Bejo is going ahead with commercial release of the new Eastern-adapted hybrid tested as EXP3622. Here is a video we shot in the summer to show how it performs, including head to head with Eastern Crown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcH4wkioMMU
The new broccoli hybrid compares well to the competition.
This hybrid combines adaptation traits and architecture from the public breeding program of Cornell’s Philip Griffiths with the quality and productivity traits in Bejo’s commercial breeding program.
Commercial quantities of seed are available, but are not in 2025 catalogs. Contact your seed dealer for more information.
The BolTBDH mapping population is valuable for . It is now one of the most easily avialable for use by researchers. The availability is due to seed increase, cataloging, curation and distribution by the USDA germplasm system.
The BolTBDH mapping population is derived from a cross between broccoli and chinese broccoli. The progeny are all heading Brassica oleracea, allowing investigation of many reproductive traits and traits of commercial importance.
Many thanks to curator Becky Povilus and previous vegetable curators Zach Stansell and SS for making this possible and to technical specialist Paul Kisly for producing all the seed that is now available for research.
An valuable feature, in addition to the easy access and associated genetic map, is that there are already about 5000 phenoptypes assessed for each of the lines in the population. If a triat segregates in this poulation, you can not only map it quickly using your phenotype data, you can also look for traits that cosegregate and for related processes without doing any additional lab work.
Mark Farnham in his research field at the Unites States Vegetable Lab in Charleston, SC, showing off broccoli that grew in the summer heat without defects
Mark Farnham was one of the key instigators of the Eastern Broccoli Project, which was made possible in the beginning because of the advances he made in heat tolerance in the 1990s and early 2000s. His position with USDA-ARS made it possible to invest in a far-sighted goal during that time, and that breeding has now been brought to fruition. Several of his broccoli parental lines and hybrids are, or will soon be, released for use in industry. As of today, August 1, 2020, Mark is a retiree.
In addition to maintaining a vigorous research program, Mark served as Research Leader for the US Vegetable Lab, helping assure the high performance of that unit.
Mark hired Zach Stansell to work in his program for many years. As a result of his excellent work with Mark, Zach went on to do his PhD at Cornell University with Thomas Björkman, and is now working for USDA-ARS in Geneva to complete the circle.
Mark is also known for his high-glucosinolate broccoli and downy-mildew resistant collards.
The Eastern Broccoli Project is fortunate to have Mark continue as an official collaborator through the end of the project so that he can continue contributing leadership in the breeding program, and make sure that his best germplasm is used by industry and his successors in public-sector breeding.
The Eastern Broccoli Project team wishes Mark the best in his retirement and in his continued engagement with us.
Important news: as of 2024 this popultation is available from the USDA Plant Germplasm Research Unit. It can be ordered under a single Plant Introduction number, PI 700926.
Here is the link: https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=2138964
This accessibility makes this the most easily used mapping population for research program with limited capacity to do the breeding and seed increase usually required. You only need to phenotype for your trait.
The information about the population on the GRIN database included phenotype information for about 5000 traits. That is valuable for correlating your trait of interest with the overall variation in brassicas.
January 19,2025
The plant research community has a valuable and practical new resource available: a rapid-cycling Brassica oleracea population that can be used to map the genetics of many traits simply by phenotyping. The population and related resources are described in a recent publication led by Zach Stansell in Thomas Björkman’s lab at Cornell University.
The map and reference genome are complete
Bioinformatic-analysis pipeline is available
Seed is available for free
Researchers only need to phenotype and analyze
The BolTBDH population is derived from a from a cross of rapid-cycling Chinese kale with broccoli. It is particularly valuable for studying reproductive development because progeny lines have inflorescences that range from non-heading to fully heading broccoli. Variation is documented for many other traits, such as architecture and glucosinolate content, and variation in many others remains to be explored and documented.
Parents of BolTBDH: the rapid-cycling Chinese kale, TO1000 and the broccoli ‘Early Big’.
Zach Stansell has adapted his tool for breeders so that it is usable for any crop that has a highly subjective breeding goal.
Zach Stansell has developed an R package that helps breeders assess their criteria for subjective traits like beauty in many locations.
We are sharing the information with various media outlets. The first pass is a publication in the Cornell Chronicle.
Many horticultural crops need to meet the quality criteria of a particular market or of the main breeder. They need to meet those criteria in many environments. How can you test for quality in many locations at the same time. This technique is good at predicting the reference person’s quality score by having trained raters make objective measurements.
The package is posted on GitHub so that anyone can use it for free. It is annotated and revised to work with just about any trait of interest or any crop. The revision was done with Deniz Akdemir, Cornell statistician. The development of the method is published in HortScience (Stansell, Zachary, Thomas Björkman, Sandra Branham, David Couillard, and Mark W. Farnham. 2017. Use of a Quality Trait Index to Increase the Reliability of Phenotypic Evaluations in Broccoli HortScience 32:1490-1495. doi: 10.21273/HORTSCI12202-17 )
Late nitrogen application can cause early side-branch elongation, making the heads less desirable on the market. The top image shows a tight head with solid side branches. The lower image has a head that has begun to loosen at the sides. This effect can be reduced by having the last nitrogen application at least four weeks before harvest so that the growth rate is slowing down a bit just as harvest begins.
One of the challenges with raising broccoli in the East is getting heads to stay dense. In the warmth of summer, the outer branches of broccoli tend to start elongating a little before harvest maturity. They “blow up” in the words of many producers. The result is a head that doesn’t pack tightly in the box and has soft edges that are prone to damage in handling.
The solution is to let growth slow a little during the week before harvest. Growth is promoted by the combination of warmth, water, nitrogen, and sunlight. Warmth is a given for harvests in July and early August, sunlight we have no control over, and abundant water sometimes comes whether we want it or not. The main management tool is nitrogen.
Slowing growth by reducing nitrogen is a considerable challenge because abundant nitrogen is needed during the vegetative growth to get strong, healthy, fast-growing plants. The best approach is to supply nitrogen relatively early in the growing period, and not add nitrogen in the last four weeks.
Many popular broccoli varieties are harvested starting only eight weeks after transplanting. Therefore, the last nitrogen application should be only four weeks after transplanting. At that time, the foliage is near full cover, which a good time for a traditional side-dress application as well as cultivation to get escaped or newly germinated weeds. Fertigation through a trickle-irrigation system would be during the fourth week. At that time, the plants are large enough to take up the nitrogen but not so far along that excess growth at harvest will cause loose heads.
Applying all of the nitrogen before planting is a possibility. Ordinarily, applying 120 to 150 pounds per acre of nitrogen preplant is ill-advised because of the high likelihood of leaching before the crop takes it all up. However, because broccoli is only in the ground for about nine weeks through the end of harvest, and reaches its maximum uptake five weeks after transplanting, the risk of leaching loss is relatively low compared to the typical situation. Pre-plant application of the fertilizer opens up production options that don’t allow side-dressing or liquid fertilization.
This early-nitrogen approach is also helpful in reducing hollow stem. Hollow stem is likewise a symptom of excessive late vegetative growth. The main tool for managing hollow stem is adjusting the plant population. If hollow stem is a problem, it’s likely that both yield and quality will be improved by spacing the plants closer together. In New York we have found an in-row spacing of 8 inches to work quite well. But limiting late nitrogen also tempers the growth rate at the right time.
This article was published in VegEdge on June 5, 2019. A publication of the CCE Cornell Vegetable Program.
The Eastern Broccoli Project is intended to supply some of the growth in broccoli consumption in the East. The bulk of supply comes from coastal California in the summer and the desert southwest in the winter. But now, imports from Mexico are playing a greater role.
When the project started in 2009, Mexico was not a significant supplier of fresh broccoli to the East. That has changed. The volume from Mexico to the US is over $200 million per year. The frozen market is almost entirely from Mexico and Central America.
The total value of imported fresh broccoli has quadrupled over the past ten years. Current imports represents about one fourth of the total wholesale volume. That amount can put pressure on prices. Frozen has risen modestly.The wholesale price of imported broccoli has been rising steadily.
Mexican imports primarily compete with winter production in Florida and Georgia. The volume in the winter months has been rising over the last five winters, more than the summer imports. Growers in those areas are also expressing concern about the effect of the USMCA trade deal, fearing that it would allow dumping in their market.
Eastern production is closer to the Northeast market than either Mexico or the desert, but it is significant. The distance to the terminal market in Bronx NY from Hastings, Florida is 1000 miles in 15h of driving. From San Luis Potosi, Mexico is 2400 miles in 36 hours, and from Yuma, Arizona is 2600 miles in 39 h.
Winter is the peak of fresh broccoli imports, but there is significant volume all year. The quantity shipped in January and February has been increasing most.
Frozen broccoli imports are fairly stable throughout the year, reflecting a continuous consumer demand.
There are some facilities to freeze broccoli in New York. Developing a frozen deal for New York growers would be needed for a customer like a school system that specified New York broccoli under the farm-to-school program, but needed ready-to use product in their kitchens during the school year. The frozen-food giant Bonduelle raises and freezes broccoli in Québec, so the economics can be made to work nearby.
Thanks to USDA-ERS economists Kamron Daugherty and Broderick Parr for compiling this important information.
We have eagerly awaited the 2017 Census of Agriculture to see whether the Eastern Broccoli Project is having an effect. Today, the results were released, allowing us to compare our early effect (2017) with the pre-project baseline. We are happy to see so many more Eastern farms finding a place for broccoli in their crop mix.
Broccoli on muck soil gets a lot of nitrogen and water, and can grow very tall. Retired Cornell broccoli researcher Joe Shail provides the scale.
One consideration is that broccoli can get too big, and get hollow stem. Growers harvesting in the heat of summer find that making the last nitrogen fertilization four weeks before harvest helps avoid the excessive burst.
Some early varieties are maturing in 50 days in the summer. If you do the math, that means the last nitrogen side dress or fertigation is just three weeks after transplanting. Putting on ~150 lb/ac of nitrogen without burning the plants takes some planning.
The article show that wholesale buyers expect broccoli to look familiar. Local variants with slightly different color or flower-bud size were acceptable only to natural food reseller, not at standard supermarkets. The challenge for a new region is to meet standards that were developed for other production areas.
