky and get one.
I just signed up so I can join in this topic. I’m new to growing Rubus, having just got my first plants these past months. Mostly wanted to grow my own berries to eat and make wine with. So being the obsessive type I am, I’ve purchased, and have on order, several cultivars to get me started. I already have dreams of breeding my perfect plant from them. That’s when I found this thread. Im aiming for A thornless primocane white blackberry and thornless yellow raspberry, with low acid and high sugar in mind. So far I have baby cake blackberry, and waiting for my polar berry, starks black gems, and Kiowa. Then I have raspberry shortcake, and fall gold, waiting on my Ann’s yellow, still looking to order a Joan J.
I think Polar blackberry is a diploid (like the raspberries), where the rest of your blackberries are polyploids. Polyploid breeding can get complicated, with several progeny crosses and backcrosses needed to get the right plant (to duplicate the chosen gene across alleles, preventing the trait from being drowned out). That’s why I prefer diploid breeding myself. There’s also cross-ploidy breeding, but that brings its own tricks and complications, depending on which levels you’re mixing (if your polyploids are hexaploid, they’ll probably work for making tetraploids with the diploid white berry).
For a Thornless Primocane White blackberry at the diploid level, I’d cross the white with Hillquist (the original primocane) and Whitford Thornless or Burbank Thornless. Actually acquiring those rare old breeds is the biggest problem.
I pretty much figured it would need at least two generations to get thornless Polar berry, I’ve read it’s a recessive trait. That’s about as far as I got with my understanding of the breeding, until I got to the part of polyploids 
Any idea about the white trait, if it’s recessive? How about thornless in raspberry? I already saw that you get pinkish berries when you cross gold with red, but I’m hoping for a yellow/gold thornless. I’m hoping with two yellow strains and hopefully two thornless reds cultivars, I may be able to get a cross that fits the bill. Being a dwarf variety would be a plus for me, as space is very limited (any germinated seeds would probably be moved to a friends land to grow out) and I’d rather keep more in containers than in a bed.
@Caesar hilquist and other Rubus are available to US Breeders from USDA NCGR-Corvallis. Corvallis marks there selections as unavailable outside there season so check include unavailable when doing searches
https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/corvallis-or/national-clonal-germplasm-repository/docs/corvallis-germplasm-distribution-seasons/
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/search.aspx
@Seamonkey84 The Prime-ark series is 4x and two genes are involved so double back crossing is required . Rubus ulmifolius is thornless and might be a good candidate.
The white trait is quite a bit harder. Just read about the effort it took Luther Burbank to perfect his white blackberry. Luther Burbank Online-The White Blackberry-How A Color Transformation Was Brought About. It took a couple of generations of back crossing for the defective white genes to reassert it self.
This is my Polar Whites second year flowering and It did so with gusto. It did not however set many fruitlets. I cleared my property of most of the wild blackberry’s. The pollination options where limited to a black cap raspberry which fully set about a dozen fruits. Fortunately my Burbank white is growing well this year so both should flower next year for proper cross pollination.
Probably at least. I myself hate the way the polar berry tastes. I don’t think it is very good at all. Now Burbanks white Blackberry is low acid and high sugar. I much prefer Burbanks. Although Polar is a small berry Burbanks are smaller than raspberries. A very tiny berry. His final white was supposed to be bigger. I think I might have one of the berries he rejected? As it is not very large. I removed other whites and only kept this one, well i removed it, but it came back. I decided to let it be. All my whites came from growers not nurseries. So maybe Polar is better? It looks like the white I had that tasted terrible.
That should be easy since most cultivars have very few thorns already.
So with the prime ark line, I’d have to back cross several times for the thornless and possibly fall fruiting?
Sorry to hear the flavor of the polars aren’t as good, I was thinking about the Burbank one but I wanted bigger berries and erect cane. If I was to cross it with Ponca (when it becomes available) maybe that would help it along and get some white/yellow berries down the line.
Reading Burbank’s description of selecting a white blackberry is an education in doing the right things for breeding while failing to understand the process of segregation. White berries - based on his information - are a result of at least 3 and more likely 4 individual mutations. In a cross of white X black, you will have to grow out at least 64 F2 offspring to have a chance of selecting a white fruit and 256 to get white combined with thornless. This depends on whether or not thornless is linked with one of the genes for white. If linkage rears up, it might take several hundred or even a few thousand plants to get the desired combination.
I have some trailing blackberries growing all around the neighborhood that are now popping up in my back yard. They look like Rubus ursinus, but I am not an expert. If they are Rubus ursinus, does this mean there is a male nearby, or can they be pollinated by Himalayan blackberry? I read that Rubus ursinus is dioecious. Is there a way to identify a male from a non-bearing primo-cane, when they are not flowering?
These are growing at the base of a holly tree, competing with ivy. I stepped on the one bramble before I realized it was loaded with fruit. The holly tree is a dumping ground for boulders, rocks, bricks, and concrete chunks.
If they taste good, I’d just take a cutting from a new growth, or dig up a sucker cane.
