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Darlene Polachic
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Free lance writer
Published
in the Western Producer March 15, 2001
Prairies prove ideal for new sour cherry
by Darlene Polachic
Prairie growers may soon have a new crop alternative: cherries.Bob Bors from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan says new Prairie-hardy dwarf sour
cherries could soon be a viable commercial industry for the Prairies.
The cherries Bors refers to are sour cherries, the type used in processed foods like pie fillings, juices, ice
creams and yoghurts, liqueurs and wines. Dried, they can go into cereals or be eaten out of hand.
To this point, Ontario and Michigan have been North America’s traditional
producers of sour cherries. All that may change.
The development of prairie-hardy cherries
has been on-going in Saskatchewan since the 1940s. Les Kerr, the first manager of the Saskatoon Forestry Farm, was
the first person to develop hardy cherries.
He did so by crossing a sour cherry with a Mongolian cherry from
Siberia. The result was a very cold-hardy tree that produced well and yielded tart fruit the size of a large
saskatoon berry.
In the late 1960’s the University of Saskatchewan
launched a similar research program, obtaining new Mongolian cherries from
Siberia and crossing them with more modern cherry cultivars.
By the 80’s, researchers Rick Sawatsky and Cecil Stushnoff had begun breeding the hardy cherries back to sour cherries
again to get better quality and larger fruit size.
Bors says the resulting fruit shows huge
potential. “The University has a large orchard with several different sour cherry varieties.
We took some of our fruit to a provincial horticulture show last
year and set up a taste test. We put out two lousy varieties and a range of six others. People even liked the lousy ones.
These are cooking and processing cherries, but many people liked them as eating cherries.
They have more sugar than sweet cherries, but because of the higher citric acid content, they
are more tart.”
Bor says Michigan is currently the number
one producer of sour cherries in North America and their cherries have 12 to 15
brix (the unit of sugar level measurement).
“Ours have 15 to 22 brix which places them around the sugar level of
grapes. You need 22 brix to make wine
without adding sugar.”
Bors believes the superior quality may be
a result of Saskatchewan’s long summer days and high concentration of sunlight
during the ripening season. He says once ripened, the cherries hold onto the tree for three to four more weeks and
get a little sweeter with each week.
Of the new developments, the only one that
has been released so far is ‘SK Carmine Jewel’ (Prunus eminens). Its
juicy fruit is dark red in color and weighs about 4 grams.
“‘Carmine Jewel’ ripens in mid-july, just
when saskatoons are on their way out,” Bors says. “It could be a good companion crop in a U-pick operation. It is
also well suited to backyard growing conditions.”
Soon to be released is another variety
still identified only as Number #721-16.3.
This cherry, which ripens in August, is lighter in color and is about
the size of a quarter. Bors says it will be available to growers in late Summer
2002 or Spring 2003.
Cultivars begin producing three to four
years after planting, with yields doubling every year thereafter. Mature trees
produce from 10 to 15 kilos of fruit per bush.
There are several characteristics outside
the higher sugar content that make Bors believe prairie sour cherries are
superior to any currently being grown elsewhere.
“Our trees are easier to harvest because
they grow in a compact bush about two meters high [hence the designation Dwarf
Sour Cherries]. The Montmorency cherries in the East will grow to be two storeys tall if they aren’t
pruned. Since the fruit is mostly
produced near the top of the tree, our cherries could be harvested with an
over-the-row picker like the one used to harvest saskatoons.
Cherries come off easier than saskatoons,
though, and the fact that the fruit is not falling from a great height means
there is less bruising.”
Prairie cherries also have a color
advantage. The East’s Montmorency cherries produce an almost colorless juice so
dye is added during processing to produce the rich red color in pie fillings
and juices. Saskatchewan cherries yield
a dark red juice that is still well-colored even when diluted.
“Our sour cherries don’t need other plants
around to cross-pollinate them,” Bors goes on.
“And in 20 years, we’ve seen hardly any disease. That offers the
possibility for organic production. The
only thing we’ve had to contend with is cherry fruit fly and that is easily
controlled. In Ontario, producers have
to spray every week or they won’t get a crop.”
Bors conducted an informal study of grocery stores around Saskatoon and found few cherry products on the
shelves. Any canned cherries were imported from Poland and Hungary.
He says that doesn’t mean there is no demand. “Locally, cherries would go
over very nicely as a Pick-Your-Own,” he says, “and there have been some great
advances made in drying techniques.”
“We would need a lot of producers
producing a lot of cherries to fill commercial demand, but juice people are
already showing an interest. One person
from the juice industry wanted to buy the entire U of S cherry crop last
year. But they were already spoken
for.” |
