Specialty Crop Grant Awarded

The USDA just announced its 2011 Specialty Crop awards. We were one of the lucky ones, our grant "Partner with North Carolina State University to develop high quality raspberry cultivars that can be grown in the southern United States and are suitable for both local sales and commercial shipping" was funded. To see what else was funded go to:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5093992

Newsletter from Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium

Here is a link to the most recent issue the Small Fruit News, a quarterly publication from the Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium. There are several articles of interest for blackberry and raspberry growers, including an article on blackberry flavor written by Dr. John Clark, blackberry breeder from the University of Arkansas.

http://www.smallfruits.org/Newsletter/Vol11-Issue4.pdf

New Publication

Dr. Ramón Molina-Bravo, was a PhD student that worked with myself and Dr. Bryon Sosinski at NCSU. Dr. Molina-Bravo just published an article that details a study that he conducted as part of his research. In a nutshell, he was able to identify several plants in a population of seedlings that had higher chlorophyll fluorescence, a trait that is associated with heat tolerance. We are using those individuals in our breeding program to see if they will survive the heat in additional locations and we will be using them in crosses in the near future.  Congrats Ramon! Here is a link to that article. doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2011.07.022

Caneberry Workshop

The Caneberry Workshop was a great success. We had over 60 participants, most were from North Carolina, but some even came from Illinois, Virginia and Kentucky! One of the goals of the workshop was to generate interest in growing caneberries in this part of the state. I think we succeeded in generating interest, I am hopeful that we will see some production in this area in the future.

The workshop featured work being done at the station by Drs. Hannah Burrack, Penny Perkins-Veazie and myself. (NB - this may have been the first workshop lead by all female NCSU faculty in history!) Dr. Burrack focused on her Spotted Wing Drosophila work, Dr. Veazie discussed pre and post harvest handling of fruit and I talked about the replicated trials of blackberries and raspberries in and out of tunnels.

I gave the participants a tour of the replicated breeding trials. The caneberry breeding program has several locations where we test our materials. One of the locations is here at the Upper Mountain Reserach Station in Laurel Springs. This is our highest sight, at about 2500-3000' elevation and is in USDA hardiness zone 6. The average high temperatures in summers are in the low 80's and nights are cool as well....compared to the rest of the state. Raspberries love it here!

At this location we have one of our mirror 'variety' trials. We have a mix of varieties and selections from our breeding program, USDA and other Univ. breeding programs as well as recently named varieties. Each of the varieties was growing both under high tunnels and outside of tunnels. This allows us to compare overall growth, ripening season and fruit quality among lots of other attributes. Primocane fruiting raspberries were in the early part of their season, while floricane fruiting types had finished a couple of weeks ago. Floricane fruiting blackberries were still producing fruit and primocane fruiting types were flowering and had lots of green fruit. We will post the data on the NC Market Ready Portal at the end of the season here: http://ncsu.edu/enterprises/blackberries-raspberries/production/latest-research/
(There is data from other locations at this site that you may want to check out as well).

Dr. Penny Perkins-Veazie discussed pre and post harvest handling of raspberry and blackberry fruit. Participants comments included, "I never knew raspberries came in so many different colors of red". They also learned that most customers don't like dark red berries. She also discussed how picking pink berries will last longer on the shelf.  She recently wrote an article about this. I will post a link on a later blog post.

Dr. Hannah Burrack discussed her work with spotted wing drosophila (SWD). This location is what she calls "Ground Zero" for SWD. Participants got to see SWD in all of its stages and learn more about how it impacts fruit production. She has a blog of her own where she regularly updates her findings. http://ncsmallfruitsipm.blogspot.com/p/spotted-wing-drosophila.html

A BIG thanks to all of the folks at the Upper Mountain Research Station that helped get the fields looking tip top and setting up the field and inside venue. I sincerely appreciate all you do for the caneberry programs. Sponsors included the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service and the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service at N.C. State University; the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services; and the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission.

Heat stress in raspberries, part 3

The final chapter in the raspberry heat stress story is about picking the right parents.  We have determined that some species of raspberry do better than others in the heat so we are using them in some of our crosses.

Above is a picture of 'Mandarin'.  This variety was released from NCSU in 1955. It is more resistant to heat than other varieties (note the other plots in the field behind it that are not doing as well). 'Mandarin' is 1/4 R. parvifolius, a species that is native to Asia. 

'Mandarin' is not available from nurseries, the fruit is small and soft and the yields are low, so it can not compete with newer varieties. However, we are using 'Mandarin' and some of its relatives in our program and are making progress in finding a heat tolerant variety with good fruit traits. 

Heat stress in raspberries, part 2

So, many of you are probably thinking "Why would anyone try to grow raspberries in a hot, humid environment like North Carolina?" Well, you are not the only one that has had that thought. There are several points that I want to make in regard to this idea.

First, North Carolina has multiple environments. The three primary regions are the Coastal Plain, Piedmont and the Mountains.  So, within the state we have a range of elevations from sea level to over 3000 ft (ca 1000 m). This allows us to grow our plants in a wide range of environments.  In the summer, all regions are hot, some are just not as hot, with high temperatures only in the 80's. However, this range of climates allows some growers to produce fruit earlier in the season and some can go later in the season. We are not trying to produce raspberries in the coastal plain in mid July. That is just too hot for this delicate fruit.

Second, in warm conditions, fruit set is often a problem. However, in our screening process, we find that some of our test plants that are able to survive the heat and have flowers that can produce fruit.  And it is this last group that we choose to select and propagate for further observations. 

Third, even if a raspberry variety can survive in the hotter areas, we find that fruit size improves when we move it to our more moderate locations (see example of fruit size above). The two pictures are fruit from the same selection planted in two different places. The hotter location is SH (the Sandhills) and Sal (Salisbury) is only 90 miles away. 

Lastly, we are finding, thanks to Dr. Penny Perkins-Veazie, that even though some of the newer varieties look good at harvest, once we pick them they go downhill rapidly. Amazingly, the test plants from our program always seem to do better. 

The role of the environment on the performance of a variety is huge. In fact plant breeders spend alot of time evaluating GXE (Genotype X Environment) interactions. We know that the environmental influence on raspberry performance is significant and that our hot and humid climate enables us to screen in an environment that is not ideal for most raspberry varieties. But we are trying and think we are making good progress.

Blackberry and Raspberry Post Harvest Evaluation

Evaluation of blackberry post harvest traits

We have an amazing team of scientists at NC State University working on blackberries and raspberries (Team Rubus). One of the newer members of our team is Dr. Penny Perkins-Veazie. Dr. Perkins-Veazie, worked for many years at USDA-ARS as a post harvest physiologist. She is  now located at the Plants for Human Health Institute at the NC Research Campus in Kannapolis. One of the projects we have is the evaluation of raspberry and blackberry fruit post harvest traits. She is also working to determine which varieties contain antioxidant compounds in Rubus fruit.

In the picture above, Dr. Perkins-Veazie shows a graduate student how to evaluate the post harvest traits of blackberries.

There is You Tube a video link to this protocol at:

http://plantsforhumanhealth.ncsu.edu/2011/03/31/rating-blackberries-raspberries-for-postharvest-quality/