In Europe, the black currant fruit is really popular, but chances are, you’ve never tasted it here. Farming black currants was banned nearly a hundred years ago because the plant spread disease through forests. Now, states are easing up on their bans, and growers are determined to bring this “forbidden fruit” to the American palate. But forestry experts caution that the black currant revival may still pose a danger to trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Phillips reports:
Transcript
In Europe, the black currant fruit is really popular, but chances are you’ve never tasted it here.
Farming black currants was banned nearly a hundred years ago because the plant spread disease
through forests. Now, states are easing up on their bans, and growers are determined to bring this
“forbidden fruit” to the American palate. But forestry experts caution that the black currant
revival may still pose a danger to trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Phillips
reports:
Greg Quinn is quite an entrepreneur. He’s run a restaurant in Europe and been the “garden guy”
for a New York City television station. Now, he’s living upstate on a farm in the Hudson Valley
region. His latest money making idea is black currants.
“Nobody in this country virtually knows what a currant is. In fact what people think currants are
are generally not currants. Those little dried raisin-y things are usually grapes and they’ve been
incorrectly dubbed currants. So no one knows what a currant is and Americans love new things.”
When he started looking into the black currant business, though, he ran into a problem: the fruit
was illegal. It had been banned since 1911 because of the role it played in spreading blister rust
through white pine forests. The disease moved from pine tree to currant shrub to pine tree, killing
young pines and damaging mature ones. Back then, timber was more important than berries, so
black currant cultivation was outlawed. The berries, which are native to the U. S., continued to
grow wild in the forest, though, and Quinn saw this as evidence that black currant and pine could
coexist. After months of lobbying the state legislature, Quinn got the ban lifted. Now, he’s free to
farm black currants.
(sound of Quinn walking up to currant crop)
“So these are some of the new varieties in here. Not much to look at but you can see the new
cuttings and so forth. Right now there’s probably less than a hundred. But by next Spring I hope
to have several thousand. And that’s really again the tip of the iceberg.”
Quinn’s quest is to make black currants the latest “hot fruit” on the market, with juices, teas,
wines, candies, and other products. He’s not the only one with the idea. Recently, five other states
ended their black currant bans, and there are black currant start up farms in Indiana, Utah,
Oregon, Connecticut, and Vermont. But some forest experts say states should proceed with
caution. Dale Bergdahl is a University of Vermont Forest Pathologist. He points out that in
Vermont, where black currant cultivation is legal, blister rust infects twenty percent of white pine
saplings and nearly a third of pole-sized white pines.
“If we begin planting more and more of these black currant species, the opportunity is there for
more infection to develop on our white pines, and that of course would be a detriment to the
timber industry. So in the long run there is risk involved and that risk needs to be seriously
considered.”
New York state officials say the state is proceeding with caution. Steve McKay is an agricultural
educator with the state’s extension service. He says the law signed last summer is designed to
keep black currants, which he refers to as “ribes,” away from situations most likely to promote the
spread of blister rust to white pine trees.
“The worst problem is when seedlings are young, and you’re in a place where there’s a lot of
moisture, and you have the ribes very close to where you’ve got those plantings. Because if you
get the infection started when the trees are young, it can cause girding in the trunk which within
five to seven years will kill the tree. When the trees are infected at a later stage in life, the disease
won’t travel back down the branch and gird the tree. So the bottom line is if you can get the trees
up to size without having had an infection at a young stage, then it wouldn’t be a problem.”
New York’s new law limits black currant cultivation to state-approved “fruiting districts,” meant
to avoid these conditions. But forest pathologist Dale Bergdahl doesn’t think these districts will
keep young white pines safe from blister rust. He’s skeptical of other black currant compromises,
too – such as the disease-resistant black currant varieties growers in New York and elsewhere are
trying. The reason, he says, is simple: black currants produce seeds, and there’s little control over
where they end up.
“Birds are going to carry it off and deposit it across the landscape in various ways. The next
generation of ribes may have no resemblance to the parent. That seed deposited in the field, by
birds, will grow up to be potentially susceptible to white pine blister rust. That in itself suggests
that there are some problems beyond the planting.”
Bergdahl says there is one compromise he would accept: seedless varieties of black currant. But
that could take some time to develop, and black currant advocates such as Greg Quinn are
showing no signs of waiting around.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lisa Phillips.