Ribes Breeding Programmes in Ukraine - Recent Achievements

Since 1980s of the last century the separate breeding programs of black currant (Ribes nigrum L.) and red and white currants (Ribes rubrum L.) have been started by several research horticultural centers in Ukraine. During 30 years of breeding over thirty black currants and twenty red and white currant cultivars were bred. Presently most of them have been successfully released and few cultivars ('Yubileynaya Kopanya', 'Sofievskaya', 'Svyatomikhaylovskaya' and others) keep leading positions in the berry production in Ukraine. Most popular and newly promising cultivars of these crops were evaluated for their parentage, horticultural aspects, nutritional compounds and also possibility of using them in the currant breeding programmes. Short descriptions of cultivars are also presented. Several pomological traits as well as heritability analysis of hybrid families were studied. Growth habit, time of flowering and ripening, berry mass, soluble solids, yield per plant/hectare, sensory parameters, resistance to fungal diseases and some pests, drought resistance and environmental adaptability were assessed. Several blackcurrant cultivars (R. nigrum L.). carry detached valuable horticultural traits. In addition, the complex of those characters were selected. Analyses of the parentage and heritability showed that cultivars bred on multiple genetic bases have a tendency to increase the contents of nutritional compounds and some other specific traits (drought resistance). Sources and donors of valuable traits were identified and recommended to use in the Ribes breeding programmes.