BREEDING GOALS AND STRATEGIES IN THE NORWEGIAN BLACK CURRANT BREEDING PROGRAMME

Following the outbreak of mildew on black currants in the 1960’s, our revised breeding programme has been aimed at combining winter hardiness with mildew resistance and upright bush growth.

‘Øjebyn’ and ‘Melalahti’, which both possess stable mildew resistance, have been the most successful parent cultivars so far.
Their offspring exhibit a wide range of mildew resistance or susceptibility, which suggests that the inheritance of this trait is poly-genetic.
This increases the chances of combining such resistance in new cultivars, along with the SPh₃-gene, which is already incorporated in our breeding material, together with genes for better branch strength from R. carrierei and the Ce-gene from gooseberry.
Besides breeding for mildew resistance, from now on more attention must be given to fruit quality and gall mite resistance.
The latter is being conducted in a separate test developed specifically for this purpose.

The Norwegian black currant breeding programme is aimed at developing mildew resistant, erect growing cultivars which are winter hardy, high yielding, and which can be grown with as little pruning work as possible.

We require a wide range of cultivars with different ripening times, adapted to both mechanical harvesting and hand picking.
The fruit should be well attached to the strigs during ripening to prevent losses from dropping, and should be of high quality, suitable for both domestic and industrial jam and juice production.

More than 2/3 of our black currants are grown in gardens.
For this, as well as commercial growing and breeding purposes, cultivars and selections belonging to the Nordic black currant group R. nigrum scandinavicum are of increasing interest, due to their good resistance to mildew Sphaerothecamors – uvae.
We are nevertheless interested in obtaining useful material from other areas.
We have, for example, recently received cuttings from East Malling Res.
Stn. of their black currant selections 1428/70 and 1429/5. Both of these possess gall mite resistance (Ce-gene) derived from gooseberry, as well as mildew resistance (SPh₃-gene) and genes for branch strength from R. carrierei.

It is hoped that further cooperation with other countries will be of great value for future progress in our breeding effort.
Breeding for resistance to black currant gall mite Cecidophopsis ribis has now been included in our programme.

IV International Rubus and Ribes Symposium

J. Øydvin

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1986.183.13