Mar 4, 2011
Sundance berry getting ready for release

The newest cranberry cultivar release from the University of Wisconsin-Madison cranberry breeding program has shown itself to be a reliable and consistent performer. In fact, the new hybrid – tentatively named Sundance – has been so predictable in field trials it’s almost boring, joked Brent McCown, a UW-Madison cranberry research professor.

Speaking at the 2011 Wisconsin Cranberry School, McCown said Sundance has excellent yearly bud set, large berry size, good color, high tolerance to both high and low nitrogen fertilization rates and has exhibited reliable performance over multiple seasons in trial plantings.

“The two things that you really notice about this variety is the large berry size and the heavy flower bud production. Almost every upright has a flower bud, and we’re also seeing multiple buds per shoot,” McCown said.

In multiple field trials, Sundance produced 215 to 500 barrels per acre compared to 217 to 271 barrels per acre for established beds of Stevens planted on the same marshes. McCown said the higher production of Sundance cranberries was due to both more total berries and larger fruit.

While larger fruit size hasn’t been a major selection criteria in the UW cranberry breeding program in the past, McCown said larger-sized cranberries may become more important with the increasing demand for sweetened dried cranberries.
The cranberries produced by Sundance averaged about 2 grams per fruit, about double the size of most of the cranberry cultivars commonly grown in Wisconsin.

Sundance is the second cranberry cultivar to be released by McCown and fellow UW-Madison cranberry breeder Eric Zeldin. When it was patented in 2003, HyRed was the first publicly developed cranberry hybrid released in 30 years.
More than 200 acres of HyRed cranberries have been planted, and 80 percent of that acreage is in Wisconsin. HyRed seems to be best suited for northern climates, which is what the researchers wanted.

“We were selecting for a variety that matured sooner and had good color,” McCown said.

Both HyRed and Sundance are crosses of Stevens and a Ben Lear seedling.

As crop plants go, cranberries are relatively undomesticated. Many popular varieties, including Ben Lear, were taken directly from wild cranberry bogs and cultivated. The Stevens cranberry, an easy-to-grow cultivar that constitutes about 60 percent of the cranberry acreage in Wisconsin, is the result of a single round of breeding by USDA in the early 1930s.

The cranberry’s wild character provides plant breeders with an abundance of genetic variation, which makes the apparent consistent performance of Sundance and increased production of great interest to cranberry growers.

UW-Madison’s patent and licensing organization, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, has filed a patent application for Sundance, and McCown expects the cultivar to be commercially available in 2012. Depending on the demand from cranberry growers, the new cultivar will be available both as “plugs” and as vine cuttings, McCown said.

A license from the foundation to produce and sell Sundance cranberries requires growers to maintain the genetic integrity of the patented plant and keep it from hybridizing with other cultivated varieties. Growers must also agree to pay a one-time, upfront license fee and an annual royalty once they begin selling Sundance fruit. All licensing proceeds from the sale of the fruit return to UW-Madison to support scientific research and other programs.

By Lorry Erickson




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