20 GERMINATION.CA MARCH 2018 BOB BORS FONDLY remembers the early days of his breed- ing career, when he was looking to the future and trying to figure out what direction to take his career in. He wanted to be a breeder, but the question was which plant crops to dedicate his life to. He never wanted to devote himself to one crop, but did want to put more effort into a few. His breeding program involves breeding about eight crops, but he spends more than half his time on haskap. “The breeder who hired me in my undergraduate days was a strawberry/raspberry breeder who gave up straw- berries. He said, ‘Why be one of the best 100 strawberry breeders when I can be one of the Top 10 raspberry breeders?’ So I thought to myself, ‘What’s kind of rare or new that I can really be one of the best at?’” Enter haskap. This niche crop isn’t just one of the latest fruits to take the berry world by storm — it’s a tiny purple powerhouse that is fuelling an entire business sector that is set to come into its own in 2018 and possi- bly give the blueberry industry a run for its money. Bors, fruit breeder at the University of Saskatchewan, has made a name for himself as Western Canada’s expert on the haskap berry, an exciting new crop for North America that’s turning heads for its great flavour, versatil- ity and its use in everything from wine to gravy. The good varieties taste something like blueberries mixed with raspberries. The bad ones taste like tonic water, he says. The early-maturing varieties are the first fruit crops to ripen, even before strawberries. Late ones are ripe three weeks later. “In Saskatchewan, the first guaranteed frost-free day is June 1, and the berries are already ripening three weeks after that,” Bors says. “It’s an amazing crop.” In terms of acreage, there are about three million haskap plants being grown in Canada from B.C. to the Maritimes and as far north as the Yukon, according to Curtis Braaten, owner of Saskatchewan’s Haskap Central Sales Ltd. Half of Canada’s haskap acreage is grown in Quebec, he notes. The largest single haskap orchard in Canada is in the Maritimes, and grows around 180,000 plants. Those numbers are growing. According to Braaten, Canadian haskap acreage is now big enough that in 2017, fresh samples from Canada were sent to Asia and the United States, where a considerable market for fresh Canadian haskap berries is on the horizon. Breeding Bonanza Things weren’t always this rosy for the haskap berry, however. “When we started, haskap was a crop that came in only at the end of June. It had small fruit that looked like the eraser on the end of a pencil,” Bors says. One group of varieties came from Russia, and ripened too early. The other group of varieties was Japanese, and ripened unevenly. BIGTHINGSAHEAD FORBREAKOUTBERRY Haskap is emerging as a serious contender in the global berry world, and it’s all because of a breeding program on the Prairies. Marc Zienkiewicz Haskap isn’t just one of the latest fruits to take the berry world by storm — it’s a tiny purple powerhouse that is fuelling an entire business sector that is set to come into its own in 2018.