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by Rachel Cooper If the strawberries in your shortcake are particularly plump and tasty this sum-mer, you may want to thank Dr. Andrew Jamieson. Jamieson is an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada plant breeder at the Atlantic Food and Horticulture Research Centre in Kentville, Nova Scotia. Since starting work there in 1983, he has brought eight new strawberry varieties to the market, from Cavendish in 1990 to Valley Sunset in 2009. (Mira, Sable, Cabot, Brunswick, Evangeline, and Wendy are the others.) When we met in his office at the Research Centre, it soon became clear that Jamieson enjoys his work. His youthful manner belies his gray hair, and he laughs readily as he speaks about his work in Kentville’s strawberry breeding program. That program was started in 1949 by Jamieson’s predecessor, Donald Craig, who retired in 1983. Remarkably, Craig and Jamieson between them have led strawberry breeding in Atlantic Canada for more than 60 years. Jamieson’s interest in horticulture was sparked in childhood by his grandmother in New Brunswick. “She had a front porch full of six-foot grapefruit plants, and she grew gloxinias that would bloom all the time,” he says. His own family always had a vegetable garden, and Jamieson had a small garden and grew plants on his window ledge. His father worked for the railway, and the family moved to Nova Scotia In 1966. “I basically grew up in Nova Scotia. I consider myself a Nova Scotian with New Brunswick roots,” he says. His curiosity about plants took him to Acadia University and a degree in biology. “I was interested in biology and in botany,” he says, “but I wanted to do something that had a practical benefit. I went to the University of Guelph, which was known as an agricultural school, and I took plant pathology.” While studying plant diseases, he was introduced to some breeding courses and decided to stay at Guelph to earn a Masters and a PhD. Before he had even finished his PhD, he

Strawberry fields forever

was hired to his position at the Research Centre. “I was still partway through my PhD, so I started taking more breeding courses and became fascinated with the breed-ing,” he says. “It’s something that kind of gets in your blood. Each year there are new surprises, new things to see,

new generations of plants.” Although Donald Craig retired the same year that Jamieson was hired, he was available during the first few summers. “We did have an opportunity to ‘walk the strawberry seedling rows’ together,” Jamieson says. As a breeder, you’re never 100 percent sure, when you introduce a new variety, whether it’s going to be taken up by the industry or disappear, he adds. “Wendy has become successful quite quickly. It was introduced in 2006, and now it’s one of the five main varieties being grown in Canada. Each one of those five varieties accounts for 10 to 15 percent of sales.”Four of those five are Kentville short-day varieties. Every year, about 25 million short-day strawberry plants are sold. Commercial growers like them because they produce large crops during our typical strawberry season, from late June until late July.

CREATING NEW VARIETIES Bringing a new variety to market takes about 10 years. Jamieson starts by crossing two different varieties or numbered selections that have certain traits he’s interested in, for example one

In this 1993 photo, Andrew Jamieson is tasting a strawberry. Note the evaluation sheet on which he records observations on traits such as flavor. (Christine Burbidge-Boyd photo)

Jamieson’s strawberry variety Wendy, introduced in 2006, now accounts for 10–15 percent of sales of short-day cultivars grown in Canada. About 25 million short-day strawberry plants are sold every year. (Andrew Jamieson photo)

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with resistance to a particular disease and another with very large fruit. The crosses are done in winter, in the greenhouse.The seeds from that cross are sown, and Jamieson and his staff plant about 100 plants and seedlings from each cross. From the 40 or 50 crosses they do each year, 40 or 50 little families of seedlings go into the field, totalling perhaps 5,000 plants. When strawberry season comes around, Jamieson walks up and down the rows many times and selects the ones to save. Since the overall rate of saving seedlings is about 0.6 percent, he saves about 30 plants from the original 5,000 – all of which were genetically different. “From the cross between one that has a certain disease resistance and one that has large fruit, I’d be hoping to find an offspring that has both traits,” he says. “Over a number of cycles of breeding, you gradually build up the traits you want.” Jamieson is particularly interested in varieties that are disease resistant. They’re more profitable for growers, and they reduce the quantity of pesticides needed. The ideal strawberry variety would be disease and weather resistant, and would also have excellent flavor, large fruit that travels well, good color, and an abundant yield. When asked about his own favorite strawberry, Jamieson laughs. “I’m very picky about which ones I eat, because I spend five weeks of the summer tasting practically every day,” he says. “Usually the favorite ones are numbered selections that haven’t been named yet, although the Wendy variety is very good.” One new strawberry (so far unnamed) was selected in 1993 and is flavorful, although the yields are just medium. Even so, some pick-your-own growers are growing it because their customers like it, he says. Another, selected in 2004, has excellent flavor but dark berries, and he’s concerned that the berries may be too dark for the market.

HELPING THE GROWERS “Everything Andrew does is to the advantage of the strawberry industry, including the nurseries that are growing his varieties,” says nurseryman Charles Keddy. “Over the years he’s had a lot of

very successful varieties.” Keddy owns and operates C.O. Keddy Nursery in Lakeville, near Kentville. He also belongs to the North American Strawberry Growers Association and

served as its president in 2003 and 2004. His nursery sells strawberry plants across Canada and in the northeastern United States. “Andrew’s varieties are the foundation for our business on the strawberry side,” he says. “The largest percentage of our northern plant sales is with varieties that have been developed by the Kentville Agricultural Research Centre.” Keddy appreciates Jamieson’s objectiv-ity. ”If he feels that a variety doesn’t have some characteristics that are better than a variety that’s already out there, then he won’t release it just to have another variety. It has to have some quality that’s better than the varieties that we already have,” he says. “He’s done a very, very good job over the years of selecting the right variet-ies. I think that’s quite apparent when you look at the impact that his varieties have had on the strawberry industry.”

NOT THE ONLY FRUIT Although strawberries have been Jamieson’s main focus, he breeds other

A tiny blackberry seedling is examined to see if it will be thorny or thornless. The little seedlings don’t have thorns yet, but they have stalked glands (little hairs along the edge of the leaf with knobs on the ends) if they will become thorny. (Heather Pye photo)

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fruit including raspberries and blackber-ries. “We’ve been breeding raspberries for quite a long time, although not as long as strawberries. It’s just in the last year or two that I’ve had a couple that I think are really good; I’m quite excited about them. They don’t have names yet, just numbers. One is spineless, and it’s really large and firm – we’re trying to breed a more firm, meaty kind of raspberry.” Picking costs have been climbing, and larger berries help keep the costs down, he says. For blackberries, the hope is to cre-ate a thornless variety that will grow upright like raspberries. What keeps Jamieson going in his 28th year of breeding strawberries and other berries? “I want to make a contribution to the agricultural com-munity, to the profitability of growers,” he says. By helping to make berries more plentiful and reasonably priced, he also hopes to make it easier for people to enjoy the health benefits of eating more berries. In his spare time, Jamieson has bred rhododendrons and roses in his garden. For vegetables, he especially likes to grow tomatoes; he tested eight varieties last summer. He and his wife, Laurel, have five daughters and three granddaughters. The two youngest children, 15 and 17, are still at home. Besides gardening, Jamieson enjoys hiking, cycling, and looking for “treasures” in second-hand bookstores. He is involved in the life of the New Minas Baptist Church and organizes its site for Inn From The Cold, an emergency homeless shelter that runs during the winter. In January, Jamieson was awarded an Honorary Life Membership from Horticulture Nova Scotia for his con-tribution to the horticultural industry in Nova Scotia. “Really, strawberries are what has put us on the map,” he says. “But I think raspberries may put us on the map even more, in time.” Raspberry shortcake, anyone?

(Rachel Cooper is a freelance writer living in Delhaven, Nova Scotia.)