Pomegranate breeding and germplasm

Just stumbled up on a review of pomegranate genetic resources:

Pomegranate Plant Material: Genetic Resources and Breeding, a Review (CIHEAM)

I'm feeling a little grouchy tonight because a nursery lost my tree order (including pomegranates) and now the ones I want aren't available from where I wanted them until next year.

This is pretty cool...

A guide to plant breeding programs in 36 different countries, many of which I've never heard of. Who'd have guessed there was so much breeding in Algeria, for example? These are nearly all developing countries, and I think it's encouraging to see these governments devoting scarce resources to these efforts.

National Organizations and Programs
(Plant Breeding Knowledge Resource Center)

Update: To be clear, I've heard of the countries, but not the breeding programs.

Attack of the Mutant Cherries

Okay, they're not really attacking. But they are mutant cherries.

I've been neglecting my friends over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, but popping over there to catch up quickly turned up a fruit link:

Japanese Scientists Create Cherry Tree That Blossoms All Year Round (Telegraph)

These sort of "everbearing" mutations have proven useful in a variety of of other crops, including strawberries (which are near and dear to me), but this may be the only one I know of that was artificially induced, rather than naturally occurring. (That said I'm skeptical about the prospects for this variety--the natural cycle of a plant is a critical component of its adaptation, and throwing one element of it completely out of whack like this can have serious detrimental effects. That can be okay in something like strawberry, where you're going to replant it yearly, but on a tree, the results can be a problem.)

Mutation breeding has a long history, though, and in fact one of the more important examples in fruit was also in cherry: the development of self-fertile varieties.

What this strawberry needs is a name that says "dry and sandy"...

The University of California strawberry breeding program (the southern branch, based in Irvine) has released two new strawberry varieties, Benicia (formerly C225) and Mojave (formerly C227).

The southern California strawberry industry is kind of hurting these days, with increasing yields and increasing acreages (as well as competition from Mexico and elsewhere) pushing down prices and cutting into profit, so I'm sure these will be welcomed, though the last release from this program, 'Palomar', has not really caught on.

I've tried these varieties, when they were in limited trials, and I have to say I don't see any of them really setting the world on fire, though. The flavor was definitely better than 'Ventana', which is the current standard, but didn't exactly knock my socks off, and the fact that they're actually talking about how soft 'Mojave' is seems like a bad, bad sign. I'll take anything that pushes the quality standards above 'Ventana', which is an insult to strawberries, but since yields appear to be no higher they're not likely to be much of a fix for what ails the industry.

(And yeah, I've got a certain bias here, but I call 'em like I see 'em)

There's much more info on these in this presentation, but they're not named yet, so just look for the testing numbers (poor C226, so close to a shot at the big time).

Rearranging the furniture

It just dawned on me that I had several fruit blogs in the "Fruit-ish Links" section, even though I had a perfectly good "Other Fruit Blogs!" section, so I moved 'em. Don's Cold Hardy Citrus Blog kind of doesn't look like it's a blog anymore, but I moved it and I'll sort that out later.

The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is a blog, but not a fruit blog, so I'm keeping it where it is. Still probably doesn't make any sense, but oh well.

I briefly considered alphabetizing, but I don't have that kind of ambition. Please don't read anything into the point at which your site appears in the list--it's wherever was most convenient to insert it at a given moment, not a ranking or a measure of my love.

And yeah, I know this doesn't really require a post and that no one cares about the links and their arrangement. But by posting this I'm maintaining the illusion of frenetic burst of activity on this site!

Forest Gardens of Pitaya

There are times I think that this would be a pretty good blog if all I did was parrot all the fruit posts from these guys. And there are days when I think it is all I do. But it's still good stuff:

The Forest Gardens of Quintana Roo (Nourishing the Planet)

I've had some mighty good pitaya in Central Mexico, and I posted about the first time here.

Oh man! A new banana from Oman!

Another find from the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog...

Mystery Cultivar from Oman (ProMusa)

I was kind of surprised that there are abandoned oases full of bananas in Oman. I would think there'd be a shortage of arable land in that part of the world. But what do I know?

Does Queens have Terroir?

That's Queens, the New York borough. The climate might actually be okay--the other end of Long Island actually makes some decent wines.

Queens's Napa Valley (Wall Street Journal)

Trees of Endangeredstan

Central Asia is possibly the region of the world least on most people's radar (despite its proximity to that perennial focus, the Middle East), but it is a center of diversity for many, many fruit crops, and as such has genetic resources which could prove critical for future breeders of such things as apples, almonds, walnuts, peaches, pomegranates and many other crops. It also has environmental degradation, unstable governments, and widespread poverty, which threaten those resources, many of which have never made it out of the region thanks to nearly a century of Soviet rule and isolation.

Flora & Fauna International has compiled a "Red List" of endangered fruit and nut species in the area. Critically endangered species include pears, hawthorns, currants, and barberries. Some of these things are down to a single tiny population.

Red List of Trees of Central Asian

An interesting read about a bunch of species I at least hadn't heard much (or anything) about.

A Life of Apples

Seems like I spend a lot of time talking about apples here, which is sort of odd, considering that I've actually never worked with them, and I talk much less about some of the crops I have worked with. But part of why apples keep coming up is that they seem to possess a special place in our culture and our history.

During my months away from this site I stumbled across an apple blog, which I read for a bit, planned on posting here, and then promptly forgot about it as work and travel took me away from the Internet. Then today I realized that the "Chris" who commented here the other day is none other than the author of that blog

A Life of Apples

A Life of Apples features a number of profiles of cultivars, all interesting and well done, which is how I found it, but also touches on the historical and mythological aspects of apples, as well as yoga, recipes, and more. A definite addition to the sidebar.