Seedling count (3/29/13)

North Texas October Grape seedlings:

Other seedlings:

Crosses with low germination rates:

Late March 2013 freeze

We have a forecast of 28 Monday morning.  As I write, it is about 11 PM, and the temperature is already in the 30s.  We expect a frost Tuesday morning.  There is a chance of frost next we, April 2.  That is still a bit far away.

Before I started breeding grapes, these late frosts bothered me a great deal.  I would worry about how to protect the grapes.  As a breeder, a different problem presents itself.  How to use the response to these frosts to improve my breeds?

For example, I could simply remove every vine that suffers from the freeze.  At this point, about 15% of the vineyard has sprouted leaves.  Five or six have quite a few.  All these leaves will be turned into what reminds me of toast.  The leaf will crumble up into dust if you rub them between your fingers.  All the leafy xylem vessels pop due to the expansion of freezing water and the leaf dries out within a day or two.

It isn't clear what will happen to the vines in their various states of spring growth.  With the leafy vines, the canes may die, forcing the roots to put up new shoots from the ground.  Generally, the fuzzy buds (no growth, just a little fuzz) can handle the freeze without any trouble. The swollen buds are probably toast, but the canes may get through the night without to much damage.

We will see.

The general idea will be to select for late bud break, and cane survival. That isn't hard to do if there are 4 vines from a single cross, and one of the four dies back to the ground.  It is harder if there are 4 vines and only one still have a viable cane.  Do I remove the other 3?

I went through the vineyard marking all the vines that had leaves.  These are the most at risk.  I was struck by the dormancy of local vines.  They were the smart ones, still fast asleep.  The mustang, generally early to leaf was still dormant, only a little fuzz.  The local cinera was still dormant, but that wasn't a surprise.  I think all the local cinerea crosses were still dormant.  A couple of the Virginia cinerea crosses had put out leaves, though.  The champini and doaniana open-pollination (OP) crosses were largely leafed out. The few vinifera seedlings I've got were generally leafed out, too.

Deciding what to study as these vines develop this year will be an interesting challenge.  A number of these vines are going to have to go.

Approximately 70% of the seed pots have germinated at least 1 seed. We transplanted several cinerea x vinifera, and Zehnder x vinifera seedlings that Rich gave me, today. I got to watch a beautiful sunset.

Seedlings 2-23-13

Seedlings are making progress:

Here is a photo of John Barnett's seedlings:

Here is what the greenhouse looked like, today:  This is representative.  A lot of pots have little activity, but some are a riot.

First seedlings for 2013

The first seedlings popped up a few days ago.  This is Plainview cinerea x Cabernet Sauvignon. There are probably about 10 seedlings up so far.

The importance of good taste

I'm a big fan of simple crosses, best wild x best fruit, etc.  We are playing a numbers game.

I was looking at Mortensen's paper on Blanc Du Bois. The vine is one of 19 'segregants' of a 1968 cross of 'Cardinal' and Florida's D6-148.  D6-148 was one of 95 seedlings  of selfed A4-23 (1961).  A4-23 was one of Stover's best crosses (1956). Stover was about to retire when Mortensen arrived in 1960-1961.

(I assume that segregant is a word for seedlings produced by self-polination.)

Anyway, the number are not that different from what we are doing.
Based on the paper, it seemed the 'taster', not Mortensen, was key to selecting what turned out to be Blanc Du Bois.  The fellow was in 'food sciences', not a grower.  I think the process of selection via tasting doesn't get enough attention.

I guess that I'm trying to say that simple crosses work, but you need a super taster.

Blanc Du Bois Pedigree

The Pixiola has an interesting story.  The following is from Loren Stover's 'Breeding has produced better grapes for Florida' (Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Series, No. 21.)

"The Magruder brothers had found a wild, white, sweet, vigorous and prolific vine of V. Simpsoni (l.) in the woods near Leesburg. They called this to the attention of Mr. K. W. Loucks.  Our stocks of it were lost when he left the Leesburg laboratory, but it was collected again in 1943 and added to the collection at Whitney in the form of a nurse graft on Beacon roots.  Today this vine has developed its own roots and is in excellent condition.  The trunk is three inches in diameter, and the cane growth spans sixty feet.  For convenience we have called this vine Pixiola.  The original vine was observed to be very vigorous and was relatively free of grape diseases; consequently it has been used extensively in the controlled breeding program."

JA Mortensen adds in his monograph on 'Blanc Du Bois, A Florida Bunch Grape for Wine':

"Blanc DuBois was one of 19 segregants from a 1968 cross between Florida D6-148 and Cardinal.  Florida D6-148 was a PD resistant selection with purple fruit selected from 95 seedlings of a self-pollination of Florida A4-23."

Mortensen, J.A. 1987. Blanc Du Bois: A Florida Bunch Grape for White Wine. Agricultural Experiment Station, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville. Cir. S-340.