 Good morning, everyone. Yes, thank you, and now for inviting me for presenting this information today. Again, this is about the new Muscadine cultivar releases, and one may wonder if we have currently over 500 cultivars of Muscadine's why we need to speak and why the breeders need to develop new cultivars at all. So I'm going to try to explain why. Next slide. Yes, Muscadine's are a crop that is very popular in the southeastern United States, and their reasons for the popularity, and there are some reasons for the crop not being as popular in other parts of the countries like in the north or in the west of us. So why they're so popular here? Well, this is a native crop. The first Muscadine vine that was a named cultivar is located in North Carolina and is still alive. It is over 400 years old and is still producing fruit every year. So that tells us Muscadine's are very well adapted to the hot and humid climate in the southeastern. They're pretty much very resistant to different insect and diseases that other types of grapes are experiencing in the southeastern, and most of the cultivars of Muscadine's are resistant to the most deadly disease, the pierces disease. They're also very good and in my opinion for right now probably the only candidate for from fruit crops for organic production. So this makes them exceptional in these terms. They're also highly productive and very versatile crop. They could be used fresh as a dessert on your table. They could be processed into juices, pies, gems and jellies, a lot of products based on Muscadine's. So with that, let me look at some of the characteristics that a juice cultivars need to have to be so popular and demanded on the marketplace. A very important characteristic is the amount of yield or productivity of cultivar that is being grown for juice production. Also, the quality of the juice is not the same based on the cultivar, so there are some cultivars that are more feasible for juice production. On the other hand, the size of the berries is not as important in this situation because of course those berries will be smashed anyhow. But the pigment stability is a very important factor in choosing a purple juice grape for juice production. Muscadine's are well known with the fact that their pigments are not as stable as the pigments in vinifera and some other types of grapes. What happens over time is the juice is taking on a brownish color and is becoming very unattractive on the marketplace. So noble for now is the only cultivar that is popular because its pigments are more stable and they keep the good quality of the color of the juice for a longer period of time. What are the important traits that we need to look for in a fresh market cultivars? Of course, they need to have those large berries, large berry size that is attracting customer in the marketplace. Another important kind of biological trait, they need to have this dry picking scar or stem scar and this is the point where the pedestal is being attached to the berry. So very often, for some cultivars, the berries, when you are harvesting the berries, the skin around the pedestal is being torn and this is because mainly those berries are not completely fully ripe at this point of time, but there is also some genetic predisposition to this trait as well. Another important feature for fresh market berries, they need to be very sweet and very flavorful, very aromatic and most of the cultivars are having these characteristics, but some of them are better than others. Uniform ripening for concentrated harvests may be important if you don't have like you pick operation if the farmer harvests the crop. On the other hand, in situations like you pick, we might need the cultivar to have more extended season of ripening so this can attract more you pickers to come to your vineyard. The appearance of the berries is also very important and again, the larger they are, the better they are like by the consumer. What is the most important biological characteristic of muscanines, unlike any other grape species, they require polynyzers. They have three types of flowers, male, female, and they have these perfect flowers. And different cultivars are having some of those characteristics, mainly male cultivars are found in the wild and they're not in production, so I'm not presenting them here, but on the picture, you can look at the female cultivar PAM and you can see that the hunters are not well developed on a female cultivar. On the other hand, we have noble with those perfect flowers, perfect flowers, what we call them, and this cultivar is self fertile. Very often, noble is being used as a colonizer for many other. One inconvenience when you are cultivating female cultivars of muscanines, you need to think of planting a pollinizer and very often to pollinizers, cultivars are recommended. So the grower not only needs to arrange for marketing the major cultivar that he is growing, but also he needs to find markets for the pollinizer cultivars. So as you can figure out, the breeding programs have different goals today, and some of the features are more important than others, but of course the breeders need to think of the use of the cultivar, either it's going to be for juice production or fresh market production, and from there go and try to develop cultivars with those desirable traits. One major biological trait that every breeder is looking at this is the cultivar adaptation for the environment in which it is going to be grown. And for now, muscanines are mainly grown in the southeast, but not all region in the southeast are equal. For example, the highly productive muscanine supreme is experiencing a lot of cold damage, especially in the spring, in the mountains of North Georgia. So breeding and developing cultivars that have more cold hardiness is one of the goals of the breeding programs. The other feature, as I just mentioned is the pollination biology. It is well known that female cultivars are producing the largest berries of muscanine, but this inconvenience of having to plant another pollinizer cultivar comes with that feature. So breeders are looking to develop more self fertile cultivars that would produce those large berries like the female cultivars do right now. The season of ripening is related to your harvesting season and your market options so extending or concentrating the cultivar that would extend or concentrate the ripening for your operation would be important. Another important characteristics of those muscanines is the quality of the fruit in the flesh and also the skin quality. We all know that our muscanines are having those tough skins and they're hard to chew especially in combination with those large seeds that are found in those cultivars. So many breeding programs now are looking to develop seedless muscanine cultivars and it is not an easy task mainly because of the genetics of muscanines and other types of grapes. Muscanines have different number of chromosomes than most other grapes. So this is the process of breeding seedlessness in muscanines is requiring a lot of time and a lot of effort. The good characteristic especially for fresh market cultivar would be the percentage of berries with dry stem scar as I mentioned is turning the skin around the pedestal at the time of harvest can reduce significantly the storability and the shipability actually of the muscanine. So developing cultivars with high percentage dry stem scar is really important and of course disease resistance is always on the radar of any breeder. And some earlier releases I will present this majesty that was released by Florida AM in 2008. We have seen somewhere written that if you'd like to impress your visitors especially they're not from around with a nice large size berries of muscanines you should find a grower who has majesty. So this cultivar is probably still the producer of the largest berries that we have right now on the market so the average berry size for majesty is reported to be close to 17 grams. In addition, majesty has firm flesh texture, and one of those other features that I mentioned the skin of majesty is relatively thin. So this is one of the first to have this wonderful attribute. The color of the berries is reddish to black and this cultivar is being reported to be highly disease resistant. In terms of productivity, I have seen kind of contradicting reports probably in Florida where it was developed is very highly productive but some reports from Georgia for example, are not agreeing completely with that report. So this kind of shows the importance of each cultivar being tested for each environment where it's going to be grown. Majesty also requires a polymerizer cultivar for optimal production. Well, the next cultivar I wanted to mention is Yodora. It was developed at USDA in Poplarville Mississippi and released in 2009. Yodora has medium to high yields and the berries are reported to be large. I think they might be on the borderline, medium to large. They're reported to be like 10 grams. Yodora also has this nice attribute of high percent dry scars and needs to be planted with another cell for tile cultivar. A good quality of Yodora, it may be cluster harvested because the berries are evenly ripening on the cluster, which is a feature that brings it closer to vinifera or French grapes. And this is the easiness at harvest, cluster harvesting of course. With that, I'm going to transition to some of the newest University of Georgia, Muscadine releases, and this image represents whole. Muscadine that was released in 2014. And this is a cell for tile and large rooted muscadine cultivar. Remember, usually cell for tile cultivars are producing smaller base, female cultivars up until now were producing the largest base. But color is changing that tendency. So this is one of the earliest varieties that farmers can pick. The harvest in Georgia begins in late July. So most of the information that I'm going to share about the new releases is coming from the breeders and those breeding programs where the cultivars were tested for a couple of years. There are not a lot of other research reports from other locations, but we will try to address this with an experiment in Alabama, in central Alabama. So whole berries are sweet. They can be picked early and whole produces very attractive color that the consumers in the Southeast prefer. You can see there is more yellow in the color. So another release from University of Georgia is Lane. It was released in 2012. It is another cell for tile. First early ripening black cultivar. So it kind of combines three important and features cell for tile cultivar with early ripening season that produces black berries. So this is the first early black berry, black cultivar on the market. The berries are large, but smaller than supreme cultivar produces. They're reported to be on average 10 grams. The vigor is moderate and the yield is lower than supreme and tarot, those high producers of masculinize, but is better than most of the other female cultivars. Lane has a tendency to split and tear during picking. So it really needs to be picked at the right moment at the right time. The flesh of the cultivars is kind of firm and that prevents leakage during storage and shipping to some extent. So this is a nice feature for Lane. Another new release is poke. It was released in 2017. It is also cell for tile. You can see that this breeding program kind of focused on perfect flowering cultivars. It is ripening during mid season and produces large fruited berries. So 15 grams on average. This is pretty large and larger than some of the female cultivars can produce, for example. It has long pedicels and this makes easy to pick the single berries. They have a high percent of dry stem scar. So pretty good in this direction. Significantly larger grapes than other cell for tile cultivars. Poke, of course, does not need a pollinizer to produce large fruit. Rubycrisp is the latest released from the University of Georgia breeding program. It is also cell for tile, mid season ripening, and yields are among the highest. The percentage of wet scar split is higher than whole and poke. So that's not that good. But berries are very attractive. As you can see on the image in the middle, we can look at this. Rubycrisp with kind of brighter red berries, very, very attractive to the eye. Have a good flavor. But because of the wet stem scar is probably recommended more for home gardener views. The firm flesh and tender skin of Rubycrisp makes it distinctly different from the other tested Mascarine cultivars and more similar to the texture of the Vitis vinipera or the French table grape cultivars. Also, the other feature the breeders were developing berries are non-slip skin and the berries skins have a neutral flavor as well. So this brings it closer to vinipera or the French grapes as well. Saran home was released by Florida. It is again hybrid between Mascarine, the French grapes and numerous other species of grapes. The berries are considered to be on the smaller side, but the flavor is good and the overall quality of this cultivar is good. It has this crisp flesh texture that the breeders are looking to develop as well. So when you eat it, it reminds you of the normal French type of grapes. Southern home is also recommended for more for home gardeners because mainly because of the small berry size. But it also has this wonderful ornamental quality. You can look at this cut leaf pattern and in the fall everything kind of turns bright red and it's a wonderful wall of bright red leaves of Southern home. It is reported to be resistant to berry rot diseases like black rot, bitter rot and ripe rot. Of course, resistant to xalala for stdls. So it makes it very feasible for home production. With that I'm going to transition to two cultivars that were developed by private breeding programs recently. And the first of them is Rasmadas, Gardens of Life released this cultivar. It is a hybrid between mascadines and French grapes. It is seedless and also self-fertile. It is reported to be continuously fruiting along the shoot, so that is a good feature because the number of clusters is reported to be higher for this mascadine. It is also reported to be highly disease resistant. The berries are sweet and tasty with a crisp texture. So going away from this sleep skin type of mascadines that we know of right now with the newer releases. Rasmadas is having some dwarfiness in it. So it's reported to be able to be grown successfully on your patio. So if you're looking for a smaller plant or edible plant, you can consider Rasmadas for sure. The other Gardens of Life release that is seedless also is Omai. This is reported to be the world's first truly seedless mascadine. It is self-fruitful, disease resistant, cold hardy and produces high yields over 40 pounds of fruit per mature vine. You can look at the color. It is really very attractive bronze color. The skin is reported to be tender and the fruit is sweet and aromatic, everything that you can expect from a mascadine grape. So as I mentioned, this information is coming from other vocations and I outlined the importance for each growing environment to have their own information on the performance of those cultivars. And here we are in 2019. We established this experimental plot, the Children's Research and Extension Center to evaluate some of the newly released cultivars with improved qualities. And the list of cultivars is here on the right-hand side. So we have Polk, Lane, Col, Eudora, Supreme, and we have Rasmadas and Southern Home as well, even though those are more for homeowners use. But also we acquired some advanced selections from two breeding programs, one in the University of Georgia and the other from the University of Arkansas, and they are also mentioned. So the number of cultivars and selections here is 13 and all of them are grown in this replicated study. So the older plants were planted in 2019 and another set of cultivars in 2021. So we're using the typical planting distance for mascadines, 20 by 12. And last year they produced some clusters, but we declustered the vines to provide the roots a better chance to establish and for the longevity of those cultivars. So right now we're looking to evaluate the first crop in 2022 season and this picture is taken last Friday from some of the cultivars and we're hoping for a good season so we can evaluate and distribute information to our growers. So with that I thank you for your attention and I don't know if there is time for questions.