Dr. John R. Clark, Distinguished Professor of Horticulture with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, introduces the Ponca Blackberry, released in 2020.
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[Transcript]
Ponca blackberry. In my years in fruit breeding at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, this is one of the most exciting discoveries I've had a part in. Why is it so exciting? It is a good blackberry, berry after berry after berry. Difficult to get blackberries to be consistently good and sweet, and Ponca, it shines in that characteristic.
Ponca ripens early. It's very near Natchez season, one of our earliest varieties, and so it'll get into the market in the early season. Ponca's characteristics include: a berry size of about seven grams, which is comparable to Ouachita, a very important Arkansas variety, and larger than Osage, one of our most popular high flavored varieties. The berry chemistry is one of the best I've seen for a blackberry. Anywhere from 10 to 13 percent average soluble solids for the season, the sweetest one we've released. It has a sub-acid flavor which always complements the sweetness, and it has a tremendous aromatic profile.
The storage of Ponca is very good. It retains its black color very good with very limited reversion or reddening of the cells in storage. It maintains its shiny appearance, that sweetness carries through on flavor. I think for a storage berry and for shipping, it has great potential. And for local markets, your customers are going to come back and ask for Ponca.
Yield is very important in our blackberry breeding program because we want to have productive plants year in and year out. The yield for Ponca is approximately 15 to 20 thousand pounds per acre in our test plots, and is equal to that of Ouachita and Osage, two of our successful varieties that have been stable yield plants in the commercial market.
Ponca has a couple of unique plant characteristics that are new to our blackberry variety profile, and that includes the ability to produce the primary crop which ripens early very similar to Natchez in season, and the secondary crop which ripens anywhere from 14 to 20 days later. When we have a frost, we have a little bit of recovery crop potential because these buds break a little later. A unique aspect of Ponca is its plant type. It has a shortened internodes, and that's the space between leaves and shoots and flower clusters, and it allows a more compact type plant. This is the fruiting area which is about shoulder heigh to slightly lower, where the canes have been tipped to train them the prior year. However the primocanes on Ponca emerge above the fruiting canopy later, which is an added benefit in that tipping is not required early or during harvest in our trials, and it also allows the tipping to be done after harvest. This is a labor saving technique and reduces some management costs, which probably will be beneficial to growers of commercial blackberries.
In the berry category, blackberries have the greatest growth potential, and the only thing holding back is marketing and better varieties. Often times people say, "I don't like blackberries because they're tart or sour." Ponca is sweet. Berry to berry to berry consistency is better than any blackberry I've ever experienced. Give Ponca a try. I think it can expand your blackberry sales, and put smiles on customer faces.
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