This will become the new
commodity fruit and the first seriously commercial cultivar that can
be grown in the boreal forest. That it tastes like a combination of
a blueberry and a raspberry is wonderful. The nutrient load will be
excellent, it will surely provide an excellent dried fruit and it
will surely lend itself to all the other processing methods we apply
to both berries. I suspect that it may even provide a very viable
wine and vinegar.
Although it will
certainly be grown on normal farmland it will also encourage the
development of fields for the first time in the boreal forest.
As you may recall, canola
was just a good idea thirty years ago. This fruit is as big. It
will be a first fresh fruit in the spring and be available for at
least a month and possible two once they tweak it a bit. It will
overlap the later blueberry market and provide frozen product year
round.
It is also obvious that
this fruit will be competitive with grapes in the global market.
The one plant you
should grow this year
By Caitlin McCormack
Shine On – Fri, 4 May, 2012 11:19 AM EDT
Growing your own
produce during the summer months is a great way to eat more local
and organic, and it can also help you slash your grocery bill costs.
Which is why we
recently spoke with gardening guru Peter Cantley, vice-president,
floral and garden for Loblaws to find out the one plant everyone
should grow this year in to get the best bang for their buck.
If he had to pick just
one edible to grow, Cantley says the haskap bush would be his pick.
"This is a very
new, very hardy fruit bush that has been developed at the University
of Saskatchewan," he says. Shaped like an elongated grape and
dark blue in colour, the fruit "Tastes like a cross between a
raspberry and a blueberry."
The haskap's fruit is
one of the earliest to produce and the bush is hardy enough to grow
pretty much anywhere in Canada says Cantley. Plants generally grow
4-5 feet tall.
You can use haskap
berries (also known as honeyberries) in jam, pies, or just eating
fresh right off the bush. Haskap.ca has several recipes you can try.
High in vitamins C and
A, the berries also pack a healthy punch of fibre and potassium and
contain high levels of antioxidants.
Haskap Breeding at
the University of Saskatchewan
Bob Bors
Department of Plant
Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, SK S7N 5A8
ABSTRACT
Haskap berries (also
known as Blue Honeysuckles, Honeyberries, and Lonicera caerulea) are
an exciting new fruit crop for Canada. Tasting great and ripening in
mid June, they appear to have few insect pests and diseases making it
a worthwhile crop to consider for organic production. As a new crop,
no pesticides are registered and after 7 years of observation, it
appears none are needed. Perhaps its early ripening habit allows the
fruit to escape insect damage. Within our collection there are many
lines that show high resistance to the few leaf diseases that have
occurred. Our collection includes 85 clones from Russia, Japan,
Kuril Islands and wild plants from Canada. We also have thousands of
hybrid seedlings. Known for health benefits in Eastern Europe and
Japan, we plan to investigate our collection for high antioxidant
levels as well as breeding for good flavour. Our breeding program is
quite unique since we are breeding this crop to be adapted to
mechanical harvesting and processing which could allow this crop to
be grown on a large scale.
INTRODUCTION
Haskap berries are an
exciting new fruit crop for Canada. Ripening weeks before
strawberries, they have a flavour commonly described as a combination
of blueberries and raspberries. The plants bear at a very young age
and the fruit are easily shaken off at harvest time. They may be
ideally suited for mechanized harvesting since they don’t sucker,
and have bushes of a similar size to other fruits that are harvested
by machines. They have been used in a wide range of products.
GERMPLASM
Lonicera caerulea is a
circumpolar species native to the northern boreal forests and can be
found in mountains as well as marshlands. Although harvested from
the wild for centuries in Japan and Russia, breeding programs began
the 1950’s in Russia and in the 1980’s in Japan. Only in the late
1990’s did the only two breeding programs in North America begin at
Oregon State University and the University of Saskatchewan. The
later two institutions are actively working with each other. Dr. Bors
has for two years visited Oregon during harvest season to assist with
the selection process.
The U of S owes its
entire collection of Japanese Haskap to Dr. Maxine Thompson at Oregon
State University.
The germplasm
collection comes from 4 areas (see figure 1) which have distinct
attributes for breeding (table 1). While we have had experience with
Russian and Kuril Island accessions for 7 Haskap Breeding at the
University of Saskatchewan
Bob Bors Department of
Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, SK S7N 5A8
Figure 1. Origin of
Lonicera caerulea germplasm collection at the U of Syears, only in
the last 2 years have we obtained Saskatchewan and Japanese
accessions. As a whole, minimal insect damage and few diseases have
been noted, indicating this crop could be suited for organic
production.
BREEDING AND SELECTION
Russian Cultivars have
been observed in the field with a goal to identify the best varieties
to be used as parents in the breeding program. 14
Russian cultivars have
not produced enough fruit to be evaluated, 8 cultivars were rejected
for having small fruit, 2 cultivars were rejected for having long
pointed and fragile fruit, and 6 cultivars were deemed acceptable for
use in breeding.
Kuril types were very
similar in most traits but 2 selections had fruit that did not bleed
from the stem end when picked. Japanese selections were evaluated for
fruit size, plant health and productivity in Oregon but clones of the
best selections are being grown in pots and will be used for
breeding.
However, 2000+
Japanese seedlings were field planted in 2005 but were too small to
fruit in 2006.
Figure 3: Haskap
berries are put through a sorting line and observed for damage.
Figure 2: to mimic
mechanized harvesting, haskap bushes are shaken into umbrellas. The
amount of fruit remaining on bushes after shaking was noted. The
plants pictured are 3 years old and approximately 1/4” their
eventual size.Although 95% of the Japanese seedlings survived the
winter of 2005/6, the plants were below the snow line which would not
be a good test for cold hardiness.
Over 1200 seedlings
derived from Russian and Kuril Island parents were old enough to be
evaluated. Desirable plants were tagged in the field and individually
harvested. Plants were not picked by hand, as is the case in most
places where this crop is grown, but instead were harvested by
shaking into umbrellas (Figure 2) to mimic mechanical harvesting.
Berries were put through a sorting line, and evaluated for damage
(Figure 3 and 4). All tagged selections were evaluated for yield but
only the more promising ones were further evaluated for fruit size,
flavour, and shape.
RESULTS
Yield for 3 and 4 year
old seedlings was in the range of 0.5 to 0.75 kg/bush.
It was noted that the
crosses between Russian and Kuril Island selections resulted in
several selections having fruit weights between 1.2 to 1.6 grams per
berry. Yet, Russian cultivars and Russian x Russian’ seedlings had
fruit in the range of 0.5 to 0.9 grams. Berries of the Russian x
Kuril Island hybrids had a more rounded shape (Figure 5) which was a
desirable trait in the sorting line and later in the season it was
noted that those hybrids had little or no powdery mildew. An
informal taste panel of growers and researchers tasted the advanced
selections and found them to be very acceptable. The selection that
had 1.6 gram berries is being considered for release as a new
cultivar. Other selections will be made available for testing by
growers interested in commercial production. They are currently
beipropagated in tissue culture.
In addition to
agronomic criterion, we are developing protocols to allow us to
select for high anti-oxidant genotypes in our breeding program.
Funding for
antioxidant and haskap production research is being provided by the
Alberta Farm Fresh Producers Association, Saskatchewan Fruit Growers
Association, and the Alberta Horticultural Growers Congress and
Foundational Society.
Figure 4: Fruit size
and shape affects performance in the sorting line. Small (A) and
pointed (B) berries often got stuck in the machine and on the belts.
Medium-sized berries of Russian selections (C) had less problems but
larger, rounded fruit of ‘Kuril Island x Russia’ types (D) were
optimum.
Figure 5: Berry of a
Russian x Kuril Island hybrid. Similar in length but twice as wide,
many of these
hybrids had larger
berries than any of the Rusian cultivars in our collectio
References
Hummer, K. 2006. Blue
honeysuckle: A new berry crop for North America. Journal of American
Pomological Society v. 60, no. 1 p. 3-8.
Thompson, M. and
A.Chaovanalikit. 2003. Preliminary observations on adaptation and
nutraceutical values of blue honeysuckle (Lonicera caerulea) in
Oregon,
USA. Acta Hort. no.
626 p. 65-72.
Plekhanova, M. 2000.
Blue honeysuckle (Lonicera caerulea L.) - a new commercial berry crop
for temperate climate: genetic resources and breeding. Acta Hort.
no. 538, v. 1 p.
159-164.
Further information on
Haskap research can be found at www.haskap.ca or by searching
‘Haskap’ at www.usask.ca
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