US: Plums have a summer market niche
“It’s a niche market, not a large market, but it has a gourmet quality about it,” says Bill Shane, at the Southwest Michigan Horticultural Research and Extension Center near Benton Harbor. Shane breeds peaches, but works with growers as they keep evaluating plum varieties that have that gourmet appeal and are productive in their climate. It takes skillful growers to produce plums, he says.
One person who is optimistic about the future of plums is Dr. Brian Smith, who breeds plums at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls. So far, his reputation hinges on one plum cultivar named Black Ice, released in 2006. The plum is large, round, sweet, very dark—and bred in a climate where winter low temperatures can hit 40 degrees below zero.
“Black Ice is the only plum I’ve released so far, but I have more in the pipeline,” Smith said.
Plums grown in the Midwest have never measured up in size and quality to those of California. Black Ice, however, has many of the -characteristics of California plums while being quite winter hardy.
Black Ice was bred from a California plum (Z’s Blue Giant) and a winter hardy cherry plum. Black Ice arrived with a dark purple-black tender skin, juicy red flesh, and semifreestone pit, and ripened two to three weeks earlier than any other large quality plum for the Midwest.
Black Ice trees are naturally semidwarf. Many plum trees are not self–fertile, and the preferred pollinizer for Black Ice is Toka, but Compass and Alderman also work.
The fruit produced by Zaiger Genetics in California is not well suited to the climate of the northeastern quadrant of the United States. Even the breeding program at Vineland, Ontario, is geared to producing fruit for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Hardiness Zone 5, Smith says, and he wants fruit that will thrive in zones 3 and 4.
He is shooting for 3. This last winter, the most severe in the Midwest in 20 years, showed that Black Ice is not as hardy as he had first thought, but hardy enough for zone 4. That makes it quite a bit hardier than peaches and hardier than either the Japanese or European plums.
Black Ice has the eating quality of Japanese dessert plums and ripens about August 5, making it a true summer fruit, he said.
Smith is hoping to release two new stonefruits in the near future, one a small, round, plum-apricot cross that, he says, has “unique flavour, the richness of an apricot and the sweetness of a plum.” He also has a new yellow plum with a rosy blush that “has amazing sweetness and -flavour.”
Source: goodfruit.com
