Rubus Breeding

I don’t know yet? Still thinking about it. I was friends with a professional breeder and it’s so difficult to launch a cultivar if you’re an independent breeder. It costs a lot up front. 10 grand for a patent, You need farmers to run trials for you against other known raspberries.
Without trials no nursery will even talk to you. Well if you pay them they will propagate enough for trials. Best take and save tissue cultures too to be able to produce a virus free cultivar. You have to pay for virus analysis too.
The whole process takes about 10 years. I tried to pass stuff to ARS and they were not interested. So I lost interest in doing anything with my hybrids. It’s fun to do. I love plants and don’t care about much else if given a choice, all I would do.

On arctic raspberries I also doubt they will do well in hot weather.I have been trying to grow them. They seem to have established, but still are small clumps. These new hybrids fruit much better than the other types. Fruits so far are very small though. These are the Swedish hybrids Sophie, Valentina, Anna, and Beta. I have the former two.

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That’s depressing… I wonder why they make the process so expensive and extensive.

And it’s weird about ARS, I’d expect them to be the first to line up for new varieties with useful traits. I’ve actually called up my local ARS stations a few times to share rare root crops… They always say they’ll call me back, but they never do. I guess if it’s not tracked down by their agents on their own terms, they’re not interested.

But if they’re not interested, we are. If you’ve made some good hybrids, pass 'em forward. It’d be a great shame if good germplasm is lost (it hurts every time I see an ARS GRIN accession listed as “Historical”). I plan on tracking everything I breed back to the source. The history and origins of a variety is almost as important as the variety itself.

I do have some shadier microclimates that should be quite a bit cooler than the surrounding spaces, so I hope to at least keep the arctics alive, even if I don’t get good yields from them.

I’ve continued reading the literature lately, and my scheming has been kicked into overdrive… For starters, the primocane-fruiting trait in the Prime Ark breeding program is derived from a blackberry variety called “Hillquist”. A quick check of the Rubus Cultivar Ploidy document revealed it to be a diploid R. argutus (it chance-produced an unreduced gamete, which is how it ended up in higher-ploidy breeding). Coupled with “Whitford Thornless” (another argutus) and/or “Burbank Thornless” (R. ulmifolius), there’s real potential for a Thornless Primocane-fruiting blackberry at the diploid level. Add in “Snowbank” for pale fruits. Cross it to Joan J raspberry, and you might get a diploid, thornless primocane Logan. Tip of the iceberg, and the possibilities multiply… This does put a smile on my face. :grin:

One thing did strike me as odd, though. “Snowbank” (listed as R. allegheniensis) is a confirmed diploid, developed by Burbank by crossing and backcrossing “Crystal White” (R.a.) & “Lawton” (R.a. x R. frondosus). Yet “Lawton” has been confirmed as a tetraploid by genetic testing at Corvallis. This would mean that, either Burbank managed to breed down from tetraploid to the diploid level by some fluke, or that Burbank’s Lawton is different from the Lawton currently in the collection (and either one might have been misidentified). Burbank claimed Lawton was fixed (that it bred true from seed). Maybe it was seed-grown for a time, and somewhere along the line there was a doubling event. Who knows? It’s all idle speculation at this point, but it makes one wonder.

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Maybe just the person I emailed and had correspondence with? I also had some rare cultivars, and just asked if they wanted them, and they did not. . I also have local wild rubus. One is exceptional. At least for breeding. A brown cap. It is disease resistant, and has large berries. I also have a collection of wild black, red, brown, and yellow cap seeds. Frozen, collected across the USA. I have seeds from a Bristol x Niwot cross. I will grow these out one day. Pete the rubus breeder I know gave me the seeds. He said do what i want with them. I’m working on stone fruit right now, and will come back to rubus in the future.

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What does a brown cap look like? For that matter, what species is it? I’m having trouble picturing a brown berry. :sweat_smile: Regardless, it sounds like a winner to me! I’d like to breed with it, maybe improve further on the Niwot primocane lines.

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About 50 years ago, I found a clump of wild blackberry vines that produced berries up to 2 inches long and 5/8 inch diameter. That clump is still growing.

A year ago, I noticed a small clump of wild blackberries that bloomed in mid February which is about 4 or 5 weeks earlier than normal for this area. I’m going back to that clump in a week or so to see if it is blooming again this year. If so, I’ll dig up a few plants and bring them home. I would love to have a blackberry that ripens fruit up to month before any other variety.

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Rubus occidentalis. Instead of being black they can be yellow, brown, or red. I have seen yellow and browns. I have seeds to a red. Mine starts out yellow and when ripe it is brown. Taste is OK, nothing special. What is cool, is the size and prolific amount of fruit it produces. Seems disease resistant too. In my one cross I think the pollen is from Jewel, but it could be from this Ontario wild brown cap. I crossed both, and they got mixed up once planted out. It could explain the huge berries. I thought the plant emerged from my Jewel x Niwot crosses, but
accidents happen. I have a 2nd plant too. It is also primocane fruiting but smaller berries.
I had 3 or 4 others i discarded.

Ontario wild brown cap

This plant is grown in a 30 gallon root pouch and is 6 years old. The container is not moved in the winter. here it is today. I took this a minute ago, still dark out this morning. Hard to see but canes are yellow/green.

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Impressive! They look like the pic of OIKOS’ Yellowcap. Now I wonder what the yellows and browns look like side-by-side.

When you say the flavor of a berry is nothing special, what precisely do you mean? What makes a great berry! I grew up with R. rosifolius here, and no one would sing its praises, but I personally enjoyed them whenever I could get them. I did notice Caroline to be a flavor explosion by comparison, so maybe that’s the difference?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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@BG1977

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.

@Drew51

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).

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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.

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I’m Keen on finding a Salmonberry Raspberry hybrid.
I know that it’s been done in England.

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i have salmonberry planted right next to the thimbleberries. maybe ill get lucky and get one.

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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.

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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.

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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 :dizzy_face: 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.

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