Ping Yu: Hello everyone, welcome to the Blooms and Beyond podcast, a podcast that uncovers plant history,
Ping Yu: culture and management through the lens of science. I'm your host, Ping. How's everyone doing today?
Ping Yu: I am doing great because I have one of the most successful woody ornamental breeder in the U.S.
Ping Yu: My dear colleague and mentor Dr. John Ruter joined me today to talk about his breeding work on hibiscus
Ping Yu: and share his enchanting stories behind the scene.
Ping Yu: Without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. John Ruter. I hope you enjoy.
Ping Yu: Well, welcome, John. Welcome to the podcast. But first, I know all the people in our industry
Ping Yu: almost would know your name. But first, for those who doesn't know, can we jump start
Ping Yu: off with the introduction? Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
John Ruter: Sure, Ping. Yeah, so I'm Dr. John Ruter. I'm the Armitage Professor of Horticulture
John Ruter: at the University of Georgia, Director of the Trial Gardens on campus. I teach three
John Ruter: different courses and also have an ornamental plant breeding program that focuses both on
John Ruter: herbaceous and woody ornamentals.
Ping Yu: Yeah, you have been working on the field for I don't know how many years, forever.
Ping Yu: But I know that you didn't start off as a breeder, but can we jump back, trace back
Ping Yu: to your childhood?
Ping Yu: Do you say, are you like, what first sparkled your interest in the horticulture?
Ping Yu: How does it come into a radar in the first place?
Ping Yu: Is that always?
Ping Yu: something interests you or this is just something that stumbles through this trajectory?
John Ruter: Sure, so I got interested in horticulture when I was 12 years old and so I grew up in the Los
John Ruter: Angeles area, San Fernando Valley, and back then boys and girls had to take a series of shop courses.
John Ruter: that were required.
John Ruter: So the girls took the home economics track
John Ruter: and the boys took just regular shop courses,
John Ruter: drafting, wood.
John Ruter: And then both the boys and girls got to take
John Ruter: a introductory horticulture course.
John Ruter: And that's what lit the spark right there.
Ping Yu: Wow.
Ping Yu: So back then, girls and boys take different courses?
Ping Yu: What is a shop course?
John Ruter: So, yeah, so for the boys we had a drafting course that we had to take.
John Ruter: So you actually had to draw your house plans for the final project there.
John Ruter: We had general shops and crafts, woodworking, basic electric.
John Ruter: Working with leather, I made belts and assorted things.
John Ruter: And then, both boys and girls took the horticulture course.
John Ruter: I believe the young ladies took sewing and some things like that and a cooking course.
Ping Yu: Wow, so you start your horticulture journey in the early days when you were like 12 year old and so
Ping Yu: In that time you already know that you're interested in horticulture. So you just go
Ping Yu: to that direction and finish your high school and a bachelor master all the way to PhD
John Ruter: Yeah, so I took this introductory horticulture class in seventh grade.
John Ruter: In ninth grade, I took another horticulture course as an elective.
John Ruter: So by the time I was 14, I was working at a retail wholesale nursery in the San Fernando
John Ruter: Valley.
John Ruter: And then my parents moved out to Simi Valley
John Ruter: during my high school years.
John Ruter: And so I got a job helping manage a Christmas tree farm,
John Ruter: growing live Christmas trees, Pinus radiata.
John Ruter: And I got involved in the FFA program,
John Ruter: Future Farmers of America.
John Ruter: I went to a large high school, about 3,000 students, but unfortunately we didn't have
John Ruter: a lot of kids that were interested in horticulture or agriculture.
John Ruter: So some of the competitions, it was me, myself, and I from our team.
John Ruter: But that was okay.
John Ruter: And state competition was always at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo every year.
John Ruter: So, of course, Cal Poly had a wonderful undergraduate ornamental horticulture program that I got exposed to.
John Ruter: And that's where I decided I wanted to go do my undergraduate.
John Ruter: And so I got my bachelor's degree in ornamental horticulture concentration in nursery management
John Ruter: and actually minored in pest management and chemistry.
John Ruter: And I thought that I might want to be a farm advisor in California or have my own business
John Ruter: possibly.
John Ruter: And I went to visit a school that had a master's program.
John Ruter: and they basically said that they could teach me to scout cotton, almonds, and vegetables.
John Ruter: And I said, "Well, I kind of like greenhouses, landscapes, and nurseries."
John Ruter: And they said, "Well, we can teach you how to do cotton, vegetables, and almonds."
John Ruter: And so...
John Ruter: I said, "Well, thank you for your time."
John Ruter: And so I'd never seen a flowering dogwood in California.
John Ruter: I'd never seen a balled and burlapped plant.
John Ruter: We grew everything in containers, large wooden boxes, or occasionally some bare root material.
John Ruter: So I decided to apply back east for graduate school and got offered an assistantship at
John Ruter: the University of Tennessee.
John Ruter: So I went there and did my master's degree there and then I went to the University of
John Ruter: Florida and did my doctorate in horticultural science, but it was mostly plant physiology
John Ruter: and biochemistry.
John Ruter: And when I graduated, there were two positions available in the nursery crop arena.
John Ruter: One was at Cornell and one was a brand new position at the University of Georgia, located
John Ruter: down on the Tifton campus.
John Ruter: They wanted a 100% nursery crop researcher, and the position was basically created as
John Ruter: of a federal review that had gone on in the department that said, "We have this large
John Ruter: nursery industry in the southwest corner of the state.
John Ruter: The main campus is five hours away.
John Ruter: You guys aren't doing anything to serve the industry.
John Ruter: Put an ornamental horticulturist in Tifton."
John Ruter: And so that's how I got to Georgia.
Ping Yu: Yeah, okay.
Ping Yu: Yeah, because I was like, well, you talk about the Cornell and Georgia.
Ping Yu: I was like, I guess I was guessing which, which offer did he take?
Ping Yu: Of course, for some Georgia.
Ping Yu: Go Dawgs!
John Ruter: Go Dawgs!
Ping Yu: Yeah.
Ping Yu: Yeah, so you didn't start it, I know your story, you didn't start it as a plant breeder
Ping Yu: and instead as an extension researcher for nursery and greenhouses.
Ping Yu: Can you tell us a little bit of how you
Ping Yu: Make yourself, I know your story, but our audience may not.
Ping Yu: Can you tell us a little bit how you transfer yourself
Ping Yu: from a nursery crop production researcher
Ping Yu: to a very renowned breeder?
John Ruter: Thank you. Yes. So yeah, initially I was doing pot-in-pot research, controlled release fertilizers,
John Ruter: plant growth regulators, all this production stuff to help the nurseries. And as part of
John Ruter: starting at the university, they gave me seven acres.
John Ruter: of land, no water, and told me to do container nursery research.
Ping Yu: In Tifton.
John Ruter: Yeah.
John Ruter: So, yeah, so I started doing a lot of on-site research until I was able to come up with
John Ruter: enough money to dig a well to put in an irrigation system and go from there.
John Ruter: But anyway, one of the things I realized early on is that a lot of the recommendations coming
John Ruter: out of Athens.
John Ruter: which was in a different climatic zone, different soil types and everything,
John Ruter: compared to the coastal plain of Georgia,
John Ruter: didn't really apply to the southern part of the state.
John Ruter: And having always just thoroughly enjoyed plants and being a plantsman,
John Ruter: I started putting in collections and doing evaluation studies,
John Ruter: looking at genera.
John Ruter: species, whatever, that would be suitable to grow in the coastal plain region of the southeastern United States.
John Ruter: Which was called Zone 8. Back then it was 8A.
John Ruter: It's now 8B on the new map, but I called it the forgotten zone of horticulture.
John Ruter: Because all the basically most of your botanical gardens that would have introduced anything would have been in your major
John Ruter: metropolitan areas.
John Ruter: And you just don't have a lot of large cities necessarily in the southeastern coastal plain region.
John Ruter: So anyway, yeah, first study that I put in was collaborating with the U.S. National Arboretum,
John Ruter: looking at red maples and elms.
John Ruter: So I was their southernmost cooperator.
John Ruter: there. And then, my PhD work was I used Japanese holly, Ilex crenata, as my model plant. And so,
John Ruter: I kind of got interested in the genus Ilex. And before I knew it, I had a collection of 300
John Ruter: different species, cultivars, accessions, you name it, got very active in the Holly Society
John Ruter: of America. And then, having worked with conifers in California,
John Ruter: and having my colleagues tell me that only pine trees grow in South Georgia for conifers,
John Ruter: I said, "You know what? I'm going to try and do a conifer collection as well for ornamental purposes, not for timber."
John Ruter: And anyway, so that was a great experience, and that eventually led to co-authoring a book on conifers.
John Ruter: for the southeast.
John Ruter: The interest in breeding came out of
John Ruter: having these collections,
John Ruter: doing the evaluations, seeing the needs,
John Ruter: working very closely
John Ruter: with the nursery industry,
John Ruter: seeing where there might be some opportunities
John Ruter: to develop some plant material.
John Ruter: We had done some
John Ruter: collaborative stuff with one or two
John Ruter: of the nurseries in south Georgia.
John Ruter: that led to an introduction or two.
John Ruter: But it was really when I got offered the professorship,
John Ruter: the opportunity to move to Athens,
John Ruter: there was, they wanted some teaching,
John Ruter: and they offered, would take over the trial gardens.
John Ruter: But what they really wanted was they wanted
John Ruter: an herbaceous ornamental plant breeder for research.
John Ruter: And so I said, as long as I get to keep my conifers
John Ruter: and hollies and camellias,
John Ruter: Yeah, I'll give it a shot to become an herbaceous ornamental plant breeder.
Ping Yu: That's cool.
Ping Yu: John, I know that for the past, I don't know, 20, 30 years of your career, you have released
Ping Yu: tons of different cultivars and that.
Ping Yu: has really shaped our industry.
Ping Yu: I know you have done like a hibiscus, hollies, camellias.
Ping Yu: Recently I know some of your work
Ping Yu: is also focused on Salvia and basil.
Ping Yu: So with all of your released cultivar,
Ping Yu: Do you have a favorite one?
John Ruter: I guess one of the real sentimental ones was my first holly release, one called Emerald Colonnade.
John Ruter: And that one has become very popular in the trade.
John Ruter: It's used not only as a standard landscape plant, but as a hedging plant for topiaries and espaliers and planter boxes.
John Ruter: And it's been used as a replacement for boxwoods on estates.
John Ruter: various places and so that was really the first release I had that really took
John Ruter: off and got established and got me all really excited about plant breeding and
John Ruter: what the possibilities are.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
Ping Yu: And for hibiscus, I know,
Ping Yu: your early stage of your breeding program, which is also a huge success and has made a big impact in our industry.
Ping Yu: Can you tell us how did you start with the hibiscus breeding?
John Ruter: Sure. Yeah, with the hibiscus breeding, so back in the, I'm gonna say the late 2000s,
John Ruter: There was a series of hardy hibiscus from Fleming Brothers nursery out in Nebraska.
John Ruter: Very cold hardy, some interesting leaf shapes, purple foliage, some interesting flowers.
John Ruter: They just... shipping season wholesale-wise is pretty much over May 15th.
John Ruter: for South Georgia and North Florida.
John Ruter: That's about when these plants would start to break dormancy
John Ruter: in containers in South Georgia.
John Ruter: I had the idea, maybe we could make them emerge earlier.
John Ruter: And also, the plants tended to want to lodge,
John Ruter: would just send up a few shoots,
John Ruter: and then they would get too big,
John Ruter: and just lodging's an agronomic term for falling over.
John Ruter: Anyway, so my initial goal was, okay, maybe we get them to emerge earlier and they don't
John Ruter: lodge, they don't get so big.
John Ruter: And so we did a couple rounds of breeding and we started to have some...
John Ruter: I'll say purplish red foliage show up.
John Ruter: And I would do a lot of garden club tours and other,
John Ruter: and so we would go out and visit my research plots
John Ruter: and I gave everybody flags and, you know,
John Ruter: go flag your favorites.
John Ruter: So sort of, you know, some consumer help.
John Ruter: What do you like?
John Ruter: And it didn't matter if it was the ugliest plant out there.
John Ruter: If it had red foliage, it got flagged.
John Ruter: And so I said, there must be something to this red foliage.
John Ruter: thing that's going on. So right about that time was when I transferred my program from Tifton to
John Ruter: Athens. And so I said, "All right, I'm going to get whatever red germplasm I can get my hands on,
John Ruter: and we're going to make crosses, as many as we can possibly do,
John Ruter: and plant them out." So the first planting was, I think it was over 1,200 seedlings.
John Ruter: We planted out and we rated them for aerial Phytophthora, Cercospora, Alternaria, flower size, color, foliage, all things that would make a good plant.
John Ruter: And we ended up picking seven out of 1,200 to keep.
John Ruter: So, it's going to be a breeder, you got to be willing to throw plants away or bush hog them, get rid of them.
John Ruter: And so that was our first...
John Ruter: I got a call one day, I'd planted some plants out at our mountain station up in Blairsville,
John Ruter: and the station superintendent called and said, "You need to come up and see your hibiscus plants."
John Ruter: He says, there's, there's something going on with them.
John Ruter: Yeah, so went up there and took a look and they were just thoroughly covered with hibiscus sawfly,
John Ruter: which is a Hymenoptera insect. So Hymenoptera, bee family.
John Ruter: And so it's the larvae that
John Ruter: chew on the foliage. The adults look like a little black fly with a red orange thorax.
John Ruter: Unfortunately, we have four generations a year in Georgia, so that can definitely be a problem.
John Ruter: So I said, "Okay, what can we do about building some resistance into these plants?"
John Ruter: So like a good plant breeder, I collected all the known species of hardy hibiscus, of which there's six.
John Ruter: or five species and two subspecies. Anyway, and I noticed that one of them, Hibiscus grandiflorus,
John Ruter: had very hairy leaves, full of trichomes, plant hairs. And when you looked at it under the
John Ruter: microscope, it looked like old shag carpet growing on the leaves, and we noticed that they had zero
John Ruter: damage.
John Ruter: So I said, "All right, there's my source of resistance right there."
John Ruter: So we made interspecific hybrids out of those, which crossed, but we had a hard time getting
John Ruter: the red foliage trait.
John Ruter: to go over. So we could make the crop. We got red petioles, we got red in the stems.
John Ruter: We thought, okay, maybe it's a recessive trait. We got to go to an F2. No, that didn't solve the
John Ruter: problem. And so then we took those F2 plants and then we back crossed them to some of the original
John Ruter: reds.
John Ruter: which took out some of the resistance, but we still had some resistance in there to get the red back in it.
John Ruter: Now with that resistance you get more of a matte red-gray colored leaf because the trichomes.
John Ruter: So out of all that initial breeding, we released two of the original crosses that came out of that
John Ruter: 1200, got selected.
John Ruter: And then the other three were these interspecific hybrids.
John Ruter: So we were the first one to release selections that had some resistance to hibiscus sawfly.
John Ruter: And then that's been huge because primary populations of Hibiscus moscheutos are along the eastern coast, often grown.
John Ruter: brackish areas near the shore and a lot of the growers along the eastern shore had given up
John Ruter: growing them because the pest was such a problem, even on the native plants.
John Ruter: And so anyway, eventually that led to five plants being selected for the Head Over Heels series.
Ping Yu: Yes.
John Ruter: That's been very successful for us.
Ping Yu: for any given if you ask any breeder.
Ping Yu: I feel like they're going to give you the number that they initiated, which would be
Ping Yu: thousands.
Ping Yu: And then at the end of the day, they're going to tell you, "Hey, I only got two or three
Ping Yu: or five, in your case, five or six out of thousands."
Ping Yu: And that's how you actually selected the plant that perfectly for your garden, for your yard,
Ping Yu: for the industry.
Ping Yu: So it's always a number game.
Ping Yu: Have you encountered during your hibiscus breeding process,
Ping Yu: have you encountered with another specific species,
Ping Yu: Hibiscus mutabilis?
Ping Yu: It's a native to Asian species,
Ping Yu: but I just haven't seen them in the U.S. yet.
John Ruter: Yeah, so an old-timey plant, particularly down in the coastal plains.
John Ruter: You'll see it at, say, older homes, old plantation farm sites.
John Ruter: So yeah, North Florida, South Georgia, it's not that uncommon.
John Ruter: We have done some breeding with it.
John Ruter: It was one of the first ones we ever attempted to make crosses on it.
John Ruter: The double-flowered form is very popular.
John Ruter: Of course, this is one that the flowers come out one color
John Ruter: and then they fade to another color by the end of the day.
John Ruter: But I always called the plant "flowers on a stick."
John Ruter: Because mutabilis has this problem, and it's this nice six to eight foot shrub
John Ruter: during the year, dies back to the ground, grows vigorously during the summer,
John Ruter: flowers in October. And so most people, one problem with selling it is in
John Ruter: October most people are thinking about mums and pumpkins, not necessarily
John Ruter: thinking about flowering hibiscus.
John Ruter: But anyway, so when Hibiscus mutabilis goes reproductive, at least with the double-flowered form, which is really popular, it drops all its foliage.
John Ruter: Oh, God.
John Ruter: So you end up with these flowers on the end of 6 to 8 foot of, you know, the stem.
John Ruter: So I always go, you know, flowers on a stick.
John Ruter: So what we did is I was able to access Hibiscus taiwanensis, which is a species from the island of Taiwan, which has very nice foliage on it, excellent foliage retention.
John Ruter: It has no cold hardiness whatsoever, it won't even survive in the ground, and flowers under completely short days, like in the greenhouse, it blooms in February.
John Ruter: So I was able to manipulate some mutabilis and taiwanensis to flower at the same time,
John Ruter: got those crossed, so we have a traditional F1 interspecific hybrid.
John Ruter: And boy, perfect example of what we breeders call heterosis or hybrid vigor.
John Ruter: I mean, these things would get 10 to 12 feet tall in one season.
John Ruter: And so, and they retain their foliage, single flowers, not the double flowers.
John Ruter: They would start to bloom in August instead of October.
John Ruter: But all the nurserymen are like, "Wow, that's cool, but that's way too big."
John Ruter: And so I was able to get my hands on a third species,
John Ruter: Hibiscus makinoi, which is from the archipelago of islands that's south of Japan.
John Ruter: And so I crossed that.
John Ruter: third species in. And so now we have nice bushes, full bloom right now, that are more in, say, the
John Ruter: four to six foot range, full of foliage, full of flowers, again, single flowers. I think that the
John Ruter: main thing with the plant is it's flowering when people are not necessarily thinking about going
John Ruter: out and...
John Ruter: buying something other than mums and pansies and snapdragons and ornamental cabbage.
John Ruter: Yeah, it's not blooming at the perfect timing.
Ping Yu: Yeah, so the reason I brought up the Hibiscus mutabilis is because when I grow up,
Ping Yu: where I grew up, I can see them every everywhere.
Ping Yu: It's the city flower of Chengdu, my hometown.
Ping Yu: And yeah, it got a very special like...
Ping Yu: feature like you just said, the flower change colors throughout the day.
Ping Yu: So it's tricky, interesting, and then a lot of there are a lot of cultivars that has
Ping Yu: big head, big flower head, and then different color change. And so that's interesting. That's
Ping Yu: the reason why I brought it up. But since you have now different species or different cultivars with
Ping Yu: in the hibiscus breeding program.
Ping Yu: When it comes to deciding which species to breed,
Ping Yu: is that easier to work with some of the
Ping Yu: United States native species?
Ping Yu: Plants were, what is the challenge of breeding
Ping Yu: for non-native plants?
Ping Yu: But for instance, the two hibiscus species
Ping Yu: that you mentioned,
Ping Yu: are some of them native to Asia and some of them are native to the U.S.
Ping Yu: What is the challenge? What's the difference of breeding or working on those non-native species versus the native species?
John Ruter: Sure, yeah. So all of our native species are what we call hardy hibiscus, okay?
John Ruter: So these are ones that are deciduous, die down to the ground, come back every year.
John Ruter: So they sort of fall into that herbaceous ornamental category there.
John Ruter: So all the ones that are native to the eastern U.S., those are all diploids, two sets of chromosomes.
John Ruter: in there. A lot of the Asian species, so Hibiscus mutabilis, taiwanensis, makinoi, Hibiscus syriacus,
John Ruter: the Rose of Sharon, would be the ones that are most commonly known there. Those plants are
John Ruter: generally naturally tetraploids, four sets of chromosomes, and even the base number of chromosomes
John Ruter: So, n equals whatever the base chromosome number is.
John Ruter: And then, of course, that doubles to get your diploid or four times that to get your tetraploid,
John Ruter: for example.
John Ruter: They're different between the North American and the Asian species as well.
John Ruter: So it's not easy to get crosses between Asian and American species because the ploidies are different, the chromosome numbers are different.
John Ruter: There was a cultivar floating around that is a moscheutos by mutabilis hybrid.
John Ruter: It basically looks like a large single-flowered mutabilis.
John Ruter: Having crossed a diploid with a tetraploid with different base chromosome numbers, it's completely sterile.
John Ruter: Oh, okay.
John Ruter: And so I've only ever seen one seed pod on one of these plants.
John Ruter: And it was actually last year.
John Ruter: I was quite surprised to see the seed then.
John Ruter: So grew seed off of it, bloomed them out this year, and there's no genetic variation at all.
John Ruter: at least visible in the phenotype. They all look exactly like the parent plant.
Ping Yu: So basically...
John Ruter: And they all seem to be sterile.
John Ruter: Yeah.
Ping Yu: Yeah. So basically if those two species with different lengths of chromosome or different
Ping Yu: number for the, what's it called, the baseline...
John Ruter: The base chromosome number, yeah.
Ping Yu: Yeah. And it's not comparable to cross them and to have a baby.
Ping Yu: for the next generation. Yeah, so yeah, so occasionally you will get the cross to make.
John Ruter: There's probably several examples out there of interspecific hybrids, but then quite often those
John Ruter: interspecific hybrids are what the animal world would call a mule. They're just, they're completely
John Ruter: sterile and cannot reproduce. It's, yeah, it's like how you mate the...
Ping Yu: No.
John Ruter: A horse and a donkey.
Ping Yu: Yeah, a horse and a donkey.
Ping Yu: That situation.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
Ping Yu: So the next generation...
John Ruter: Yeah, so the initial cross you can make, but then the hybrid is not fertile.
John Ruter: And so, yeah, sometimes it's just incongruity amongst the chromosomes.
John Ruter: They don't match up.
John Ruter: And that also leads to how we get sterile triploids sometimes too, where we can take
John Ruter: plants like reproduce with even numbers of chromosomes.
John Ruter: And a simple way to put it is that you cross a plant with two sets of chromosomes with a plant with four sets of chromosomes.
John Ruter: The hybrid ends up with three sets of chromosomes and somebody doesn't have a dance partner.
Ping Yu: For sure, yeah.
Ping Yu: What is something that people don't realize?
Ping Yu: about professional cultivar development. Can you walk us through the process of the variety
Ping Yu: development from the breeding program from beginning all the way to the market? And I know
Ping Yu: for breeding, I see it as, for breeders, I see it as a fashion designer for our industry because
Ping Yu: It is because you have to start working maybe 10 years ahead for woody plants and to decide,
Ping Yu: okay, this plant might make it maybe popular in the next 10 years for this industry.
Ping Yu: So you are the next popular fashion icon item for the future.
Ping Yu: So can you walk us through the whole process of how to decide the
Ping Yu: So...
Ping Yu: the variety development from the beginning to make the way to the market?
John Ruter: Yeah, yeah, we can use the Hibiscus moscheutos.
John Ruter: That was really the only species in the market in the late 2000s.
John Ruter: I mentioned that the ones that were in the trade at the time
John Ruter: had some flaws that could be improved upon.
John Ruter: There were some seed grown varieties. A lot of those I think did well further north.
John Ruter: I don't think they quite had the vigor we needed in the south.
John Ruter: But we were able to use those in our crosses to get early emergence and dwarf compact traits.
John Ruter: So they were beneficial from that respect in growing those.
John Ruter: So we're probably talking about starting this about 2009, for example.
John Ruter: And so our first population with crosses with red foliage and all that led to 1,200 seedlings,
John Ruter: those went in the ground in 2000.
John Ruter: I want to say 12 and they were evaluated in 2013.
John Ruter: And I would say commercial selection probably started about 2014, 2015.
John Ruter: With the first releases probably being 2017?
Ping Yu: So from 2009 to 2019, it's probably 9 to 10 years of work from starting to the market.
John Ruter: Yeah, and so nine, ten years would be for something herbaceous, I think would be fairly
John Ruter: normal.
John Ruter: A big change in the industry has been all branding and partnerships.
John Ruter: So now you have Nursery X, which has these brands that they grow, and then they have
John Ruter: other growers around the country that grow specifically some of their branded material.
John Ruter: All right, so that's added another several years into it,
John Ruter: because once company X decides,
John Ruter: okay, we like this, we're gonna put it into our brand,
John Ruter: then they send it out to all their branded growers
John Ruter: to evaluate for another three to five years
John Ruter: to see if it's gonna have nationwide adaptability or appeal.
John Ruter: So now you've just added,
John Ruter: you've gone from 10 to 15 years potentially,
John Ruter: before a company finally decides to pull the plug
John Ruter: and say, yes, we're,
John Ruter: and then they've got to get with their marketing folks
John Ruter: and the sales folks and the production folks.
John Ruter: And one of the challenges that we ran into
John Ruter: with Hardy Hibiscus that I didn't know about
John Ruter: when I started was since it's related to cotton,
John Ruter: You can't bring it in from offshore.
John Ruter: Oh.
John Ruter: So most of all of these companies
John Ruter: that are cutting farms are in Costa Rica,
John Ruter: Central America, South America, Africa,
John Ruter: wherever it might be.
John Ruter: They had to find a domestic propagator
John Ruter: to start bulking up the numbers.
John Ruter: Because again, most people are doing it offshore.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: Now, but you can't because of diseases of cotton.
John Ruter: Same thing, if you're breeding ornamental cherries, you've got to send it through Beltsville,
John Ruter: it's got to go through quarantine before you can get any new germplasm in because of viruses
John Ruter: you might bring in that could affect commercial cherries.
John Ruter: Yeah, so, you know.
Ping Yu: Yeah, because one of the observations that I have seen for the past couple years is every time I go to a nursery and even in the garden center, I see more and more people are interested in
Ping Yu: buying patented plants, the trademark on plants,
Ping Yu: even though it takes a little bit longer
Ping Yu: for the industry to develop,
Ping Yu: the popularity has increased among customers.
Ping Yu: Do you, can you give us,
Ping Yu: can you elaborate a little bit more
Ping Yu: of why people are willing to pay the extra dollar
Ping Yu: or whatever for the patent materials?
John Ruter: Yeah, so in today's market, unless it gets into a branded program, it's not going to
John Ruter: really be marketed out there.
John Ruter: And so there's several brands out there, whether it's azaleas or petunias or whatever, that
John Ruter: are in branded programs that people recognize that plants in that branded program do very
John Ruter: well.
John Ruter: and they've been tested around the United States
John Ruter: and there's lots of information on their websites.
John Ruter: Everybody's looking stuff up on their phones now.
John Ruter: Yeah.
John Ruter: They go to the garden center.
John Ruter: They're in a branded pot, they stand out.
John Ruter: They've got a really nice hang tag
John Ruter: or something inserted into the pot
John Ruter: that gives even more information.
John Ruter: And then you can go to the website
John Ruter: and look up even more information.
John Ruter: about the plant, okay?
John Ruter: There's lots of good landscape plants out there
John Ruter: that aren't in a branded program,
John Ruter: but you're not gonna find anybody really pushing those.
John Ruter: Whether it be a straight Osmanthus fragrans
John Ruter: or older varieties of Loropetalum that have red foliage
John Ruter: or Ligustrum or boxwood or...
John Ruter: People know these plants and then they'll go buy these plants, but if it's something completely new, novel,
John Ruter: or it's something that you have to differentiate it from other members of its class,
John Ruter: all right, so now it's a dwarf red super cold hardy Loropetalum instead of a big original red Loropetalum.
John Ruter: If that's not marketed, people aren't going to know about it.
John Ruter: And so I think that's the big driving factor there that people recognize these brands.
John Ruter: They recognize that plants that are in these brands have been tested and are going to have
John Ruter: a good chance of being very successful.
John Ruter: And again, they're popping up when they're looking at their phone or they're on their
John Ruter: computer or they're seeing advertisements on billboards and on the sides of trucks and
John Ruter: Southern Living or Western Gardening or whatever magazines they might be reading.
John Ruter: And so, yeah, the companies are putting a lot of money into advertising, whether it's
John Ruter: on the computer or print.
John Ruter: catalogs, hats, free students love t-shirts and freebies and bags.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: Branded bags that you can use to go to the grocery store with to take to the beach.
John Ruter: You know, carry all your plant catalogs.
John Ruter: So, yeah, I think that's one of the big things that...
Ping Yu: It's about the marketing.
John Ruter: It's marketing and success for the end consumer.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: And then, yeah, I may have this really cool native plant
John Ruter: that most people have never heard of, and it's variegated.
John Ruter: Okay?
John Ruter: And so maybe there's 300 people out there that are going to get all excited about this plant.
John Ruter: That's it.
John Ruter: But that plant's not worth trademarking or patenting.
John Ruter: You're not going to get your returns on it.
John Ruter: Even though there's a small portion of the population that thinks it's just the coolest plant ever,
John Ruter: it's never going to make it at mass market.
John Ruter: People don't know the genus.
John Ruter: on it. They've never heard the common name of the plant, and the market's very limited in a case like that.
Ping Yu: Yeah, and then people are willing to pay more for the brand.
Ping Yu: I think it's like, again, the fashion industry where you know the logo of a certain brand.
Ping Yu: You're like, "Oh, I would pay an extra amount of money to..."
Ping Yu: for that brand specifically.
Ping Yu: You know, in the breeding world,
Ping Yu: I know a lot of like professional breeder like you
Ping Yu: and a lot of people like they started as a hobby breeder
Ping Yu: to start with, but one thing that I have noticed,
Ping Yu: it's very funny.
Ping Yu: because when it comes to name the cultivar,
Ping Yu: people tend to have all different ways of naming the plant
Ping Yu: and then they have the right to do it
Ping Yu: because they are breeding,
Ping Yu: the cultivar is yours basically.
Ping Yu: So can you tell me how you decided
Ping Yu: to name some of your cultivars?
Ping Yu: Like are there any story behind it?
Ping Yu: I know one person, I think it's a camellia
Ping Yu: breeder, Joe from Athens Wholesale, and he told me, yeah, he told me that there was
Ping Yu: one camellia cultivar it has variegated color and he named the cultivar after
Ping Yu: his wife, Mary, because that's how they developed or noticed, selected
Ping Yu: the specific plant but in that case do you have any a specific way of naming
Ping Yu: your cultivars?
John Ruter: Yeah, so basically when I started releasing cultivars, the industry has gone to this whole
John Ruter: trademarking marketed names.
John Ruter: And so I had to come up with a system of being able to identify plants from my breeding program,
John Ruter: but give it one of these nonsensical cultivar names.
John Ruter: And so in talking it over with the folks at UGARF, the Research Foundation at the university,
John Ruter: we decided that we would, all my cultivars would start with RUT.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: So for Ruter.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: And so you will find, so the hibiscus are all RutHib1 through RutHib5.
John Ruter: So my model is...
John Ruter: first three letters of my last name, first three letters of the genus, and then so like on the Ilex we're up to 10.
John Ruter: So it's RutIle01 to RutIle10 now. And so as far as the marketing names,
John Ruter: Emerald Colonnade was one that I suggested and came up with. Most of the companies
John Ruter: Yeah, certainly in the last 10 to 15 years, they want to come up with their own marketing
John Ruter: name for the plant.
John Ruter: They'll take suggestions, but they generally want to come up with, if it's series, like
John Ruter: with the hibiscus.
John Ruter: or the Ilex or whatever.
John Ruter: So the companies want to name the marketing name,
John Ruter: the trademark name, as well as the series name.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: And so we can have input with that,
John Ruter: but if we're just particularly passionate.
John Ruter: about naming something. Again, Emerald Colonnade, I said, "Hey, I really like that name. This is what I want to go with."
John Ruter: But as far as the actual cultivar name that's given to the plant, yeah, there's a method to it.
John Ruter: So you might see something from NC State would start with NC, for example.
John Ruter: Yeah.
John Ruter: And so there's different ways of doing it.
John Ruter: Some of it would be the breeder's three initials and then just some numbered code.
Ping Yu: Yeah, well, I always say for all those breeders that I know breeders
Ping Yu: always got something. They never retire. They keep going. They have all the babies to take care of.
Ping Yu: But what are some of the next steps that you are very excited about with your breeding program?
John Ruter: So yeah, on the hibiscus front, we got kind of stuck at having the same flower colors.
John Ruter: So we would have white, we have blush, we have pink, and occasionally get red out there.
John Ruter: And so I've got a graduate PhD student now that's,
John Ruter: basically what we've done is we've taken all six species.
John Ruter: and crossed everything in both directions,
John Ruter: and then grew out the F1 population.
John Ruter: And then this year,
John Ruter: we've actually grown out the F2 population.
John Ruter: So we're starting to see that,
John Ruter: you know, segregation of recessive traits.
John Ruter: And so we're getting some, you know,
John Ruter: really novel leaf forms and flower colors.
John Ruter: We've also, you know, we've never really done mutagenesis.
John Ruter: on the plants, whether it be chemical or physical.
John Ruter: And so she's done work on that.
John Ruter: She's doing work with HPLC, liquid chromatography, trying to figure out what the pathways are,
John Ruter: what are the actual flavonols and anthocyanidins that are creating these colors and what are
John Ruter: the possibilities.
John Ruter: you know, should we ever get to the point that we could do CRISPR or something like that?
John Ruter: Yeah.
John Ruter: You know, we would know what pathway that we're working with and, you know, what we need to slow down, what we need to speed up,
John Ruter: you know, to get novel colors out of
John Ruter: that material. And then we're also doing some molecular work on them as well.
John Ruter: And so for Hibiscus moscheutos, we're going to be looking at annotating the genome
John Ruter: and then looking at the other species.
John Ruter: doing you know so sort of some molecular guided breeding for the future.
Ping Yu: And you, I know that you have how many, you have more than three students working on different
Ping Yu: projects and then hibiscus is just one of them. Yeah, right now I got five. Gosh.
Ping Yu: And I know one of them are working, I think I met three of them and one of them I know they're
Ping Yu: working on the hibiscus leaf color with HPLC and everything and then another one.
Ping Yu: working on basil or is a basil students graduated? Mountain mint,
John Ruter: Pycnanthemum. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that's another plant that's not really in the trade. A
John Ruter: few native nurseries are growing it. We have I believe 16 or 17 of the 19 native
John Ruter: species of it. We just completed a four-year garden trial.
John Ruter: Looking at how the different species grow, there's only two named cultivars that we're aware of.
John Ruter: So it's a fantastic pollinator plant. We're trying to get a paper published on what visits the Pycnanthemum plants.
John Ruter: It does definitely bring in the pollinators.
John Ruter: But there's, like with any wild plant, there's some traits.
John Ruter: Some of the species drop their leaves when they go reproductive.
John Ruter: Some of the species get more plant hoppers or whatever.
John Ruter: Some of the species are compact, some of the species lodge.
John Ruter: Some of the species look like they might have cut flower potential for dried cut flowers.
John Ruter: some of the species might have uses for essential oils.
John Ruter: A lot of them smell quite, you can almost tell the species just by the scent of the foliage.
John Ruter: So yes, I have a student working on mountain mint.
John Ruter: I've got another student working on ploidy manipulation, sterility, all that sort of stuff.
John Ruter: And there's nobody I know that ever doubled the chromosomes of evergreen hollies.
John Ruter: And so we've done that with an Asian species and our native Ilex vomitoria.
John Ruter: We're doing some collaborative work, just getting a real program really started looking
John Ruter: at Ilex vomitoria potentially as a native tea plant.
John Ruter: So it's our only North American native that produces caffeine.
John Ruter: It's a substantial amount.
John Ruter: So collaborations there.
John Ruter: I had a student that was working on American chestnut, trying to do somatic embryogenesis
John Ruter: and other things.
John Ruter: And then final student who should be finishing this fall, she's been working on breeding
John Ruter: Salvia coccinea.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: trying to come up with some novel colors and as well as doubling the chromosomes of
John Ruter: Lagerstroemia, crepe myrtle, which has been a challenge.
John Ruter: Not the easiest plant to try and double the chromosomes.
Ping Yu: Yeah, so basically in your program, you're like in combination with the traditional breeding
Ping Yu: techniques in combination with some of the new technologies that
Ping Yu: such as CRISPR and other molecular tools to do a different project with your breeding work?
John Ruter: Yeah, so I would consider myself a traditional breeder, intra- and interspecific hybrids, mutagenesis,
John Ruter: ploidy manipulation.
John Ruter: Just now getting into the molecular world, again, doing genotyping by sequencing and various
John Ruter: methods to map the genomes or look at the populations and diversity and relatedness
John Ruter: and those sorts of things to make more educated breeding decisions.
John Ruter: CRISPR's still a ways down the line. I'm not doing any of that yet.
Ping Yu: But if you are going to do that in the future, you need this other base information.
John Ruter: Having the genome annotated and those sorts of things.
John Ruter: Yeah.
Ping Yu: And I don't know how many graduate students have graduated from your breeding program,
Ping Yu: and a lot of them I know are very successful.
Ping Yu: and the fact that
Ping Yu: in one of the ISHS germplasm symposium
Ping Yu: that three of your students got first place,
Ping Yu: second place, and third place
Ping Yu: of all those awards for students, which is great.
Ping Yu: So can you tell us or share some of your suggestions
Ping Yu: for any of those students who wanted
Ping Yu: to become a successful breeder like you
Ping Yu: or for any of other faculty members who are younger?
Ping Yu: junior faculty or breeders out there who wanted to set them up for long-term success. Can you share some of your suggestions?
John Ruter: Yeah, I think one part is being a good major professor.
John Ruter: you know my
John Ruter: method of doing it is, you know, we agree on a project and then I turn the
John Ruter: students loose to do it. I don't baby them, I don't hold their hand, I don't call
John Ruter: them every day and say this is what you're doing today. I expect them to do
John Ruter: that. If I have the resources available, I actually let them actually hire their
John Ruter: own student labor.
John Ruter: to help them. So that helps them become a manager, which particularly if you're going to go into the industry
John Ruter: or even in academics, you know, it's beneficial to learn how to be a boss and deal with hiring and
John Ruter: letting people go and people not showing up and doing, you know, training them how you want things done and
John Ruter: how to get everything labeled and do all that.
John Ruter: So that's, I think that's one of the things.
John Ruter: Being available when they need you, you know,
John Ruter: within reason.
John Ruter: And so just being there to chat and talk and, you know,
John Ruter: be available, have fun.
John Ruter: Very important.
John Ruter: Yeah, you know, have a good time.
John Ruter: Yeah, getting them getting them out getting them introduced to the different companies
John Ruter: and to meetings and other people in the industry I think is very, very important.
John Ruter: So I tried to take all my students on to professional meetings or.
John Ruter: whether it be something like IPPS or an ISHS meeting or ASHS.
John Ruter: I just had one of my students and my trial garden manager,
John Ruter: we were just up at the International Plant Trialing Conference.
John Ruter: So getting your students as much experience. Whenever breeders come,
John Ruter: or I mean companies, nurseries, programs come by,
John Ruter: if the students are available, I ask them to be out there and participate.
John Ruter: and talk about your crops.
John Ruter: What are you doing?
John Ruter: What are the interesting things?
John Ruter: What have you found?
John Ruter: Show them your elite selections
John Ruter: and be involved in the whole process.
John Ruter: And I let them come up with ideas
John Ruter: and they can come and talk to me and say,
John Ruter: "Hey, it would be great to have X."
John Ruter: Yeah, I'm like, okay, how are we going to benefit from having X?
John Ruter: If it's affordable and reasonable, I'll get it for the program.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: And so I think, and then being available and being firm, but pleasant.
John Ruter: Yeah.
John Ruter: You got to get your work done, but we can have fun too.
John Ruter: I just have a fantastic group right now.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: They all get along with each other.
John Ruter: They all help each other.
John Ruter: they do things outside of.
John Ruter: you know, school and research together.
John Ruter: And they're, you know, they're a blast to travel with.
John Ruter: And I think back when I would only have one or two students
John Ruter: at the time, you know, particularly the PhD students,
John Ruter: I'd usually try to take them on like one big trip.
John Ruter: during their program where we head up the Atlantic or we go along the Gulf Coast and just
John Ruter: introduce them to everybody you can in seven days. Yeah. And visit nurseries and
John Ruter: garden centers and whatever. Yeah and also more importantly I think it's the networking
Ping Yu: because that's where the potential opportunity come out down the road you never know.
John Ruter: Yeah, so I've got a couple students in industry working as plant breeders now.
John Ruter: And it's a lot of it's because, you know, one was that they had outgoing personalities,
John Ruter: but two, getting them introduced to the right people.
John Ruter: Sitting down and having lunch with the right people at some meeting and being able to make
John Ruter: those connections for them and then see their success.
John Ruter: And yeah.
Ping Yu: Yeah, look after your kids. Oh yeah, oh yeah. With that in mind, if people want to keep a finger on
Ping Yu: the pulse of what you are doing, following along with your breeding work, where do you recommend
Ping Yu: they go and look for more? Yeah, the best thing would be to come visit us. You have to be very
John Ruter: careful with plant breeding, of putting stuff up on the internet and...
John Ruter: People are welcome to take pictures when they come visit.
John Ruter: They have to realize that it's for in-house use only.
John Ruter: Yes.
John Ruter: And because, yeah, if somebody posts a picture of something of yours and that is taken as
John Ruter: being for sale, it starts a clock on a patent application.
John Ruter: And you only have a year.
John Ruter: Somebody accidentally puts it in their catalog and doesn't tell you.
John Ruter: You have...
John Ruter: one year from the time that catalog comes out to suddenly get that plant patented and
John Ruter: everybody's really good about doing that and
John Ruter: But yeah, come to meetings where I'm presenting. Come visit us. We're more than happy to give you a tour and
Ping Yu: Yeah, if you're going. Yeah, the trial garden at UGA is just gorgeous, and John is the director of the trial garden, and he also, of course, he's a faculty with University of Georgia. You can always find his profile online. And yeah, that sounds great. Thank you, John. It was great.
John Ruter: Thank you for having me.
Ping Yu: Of course, thank you.
Ping Yu: It's always good to talk about things that you normally wouldn't in other occasions.
Ping Yu: I thank Dr. John Ruter for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with us.
Ping Yu: And as always, go check with the show notes to learn more about this topic and other topics
Ping Yu: we featured on the show.
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Ping Yu: Thank you for listening.
Ping Yu: Till the next time, stay healthy and go plants!