Coffea Canephora
Coffea canephora, which produces the popular robusta beans, is the second most important variety of the coffee plant.
Like its arabica cousin, C. canephora can grow tall; if left to its own device, it can attain a majestic thirty feet in height.
But like the Arabica plant, it is kept to about eight feet in height to allow for harvesting.
In other ways, too, the robusta plant resembles the arabica plant.
C. canephora doesn’t deliver a crop until three to five years after it is planted, after which the fruits take almost a year to mature. And the plant can continue to bear cherries for twenty to thirty years.
Like C. arabica and C. canephora appreciates sixty inches of rain per year. However, this plant likes it considerably hotter than its arabica cousin, and also tolerates higher humidity.
Grown mainly in West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia and parts of South America, robusta plants do best in equatorial conditions with temperatures ranging from the mid- seventies to the mid eighties, and altitudes ranging from sea level to 3,000 feet.
They also differ in that they are both more resistant to disease and higher yielding than robusta plants. The typical robusta tree yields as much as two to three pounds of beans per year – about twice the amount produced by an arabica plant.
Moreover, at 2 percent caffeine by weight, the caffeine content of robusta coffee is higher than that of arabica.
Robusta beans are considered inferior to arabica because they are far less flavorful, with a distinct bitterness.
This is why robusta beans are less expensive than arabica beans and are often used in lower grade commercial coffee blends, as well as in the processing of many instant coffees, both flavored and unflavored.
Coffea Canephora
May 25, 2009
May 18, 2009
History of Selection and Improvement of Blueberries
History of Selection and Improvement of Blueberries
During the 1890s, various plant scientists in Maine, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and other areas made limited efforts to select and transplant particularly good wild bushes for commercial production.
None of these was successful.
Recognizing both the potential widespread commercial value of the blueberry and the demand for the fruit on the Boston market, Dr. Frederick V. Coville, a botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture, began extensive research on the plant in 1906.
He joined forces with the commercial grower who had been instructing her workers to select and transplant especially good will blueberry plants from the wetlands surrounding her bog.
After discovery the plants’ soil requirements, Dr. Coville de devoted another two years to their culture from seed to fruit and investigated methods of propagating and pollinating the bushes.
In 1908, the first wild highbush blueberry plant for breeding purpose was selected in Greenfield, New Hampshire and named ‘Brooks.’
By the time of his death in 1937, Dr. Coville had propagated over 68,000 seedlings, from which he had selected and introduced 15 improved cultivars (some of them third generation hybrids).
Coville and others realized that interspecific crosses could readily be made between species with the same chromosome number (homoploids).
He recorded successful hybrids between Vaccinium stamineum L. (deerberry) and V. myrtilloides Mich. as well as between V. melanocarpum Mohr. and V. myrtilloides Mich.
The discovery of interspecific hybridization permitted plant breeders to combine desirable traits (such as cold hardiness, higher sugar content, and drought tolerance) of several species into a single plant.
Interspecific hybridization ensures the diversification not only of the blueberry industry but also of the gene pool available to growers.
This diversification is nature’s way of guaranteeing that no single natural calamity will obliterate blueberry production.
To extend the range of blueberry production into northern areas, breeders following Dr. Coville’s lead have crossed the highbush with the lowbush species to reduce plant height, thus taking advantage of insulating snow cover, while at the same time increasing fruit size.
Many of the progeny also have flexible canes that bend but do not break, under snow.
The half highs are often twiggy and strongly rhizomatous, and they may spread out of their rows when planted too far south.
History of Selection and Improvement of Blueberries
During the 1890s, various plant scientists in Maine, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and other areas made limited efforts to select and transplant particularly good wild bushes for commercial production.
None of these was successful.
Recognizing both the potential widespread commercial value of the blueberry and the demand for the fruit on the Boston market, Dr. Frederick V. Coville, a botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture, began extensive research on the plant in 1906.
He joined forces with the commercial grower who had been instructing her workers to select and transplant especially good will blueberry plants from the wetlands surrounding her bog.
After discovery the plants’ soil requirements, Dr. Coville de devoted another two years to their culture from seed to fruit and investigated methods of propagating and pollinating the bushes.
In 1908, the first wild highbush blueberry plant for breeding purpose was selected in Greenfield, New Hampshire and named ‘Brooks.’
By the time of his death in 1937, Dr. Coville had propagated over 68,000 seedlings, from which he had selected and introduced 15 improved cultivars (some of them third generation hybrids).Coville and others realized that interspecific crosses could readily be made between species with the same chromosome number (homoploids).
He recorded successful hybrids between Vaccinium stamineum L. (deerberry) and V. myrtilloides Mich. as well as between V. melanocarpum Mohr. and V. myrtilloides Mich.
The discovery of interspecific hybridization permitted plant breeders to combine desirable traits (such as cold hardiness, higher sugar content, and drought tolerance) of several species into a single plant.
Interspecific hybridization ensures the diversification not only of the blueberry industry but also of the gene pool available to growers.
This diversification is nature’s way of guaranteeing that no single natural calamity will obliterate blueberry production.
To extend the range of blueberry production into northern areas, breeders following Dr. Coville’s lead have crossed the highbush with the lowbush species to reduce plant height, thus taking advantage of insulating snow cover, while at the same time increasing fruit size.
Many of the progeny also have flexible canes that bend but do not break, under snow.
The half highs are often twiggy and strongly rhizomatous, and they may spread out of their rows when planted too far south.
History of Selection and Improvement of Blueberries
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