Project Number: 1910-21000-020-02
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 30, 2006
End Date: Sep 29, 2007

Objective:
The objective of this cooperative research project is to identify late-blooming tart cherry selections which will have an increased probability of avoiding spring freeze injury to the pistils. These late-blooming selections will be added as new accessions in the USDA-ARS tart cherry collection at the PGRU in Geneva and will serve as parental material in the MSU tart cherry breeding program.

Approach:
Tart cherry germplasm selections that bloom significantly later than `Montmorency¿ will be identified. That identification of the late-blooming germplasm is critical to our achieving our goal of developing tart cherry cultivars that are less susceptible to spring freeze damage than `Montmorency¿. We will evaluate Russian plant material collected in a 1998 exploration trip to Russia. We presume that the original P. fruticosa evolved extremely late bloom time to avoid spring freeze damage in its native habitat in central Russia. We have previously reported that hybrids of P. cerasus x P. fruticosa bloomed significantly later than `Montmorency¿. We will also be analyzing a newly available seed collection of P. fruticosa and P. fruticosa species hybrids collected from the mountains south of Budapest, Hungary, and seedlings with the winter hardy German landrace cultivar `Schattenmorelle¿ in their pedigree.