ASHS 2015 Annual Conference

The dissemination of information on fruit cultivars has gone through many changes in recent times. For many years, the primary means of sharing information on new cultivars were limited to grower meetings, factsheets, meeting proceedings, nursery catalogs, and other print sources. As internet resources developed, the internet became a primary source of information about new cultivars, their primary traits, and recommendations for use. Universities have also included internet sources of information. The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture has a long history in fruit breeding, the program having begun in 1964. More than 60 cultivars have been released, including blackberries, grapes, peaches, nectarines, and blueberries. The University first began using the internet to provide new cultivar information in the early 2000s on its Cooperative Extension Service website. The presentation used short written descriptions of cultivars and pictures. In 2013, the University first utilized YouTube videos to provide additional exposure for the fruit cultivar releases.  The video and audio for five blackberry, three nectarine, four peach, and six table grape cultivars were recorded at the University’s Fruit Research Station, Clarksville, in the breeding program’s advanced selection plots. The videos ranged from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes in length, and included views of the fruit and plants of each cultivar along with narration highlighting the major attributes of each. Final production including editing of the videos and adding music to each were done at the University Campus. Portions of the songs “Blackberry Freedom”, “Table Grape Getalong”, and “Peach Blues” were used to introduce and end the videos, all original compositions provided for these productions.  The videos were posted between 3 July and 15 Oct. 2013. Overall, the videos proved to be the most popular of the video series of the University’s Agricultural Experiment Station, far out-numbering other crops and topics in numbers of views.  Among the fruits, blackberry views were much higher than those for table grapes, peaches and nectarines. As of early March 2015, the most popular of the blackberries was ‘Prime-Ark® Freedom’ with almost 5,000 views. Of the table grapes, ‘Faith’ had the most views, 935. The peaches and nectarines were viewed the least, the most popular was ‘Bowden’ having 400 views. Total views for all cultivars were just over 25,000 by this same date. This method of communication has increased exposure for the cultivars and added a new dimension to information sharing from the breeding program.