June 3, 2022
Backyard vineyard a lifeline for Southern Sensation grape
By Mary Hightower, U of A System Division of Agriculture
Fast facts
- Selection A-1400 scrubbed for winterkill
- Variety can survive areas of high disease pressure
(831 words)
(Newsrooms: with art at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzSLve; with sidebar on Pierces disease)
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Sometimes it’s the strays you take home that wind up being the most successful.
Take, for example, the Southern Sensation grape. It’s a variety released jointly by Texas A&M and the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
Nearly a half-century ago, James Moore, fruit breeder for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, worked to develop a variety that could defy one of the South’s greatest grape foes: Pierces disease.
Moore selected a white grape he dubbed A-1400 for trials at the Fruit Research Station near Clarksville, part of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station.
The grape had a complex pedigree. Some of its genes came from the North Carolina vineyard of Bob Dunstan, professor of Romance languages who liked to breed grapes. The grape can claim among its parentage a wine grape called Black Rose and most importantly, a French-American hybrid called Villard Blanc. This hybrid was the product of a mélange of native American species, and it is this mix which likely provided Moore high hopes for A-1400.
The grapes produced high quality fruit, but weather turned out to be the grape’s Achilles heel.
“The selection often experienced winter damage to canes, but in two years, 1985 and 1997, it was killed to the ground due to damaging winter low temperatures,” said John Clark, distinguished professor and fruit breeder for the Division of Agriculture. “It was discarded from the Arkansas breeding program after the 1997 season.”
However, that’s not where the story ends.
Share and share alike
Moore was not one to keep something to himself and shared cuttings of A-1400 with John Lipe, a Texas A&M researcher and professor and internationally known for his expertise in fruit.
Fellow Texas A&M fruit specialist Larry Stein asked Lipe to share a few cuttings, so he could set up trials to see how it would fare in areas with moderate to high Pierces disease pressure. He set up one trial at Stephenville, Texas, southwest of Fort Worth, and a second one at Castroville, west of San Antonio.
“When I moved to the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in 1985, there had only been limited work done on table grapes in Texas,” Stein said. “So, I established a trial with the varieties from California, New York and Arkansas.
“Dr. Lipe had a few table grapes planted and so I asked him for the ones he had as well,” Stein said. “It turns out that two of them were Ark-1475, known as Victoria Red, and Ark-1400.”
The grape produced fruit at the Stephenville site starting in 1988. At Castroville, where Pierces disease pressure is high, only one grape cultivar from a multi-grape trial survived: A-1400.
The Castroville trial was ended in 1997 when the owner sold the land and the researchers needed to move. However, Stein wasn’t done with the tough and tasty grape — he took some cuttings home where they took root in his backyard.
“I did not have a good place to take them other than my house as I did not have any space at the Research and Extension Center,” Stein said, noting he had always been impressed by the fruit quality.
“This grape tasted and looked like the grapes available in the grocery stores; it had no seed remnants as did some of the other table grape varieties, and it had a mild non-offensive flavor as opposed to some overpowering flavor,” he said.
Adopt-a-cultivar
At the time Stein decided to adopt this now-homeless selection, his backyard was in transition. A small vineyard was being shaded out by a planting of pecan trees.
“Luckily, I had established some vines elsewhere when this began to happen,” he said. “I like growing things in general, so yes for both work and fun!”
His “work and fun” approach proved to be a lifeline for A-1400.
Stein then contacted Jim Kamas, a Texas A&M extension specialist and researcher, about increasing the vines using grafting. However, the grafts failed, and it was thought that the vines were infected with viruses, the cause of the failure. Mark Black, a Texas A&M plant pathologist, submitted cuttings of A-1400 from the Castroville vines to the University of California Foundation Plant Services for virus clean up.
A few years later, Clark learned there was virus-free A-1400 stock available and worked with Justin Scheiner, a Texas A&M viticulture specialist, to get a new trial in the ground. Started in 2017, the vines bore fruit in 2020.
“After this successful trial, plus the many years of survival of A-1400 in Texas, a decision was made to cooperatively release A-1400 as Southern Sensation Seedless in 2021,” Clark said.
Southern Sensation is described as having a mostly neutral to slightly fruity flavor with berry clusters that can weigh up to a pound each.
Clark said, “it is hoped that Southern Sensation Seedless will show good survival in the Deep South, where Pierces disease pressure prevents most bunch grapes from surviving.”
Texas A&M has a video about this release.
To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices.
Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 25 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Media contact: Mary Hightower, mhightower@uada.edu.