April 14, 2017
Researcher breeds better haksap berries
By MARGARETT WATERBURY
For the Capital Press
Some people take up new
projects in retirement. Golfing,
say, or restoring old cars. But for
plant breeder Maxine Thomp-
son, retirement from her posi-
tion as a professor of horticul-
ture at Oregon State University
offered the chance to focus on a
pet project she’s been involved
with for many years: haksap
berries.
Haksap berries are the edible
fruit of Lonicera caerulea, a hon-
eysuckle native to northern bo-
real forests in Asia, North Amer-
ica and Europe. The extremely
cold-tolerant plants produce a
deep purple, tangy-sweet berry
said to provide a concentrated
dose of health-promoting anti-
oxidants.
Maxine began working on
haksap in 2000, initially concen-
trating on varieties from Siberia.
“I first evaluated 35 Russian
varieties,” says Maxine, “and
none of them are any good.
They’re small, and they bloom
too early, when the bees aren’t
out. They’re not suited for this
climate.”
Then, a friend passed along
a single haksap bush some-
body had brought him from
Japan. She planted it out, and it
bloomed a month later than the
Russian varieties. “And the next
year,” laughs Maxine, “I went to
Japan, and got seeds from eight
different sources.”
Today, Thompson works
Margarett Waterbury/For the Capital Press
Shinjie Kawai poses in front of a haksap variety that breeder Max-
ine Thompson named after him on his farm in Brownsville, Ore.
exclusively with cultivars from
northern Japan, which she says
have a superior flavor and berry
size to varieties from Russia, as
well as better adaptation to mod-
erate coastal climates.
Thompson’s initial plant-
ings were in fields at OSU, but
in 2008, she decided to take her
plants home with her. Trouble
was, she didn’t have space for
all her bushes — so she reached
out to Shinjie Kawai, a former
student and current faculty re-
search assistant in OSU’s De-
partment of Horticulture.
Unlike most Americans,
Kawai was already familiar with
haksap berries from his native
Japan, where they’re harvested
and used as a popular ingredient
in ice cream, tea and other pro-
cessed products. Intrigued by
the project, he said yes, and ded-
icated a half-acre of his Browns-
ville property to the berry.
Since then, he and Thomp-
son have worked closely, work-
ing together to grow out selec-
tions and evaluate varieties.
They’re looking for traits
like yield, flavor, disease resis-
tance, upright habit, a large and
firm berry and a dense fruit set
pattern.
“It’s been very exciting to
be able to work with her,” says
Kawai.
So far, the fruit is still too
soft and irregularly dispersed
for machine harvesting, which
means harvest labor costs are
a significant barrier to wide-
spread commercial adoption.
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