What have plant breeders in the three prairie provinces of Canada achieved in combining the quality of the best fruit varieties with the hardiness required for the severe winters of the northern tier of states and the blizzard country of the American middle west?
As a Saskatchewan nurseryman and amateur plant breeder, I naturally believe that the Canadian prairies have a large contribution to the country on either side of the border where winter conditions exist.
A little extra hardiness is not a bad idea for the ordinary fruit grower and is essential to the plant breeder who needs adequate hardiness.
Since the parent varieties he uses to provide quality are likely relatively tender, the other parent must possess something extra in the way of hardiness.
Aiming Hardiness
Americans, of course, do not have to cross the Canadian border to find plant breeding which has stressed the value of hardiness in districts that experience winter cold.
In the Dakotas and Minnesota, to a lesser extent, hardiness has always been an aim.
Dolgo
The bright crimson crabapple Dolgo, probably the finest jelly-crab apple in the world, was disseminated from So. Dakota by the late Dr. N. E. Hansen, world-famous both as an importer and breeder of hardy fruits and roses.
Dolgo is the best of four red-fruited seedlings (the others being Alexis, Amur, and Beauty), raised by Dr. Hansen out of seed he brought from the St. Petersburg Botanical Gardens in Russia.
It is hardy in about 90 percent of Canada’s prairie provinces and has been used successfully as a parent in breeding work.
One of its descendants is the Kerr crab apple, developed at the Dominion Experimental Farm, at Morden, Manitoba, by crossing the Haralson apple with the Dolgo crab apple. It is much larger than Dolgo, and I will keep it till March.
Rescue Variety
Another Canadian crab apple not built on previous U. S. plant breeding is the Rescue variety.
When the Siberian crab (Malus baccata) was brought from the Lake Baikal region in Siberia, its hybrids with standard apples produced some crab apples hardy enough for general planting in districts where winter temperatures can sink to 60° degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
These were crossed with standard apples producing Trail Rosilda and some similar varieties, which are best described as small apples of excellent eating quality.
However, they lost enough hardiness so that they could now be grown reliably only in the southern portions of the prairie provinces.
Rescue is one of the three-quarters groups as far as quality is concerned but is as hardy as the half-and-half group.
Dr. C. F. Patterson, head of the Department of Horticulture at the University of Saskatchewan, has raised more than 100,000 seedlings in the three-quarters apple classification.
He found some 15 varieties that combine the hardiness, size, and quality of first-generation hybrids of the Siberian crab.
These new varieties, just now ready for release, should move the Apple Belt some 300 miles north.
Plums
In plums, the biggest Canadian contribution has probably been made in importing the Ptitsin plum in seed form from Manchuria.
Most everyone knows that the Burbank plum (Prunus salicina), native to Japan, cannot be grown north of the peach districts.
However, very few people realize that strains of the same species grow in Manchuria even harder than in the plums of Manitoba.
A White Russian refugee from the Bolshevik revolution who settled in Harbin, Manchuria, collected seeds of these outstandingly hardy plums, which he sold to the Morden Experimental Farm.
These plums lack the thick skin and bitterness of the native plums, Prunus americana, and P.a. nigra, and open a new door for plum quality in varieties hardy to 60° degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
Strawberries
In strawberries, a new range of hardiness has resulted from crossing the wild strawberries of the northern Great Plains with other standard sorts.
The first variety of this type seems to have been Dr. N. E. Hansen’s Dakota, a superbly hardy type with all the flavor of the wild strawberry.
The second infusion of northern wild strawberry genes was made by A. J. Porter of Parkside, Saskatchewan, who crossed a native strawberry of his district with Sparta, an everbearing strawberry of his breeding.
From this emerged a hardy everbearing strawberry, which he named Northerner, that combines the wild strawberry’s flavor and firmness.
Northerner is too small to be grown except where its hardiness is needed, but Mr. Porter has already raised four or five strawberries of fine promise, which should be tried further south.
Hardiest Latham
The hardiest standard raspberry of fair size has undoubtedly long been the Minnesota variety, Latham.
For many years, plant breeders produced nothing which equaled Latham varieties in hardiness, size, or quality.
Recently, however, work has been done at Morden Farm by Mr. Porter, which promises a new era in the fields above.
In gooseberries, the biggest Canadian contribution was undoubtedly made by the Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa, Ontario, which produced the first thornless variety, Spinefree. Of Ottawa origin, this was not too productive and consequently never became popular.
Captivator Variety
Nevertheless, breeding for thornless canes and fair-sized berries continued, eventually producing the Captivator variety.
Captivator is almost hardy enough for the prairie provinces and of a size that makes it a good compromise between the large-fruited European gooseberries and the now hardy sorts such as Houghton and Pixwell.
From Captivator, all the gooseberry varieties of the future are likely to trace their ancestry.
44659 by Percy H. Wright