Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture Guest: Dr. John Ruter, Armitage Professor of Horticulture, University of Georgia; Director of the UGA Trial Gardens Producer: Rich Braman Episode: S02E09, Blooms and Beyond, Season 2 Duration: 52:28 Air Date: August 30th, 2026
Welcome
Ping Yu: Hello everyone, welcome to the Blooms and Beyond podcast, a podcast that uncovers plant history, culture and management through the lens of science. I’m your host, Ping. How’s everyone doing today? I am doing great because I have one of the most successful woody ornamental breeder in the U.S. My dear colleague and mentor Dr. John Ruter joined me today to talk about his breeding work on hibiscus and share his enchanting stories behind the scene. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. John Ruter. I hope you enjoy.
Meet John Ruter, and the Spark at Twelve
Ping Yu: Well, welcome, John. Welcome to the podcast. But first, I know all the people in our industry almost would know your name. But first, for those who doesn’t know, can we jump start 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 at the University of Georgia, Director of the Trial Gardens on campus. I teach three different courses and also have an ornamental plant breeding program that focuses both on herbaceous and woody ornamentals.
Ping Yu: Yeah, you have been working on the field for I don’t know how many years, forever. But I know that you didn’t start off as a breeder, but can we jump back, trace back to your childhood? Do you say, are you like, what first sparkled your interest in the horticulture? How does it come into a radar in the first place? Is that always 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 Angeles area, San Fernando Valley, and back then boys and girls had to take a series of shop courses that were required. So the girls took the home economics track and the boys took just regular shop courses, drafting, wood. And then both the boys and girls got to take a introductory horticulture course. And that’s what lit the spark right there.
Ping Yu: Wow. So back then, girls and boys take different courses? What is a shop course?
John Ruter: So, yeah, so for the boys we had a drafting course that we had to take. So you actually had to draw your house plans for the final project there. We had general shops and crafts, woodworking, basic electric. Working with leather, I made belts and assorted things. And then, both boys and girls took the horticulture course. 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 in that time you already know that you’re interested in horticulture. So you just go to that direction and finish your high school and a bachelor master all the way to PhD.
From Shop Class to Cal Poly
John Ruter: Yeah, so I took this introductory horticulture class in seventh grade. In ninth grade, I took another horticulture course as an elective.
So by the time I was 14, I was working at a retail wholesale nursery in the San Fernando Valley. And then my parents moved out to Simi Valley during my high school years. And so I got a job helping manage a Christmas tree farm, growing live Christmas trees, Pinus radiata. And I got involved in the FFA program, Future Farmers of America.
I went to a large high school, about 3,000 students, but unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of kids that were interested in horticulture or agriculture. So some of the competitions, it was me, myself, and I from our team. But that was okay. And state competition was always at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo every year. So, of course, Cal Poly had a wonderful undergraduate ornamental horticulture program that I got exposed to. And that’s where I decided I wanted to go do my undergraduate. And so I got my bachelor’s degree in ornamental horticulture concentration in nursery management and actually minored in pest management and chemistry.
Cotton, Almonds, and a Move Back East
John Ruter: And I thought that I might want to be a farm advisor in California or have my own business possibly. And I went to visit a school that had a master’s program, and they basically said that they could teach me to scout cotton, almonds, and vegetables. And I said, “Well, I kind of like greenhouses, landscapes, and nurseries.” And they said, “Well, we can teach you how to do cotton, vegetables, and almonds.” And so I said, “Well, thank you for your time.”
And so I’d never seen a flowering dogwood in California. I’d never seen a balled and burlapped plant. We grew everything in containers, large wooden boxes, or occasionally some bare root material. So I decided to apply back east for graduate school and got offered an assistantship at the University of Tennessee. So I went there and did my master’s degree there and then I went to the University of Florida and did my doctorate in horticultural science, but it was mostly plant physiology and biochemistry.
And when I graduated, there were two positions available in the nursery crop arena. One was at Cornell and one was a brand new position at the University of Georgia, located down on the Tifton campus. They wanted a 100% nursery crop researcher, and the position was basically created as of a federal review that had gone on in the department that said, “We have this large nursery industry in the southwest corner of the state. The main campus is five hours away. You guys aren’t doing anything to serve the industry. Put an ornamental horticulturist in Tifton.” And so that’s how I got to Georgia.
Ping Yu: Yeah, okay. Yeah, because I was like, well, you talk about the Cornell and Georgia. I was like, I guess I was guessing which, which offer did he take? Of course, for some Georgia. Go Dawgs!
John Ruter: Go Dawgs!
Ping Yu: Yeah.
Seven Acres, No Water: Becoming a Breeder
Ping Yu: Yeah, so you didn’t start it, I know your story, you didn’t start it as a plant breeder and instead as an extension researcher for nursery and greenhouses. Can you tell us a little bit of how you make yourself, I know your story, but our audience may not. Can you tell us a little bit how you transfer yourself from a nursery crop production researcher to a very renowned breeder?
John Ruter: Thank you. Yes. So yeah, initially I was doing pot-in-pot research, controlled release fertilizers, plant growth regulators, all this production stuff to help the nurseries. And as part of starting at the university, they gave me seven acres of land, no water, and told me to do container nursery research.
Ping Yu: In Tifton.
John Ruter: Yeah. So, yeah, so I started doing a lot of on-site research until I was able to come up with enough money to dig a well to put in an irrigation system and go from there.
The Forgotten Zone of Horticulture
John Ruter: But anyway, one of the things I realized early on is that a lot of the recommendations coming out of Athens, which was in a different climatic zone, different soil types and everything, compared to the coastal plain of Georgia, didn’t really apply to the southern part of the state. And having always just thoroughly enjoyed plants and being a plantsman, I started putting in collections and doing evaluation studies, looking at genera, species, whatever, that would be suitable to grow in the coastal plain region of the southeastern United States. Which was called Zone 8. Back then it was 8A. It’s now 8B on the new map, but I called it the forgotten zone of horticulture. Because all the basically most of your botanical gardens that would have introduced anything would have been in your major metropolitan areas. And you just don’t have a lot of large cities necessarily in the southeastern coastal plain region.
So anyway, yeah, first study that I put in was collaborating with the U.S. National Arboretum, looking at red maples and elms. So I was their southernmost cooperator there. And then, my PhD work was I used Japanese holly, Ilex crenata, as my model plant. And so, I kind of got interested in the genus Ilex. And before I knew it, I had a collection of 300 different species, cultivars, accessions, you name it, got very active in the Holly Society of America. And then, having worked with conifers in California, and having my colleagues tell me that only pine trees grow in South Georgia for conifers, I said, “You know what? I’m going to try and do a conifer collection as well for ornamental purposes, not for timber.” And anyway, so that was a great experience, and that eventually led to co-authoring a book on conifers for the southeast.
Collections Turn Into Breeding
John Ruter: The interest in breeding came out of having these collections, doing the evaluations, seeing the needs, working very closely with the nursery industry, seeing where there might be some opportunities to develop some plant material. We had done some collaborative stuff with one or two of the nurseries in south Georgia that led to an introduction or two. But it was really when I got offered the professorship, the opportunity to move to Athens, there was, they wanted some teaching, and they offered, would take over the trial gardens. But what they really wanted was they wanted an herbaceous ornamental plant breeder for research. And so I said, as long as I get to keep my conifers and hollies and camellias, yeah, I’ll give it a shot to become an herbaceous ornamental plant breeder.
Ping Yu: That’s cool. John, I know that for the past, I don’t know, 20, 30 years of your career, you have released tons of different cultivars and that has really shaped our industry. I know you have done like a hibiscus, hollies, camellias. Recently I know some of your work is also focused on Salvia and basil. So with all of your released cultivar, 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. And that one has become very popular in the trade. It’s used not only as a standard landscape plant, but as a hedging plant for topiaries and espaliers and planter boxes. And it’s been used as a replacement for boxwoods on estates, various places and so that was really the first release I had that really took off and got established and got me all really excited about plant breeding and what the possibilities are.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
How the Hibiscus Program Started
Ping Yu: And for hibiscus, I know, your early stage of your breeding program, which is also a huge success and has made a big impact in our industry. 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, there was a series of hardy hibiscus from Fleming Brothers nursery out in Nebraska. Very cold hardy, some interesting leaf shapes, purple foliage, some interesting flowers. They just… shipping season wholesale-wise is pretty much over May 15th for South Georgia and North Florida. That’s about when these plants would start to break dormancy in containers in South Georgia. I had the idea, maybe we could make them emerge earlier. And also, the plants tended to want to lodge, would just send up a few shoots, and then they would get too big, and just lodging’s an agronomic term for falling over.
Anyway, so my initial goal was, okay, maybe we get them to emerge earlier and they don’t lodge, they don’t get so big.
The Flag Exercise and 1,200 Seedlings
John Ruter: And so we did a couple rounds of breeding and we started to have some… I’ll say purplish red foliage show up. And I would do a lot of garden club tours and other, and so we would go out and visit my research plots and I gave everybody flags and, you know, go flag your favorites. So sort of, you know, some consumer help. What do you like? And it didn’t matter if it was the ugliest plant out there. If it had red foliage, it got flagged. And so I said, there must be something to this red foliage thing that’s going on.
So right about that time was when I transferred my program from Tifton to Athens. And so I said, “All right, I’m going to get whatever red germplasm I can get my hands on, and we’re going to make crosses, as many as we can possibly do, and plant them out.” So the first planting was, I think it was over 1,200 seedlings. We planted out and we rated them for aerial Phytophthora, Cercospora, Alternaria, flower size, color, foliage, all things that would make a good plant. And we ended up picking seven out of 1,200 to keep. 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.
The Call from Blairsville
John Ruter: And so that was our first… I got a call one day, I’d planted some plants out at our mountain station up in Blairsville, and the station superintendent called and said, “You need to come up and see your hibiscus plants.” He says, there’s, there’s something going on with them. Yeah, so went up there and took a look and they were just thoroughly covered with hibiscus sawfly, which is a Hymenoptera insect. So Hymenoptera, bee family. And so it’s the larvae that chew on the foliage. The adults look like a little black fly with a red orange thorax. Unfortunately, we have four generations a year in Georgia, so that can definitely be a problem.
So I said, “Okay, what can we do about building some resistance into these plants?” So like a good plant breeder, I collected all the known species of hardy hibiscus, of which there’s six or five species and two subspecies. Anyway, and I noticed that one of them, Hibiscus grandiflorus, had very hairy leaves, full of trichomes, plant hairs. And when you looked at it under the microscope, it looked like old shag carpet growing on the leaves, and we noticed that they had zero damage. So I said, “All right, there’s my source of resistance right there.”
Getting the Red Back In
John Ruter: So we made interspecific hybrids out of those, which crossed, but we had a hard time getting the red foliage trait to go over. So we could make the crop. We got red petioles, we got red in the stems. We thought, okay, maybe it’s a recessive trait. We got to go to an F2. No, that didn’t solve the problem. And so then we took those F2 plants and then we back crossed them to some of the original reds, which took out some of the resistance, but we still had some resistance in there to get the red back in it. Now with that resistance you get more of a matte red-gray colored leaf because the trichomes.
So out of all that initial breeding, we released two of the original crosses that came out of that 1200, got selected. And then the other three were these interspecific hybrids. So we were the first one to release selections that had some resistance to hibiscus sawfly. And then that’s been huge because primary populations of Hibiscus moscheutos are along the eastern coast, often grown brackish areas near the shore and a lot of the growers along the eastern shore had given up growing them because the pest was such a problem, even on the native plants. 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. I feel like they’re going to give you the number that they initiated, which would be thousands. And then at the end of the day, they’re going to tell you, “Hey, I only got two or three or five, in your case, five or six out of thousands.” And that’s how you actually selected the plant that perfectly for your garden, for your yard, for the industry. So it’s always a number game.
Mutabilis, Taiwan, and the Chromosome Problem
Ping Yu: Have you encountered during your hibiscus breeding process, have you encountered with another specific species, Hibiscus mutabilis? It’s a native to Asian species, 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. You’ll see it at, say, older homes, old plantation farm sites.
So yeah, North Florida, South Georgia, it’s not that uncommon. We have done some breeding with it. It was one of the first ones we ever attempted to make crosses on it. The double-flowered form is very popular. Of course, this is one that the flowers come out one color and then they fade to another color by the end of the day. But I always called the plant “flowers on a stick.”
Flowers on a Stick
John Ruter: Because mutabilis has this problem, and it’s this nice six to eight foot shrub during the year, dies back to the ground, grows vigorously during the summer, flowers in October. And so most people, one problem with selling it is in October most people are thinking about mums and pumpkins, not necessarily thinking about flowering hibiscus. But anyway, so when Hibiscus mutabilis goes reproductive, at least with the double-flowered form, which is really popular, it drops all its foliage. Oh, God. So you end up with these flowers on the end of 6 to 8 foot of, you know, the stem. So I always go, you know, flowers on a stick.
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. 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. So I was able to manipulate some mutabilis and taiwanensis to flower at the same time, got those crossed, so we have a traditional F1 interspecific hybrid.
And boy, perfect example of what we breeders call heterosis or hybrid vigor. I mean, these things would get 10 to 12 feet tall in one season. And so, and they retain their foliage, single flowers, not the double flowers. They would start to bloom in August instead of October. But all the nurserymen are like, “Wow, that’s cool, but that’s way too big.” And so I was able to get my hands on a third species, Hibiscus makinoi, which is from the archipelago of islands that’s south of Japan. And so I crossed that third species in. And so now we have nice bushes, full bloom right now, that are more in, say, the four to six foot range, full of foliage, full of flowers, again, single flowers. I think that the main thing with the plant is it’s flowering when people are not necessarily thinking about going out and buying something other than mums and pansies and snapdragons and ornamental cabbage. 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, where I grew up, I can see them every everywhere. It’s the city flower of Chengdu, my hometown. And yeah, it got a very special like feature like you just said, the flower change colors throughout the day. So it’s tricky, interesting, and then a lot of there are a lot of cultivars that has big head, big flower head, and then different color change. And so that’s interesting. That’s the reason why I brought it up.
But since you have now different species or different cultivars with in the hibiscus breeding program. When it comes to deciding which species to breed, is that easier to work with some of the United States native species? Plants were, what is the challenge of breeding for non-native plants? But for instance, the two hibiscus species that you mentioned, are some of them native to Asia and some of them are native to the U.S. What is the challenge? What’s the difference of breeding or working on those non-native species versus the native species?
Diploids, Tetraploids, and Why Crosses Fail
John Ruter: Sure, yeah. So all of our native species are what we call hardy hibiscus, okay? So these are ones that are deciduous, die down to the ground, come back every year. So they sort of fall into that herbaceous ornamental category there. So all the ones that are native to the eastern U.S., those are all diploids, two sets of chromosomes in there. A lot of the Asian species, so Hibiscus mutabilis, taiwanensis, makinoi, Hibiscus syriacus, the Rose of Sharon, would be the ones that are most commonly known there. Those plants are generally naturally tetraploids, four sets of chromosomes, and even the base number of chromosomes. So, n equals whatever the base chromosome number is. And then, of course, that doubles to get your diploid or four times that to get your tetraploid, for example. They’re different between the North American and the Asian species as well.
So it’s not easy to get crosses between Asian and American species because the ploidies are different, the chromosome numbers are different. There was a cultivar floating around that is a moscheutos by mutabilis hybrid. It basically looks like a large single-flowered mutabilis. Having crossed a diploid with a tetraploid with different base chromosome numbers, it’s completely sterile. Oh, okay. And so I’ve only ever seen one seed pod on one of these plants. And it was actually last year. I was quite surprised to see the seed then. So grew seed off of it, bloomed them out this year, and there’s no genetic variation at all, 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. Yeah.
Ping Yu: Yeah. So basically if those two species with different lengths of chromosome or different 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 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 interspecific hybrids are what the animal world would call a mule. They’re just, they’re completely 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. That situation. Yeah. So the next generation…
John Ruter: Yeah, so the initial cross you can make, but then the hybrid is not fertile. And so, yeah, sometimes it’s just incongruity amongst the chromosomes. They don’t match up. And that also leads to how we get sterile triploids sometimes too, where we can take plants like reproduce with even numbers of chromosomes. 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. The hybrid ends up with three sets of chromosomes and somebody doesn’t have a dance partner.
Ping Yu: For sure, yeah.
From Cross to Catalog: Ten to Fifteen Years
Ping Yu: What is something that people don’t realize about professional cultivar development. Can you walk us through the process of the variety development from the breeding program from beginning all the way to the market? And I know for breeding, I see it as, for breeders, I see it as a fashion designer for our industry because it is because you have to start working maybe 10 years ahead for woody plants and to decide, okay, this plant might make it maybe popular in the next 10 years for this industry. So you are the next popular fashion icon item for the future. So can you walk us through the whole process of how to decide the… So the variety development from the beginning to make the way to the market?
John Ruter: Yeah, yeah, we can use the Hibiscus moscheutos. That was really the only species in the market in the late 2000s. I mentioned that the ones that were in the trade at the time had some flaws that could be improved upon. There were some seed grown varieties. A lot of those I think did well further north. I don’t think they quite had the vigor we needed in the south. But we were able to use those in our crosses to get early emergence and dwarf compact traits. So they were beneficial from that respect in growing those.
So we’re probably talking about starting this about 2009, for example. And so our first population with crosses with red foliage and all that led to 1,200 seedlings, those went in the ground in 2000. I want to say 12 and they were evaluated in 2013. And I would say commercial selection probably started about 2014, 2015. 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 normal.
Branding Adds Another Three to Five Years
John Ruter: A big change in the industry has been all branding and partnerships. So now you have Nursery X, which has these brands that they grow, and then they have other growers around the country that grow specifically some of their branded material. All right, so that’s added another several years into it, because once company X decides, okay, we like this, we’re gonna put it into our brand, then they send it out to all their branded growers to evaluate for another three to five years to see if it’s gonna have nationwide adaptability or appeal. So now you’ve just added, you’ve gone from 10 to 15 years potentially, before a company finally decides to pull the plug and say, yes, we’re, and then they’ve got to get with their marketing folks and the sales folks and the production folks.
Related to Cotton, So It Stays Home
John Ruter: And one of the challenges that we ran into with Hardy Hibiscus that I didn’t know about when I started was since it’s related to cotton, you can’t bring it in from offshore. Oh. So most of all of these companies that are cutting farms are in Costa Rica, Central America, South America, Africa, wherever it might be. They had to find a domestic propagator to start bulking up the numbers. Because again, most people are doing it offshore.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: Now, but you can’t because of diseases of cotton. Same thing, if you’re breeding ornamental cherries, you’ve got to send it through Beltsville, it’s got to go through quarantine before you can get any new germplasm in because of viruses you might bring in that could affect commercial cherries. Yeah, so, you know.
Why Growers Pay for a Brand
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 buying patented plants, the trademark on plants, even though it takes a little bit longer for the industry to develop, the popularity has increased among customers. Do you, can you give us, can you elaborate a little bit more of why people are willing to pay the extra dollar 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 really be marketed out there. And so there’s several brands out there, whether it’s azaleas or petunias or whatever, that are in branded programs that people recognize that plants in that branded program do very well, and they’ve been tested around the United States and there’s lots of information on their websites. Everybody’s looking stuff up on their phones now. Yeah. They go to the garden center. They’re in a branded pot, they stand out. They’ve got a really nice hang tag or something inserted into the pot that gives even more information. And then you can go to the website and look up even more information about the plant, okay?
There’s lots of good landscape plants out there that aren’t in a branded program, but you’re not gonna find anybody really pushing those. Whether it be a straight Osmanthus fragrans or older varieties of Loropetalum that have red foliage or Ligustrum or boxwood or… People know these plants and then they’ll go buy these plants, but if it’s something completely new, novel, or it’s something that you have to differentiate it from other members of its class, all right, so now it’s a dwarf red super cold hardy Loropetalum instead of a big original red Loropetalum. If that’s not marketed, people aren’t going to know about it.
And so I think that’s the big driving factor there that people recognize these brands. They recognize that plants that are in these brands have been tested and are going to have a good chance of being very successful. And again, they’re popping up when they’re looking at their phone or they’re on their computer or they’re seeing advertisements on billboards and on the sides of trucks and Southern Living or Western Gardening or whatever magazines they might be reading. And so, yeah, the companies are putting a lot of money into advertising, whether it’s on the computer or print 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. You know, carry all your plant catalogs. 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 that most people have never heard of, and it’s variegated. Okay? And so maybe there’s 300 people out there that are going to get all excited about this plant. That’s it. But that plant’s not worth trademarking or patenting. You’re not going to get your returns on it. Even though there’s a small portion of the population that thinks it’s just the coolest plant ever, it’s never going to make it at mass market. People don’t know the genus 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. I think it’s like, again, the fashion industry where you know the logo of a certain brand. You’re like, “Oh, I would pay an extra amount of money to…” for that brand specifically.
Naming a Cultivar: The RUT System
Ping Yu: You know, in the breeding world, I know a lot of like professional breeder like you and a lot of people like they started as a hobby breeder to start with, but one thing that I have noticed, it’s very funny, because when it comes to name the cultivar, people tend to have all different ways of naming the plant and then they have the right to do it because they are breeding, the cultivar is yours basically. So can you tell me how you decided to name some of your cultivars? Like are there any story behind it? I know one person, I think it’s a camellia breeder, Joe from Athens Wholesale, and he told me, yeah, he told me that there was one camellia cultivar it has variegated color and he named the cultivar after his wife, Mary, because that’s how they developed or noticed, selected the specific plant but in that case do you have any a specific way of naming your cultivars?
John Ruter: Yeah, so basically when I started releasing cultivars, the industry has gone to this whole trademarking marketed names. And so I had to come up with a system of being able to identify plants from my breeding program, but give it one of these nonsensical cultivar names. And so in talking it over with the folks at UGARF, the Research Foundation at the university, 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. So my model is 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. So it’s RutIle01 to RutIle10 now.
Who Gets to Name the Plant
John Ruter: And so as far as the marketing names, Emerald Colonnade was one that I suggested and came up with. Most of the companies, yeah, certainly in the last 10 to 15 years, they want to come up with their own marketing name for the plant. They’ll take suggestions, but they generally want to come up with, if it’s series, like with the hibiscus or the Ilex or whatever. So the companies want to name the marketing name, the trademark name, as well as the series name.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: And so we can have input with that, but if we’re just particularly passionate about naming something. Again, Emerald Colonnade, I said, “Hey, I really like that name. This is what I want to go with.” But as far as the actual cultivar name that’s given to the plant, yeah, there’s a method to it. So you might see something from NC State would start with NC, for example. Yeah. And so there’s different ways of doing it. 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 always got something. They never retire. They keep going. They have all the babies to take care of.
What Is Next for the Program
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. So we would have white, we have blush, we have pink, and occasionally get red out there. And so I’ve got a graduate PhD student now that’s, basically what we’ve done is we’ve taken all six species and crossed everything in both directions, and then grew out the F1 population. And then this year, we’ve actually grown out the F2 population. So we’re starting to see that, you know, segregation of recessive traits. And so we’re getting some, you know, really novel leaf forms and flower colors.
We’ve also, you know, we’ve never really done mutagenesis on the plants, whether it be chemical or physical. And so she’s done work on that. She’s doing work with HPLC, liquid chromatography, trying to figure out what the pathways are, what are the actual flavonols and anthocyanidins that are creating these colors and what are the possibilities, you know, should we ever get to the point that we could do CRISPR or something like that? Yeah. 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, you know, to get novel colors out of that material.
And then we’re also doing some molecular work on them as well. And so for Hibiscus moscheutos, we’re going to be looking at annotating the genome and then looking at the other species, doing you know so sort of some molecular guided breeding for the future.
Beyond Hibiscus: Mountain Mint, Hollies, Chestnut
Ping Yu: And you, I know that you have how many, you have more than three students working on different projects and then hibiscus is just one of them.
John Ruter: Yeah, right now I got five.
Ping Yu: Gosh. And I know one of them are working, I think I met three of them and one of them I know they’re working on the hibiscus leaf color with HPLC and everything and then another one 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 few native nurseries are growing it. We have I believe 16 or 17 of the 19 native species of it. We just completed a four-year garden trial. Looking at how the different species grow, there’s only two named cultivars that we’re aware of. So it’s a fantastic pollinator plant. We’re trying to get a paper published on what visits the Pycnanthemum plants. It does definitely bring in the pollinators.
But there’s, like with any wild plant, there’s some traits. Some of the species drop their leaves when they go reproductive. Some of the species get more plant hoppers or whatever. Some of the species are compact, some of the species lodge. Some of the species look like they might have cut flower potential for dried cut flowers. Some of the species might have uses for essential oils. A lot of them smell quite, you can almost tell the species just by the scent of the foliage.
So yes, I have a student working on mountain mint. I’ve got another student working on ploidy manipulation, sterility, all that sort of stuff. And there’s nobody I know that ever doubled the chromosomes of evergreen hollies. And so we’ve done that with an Asian species and our native Ilex vomitoria. We’re doing some collaborative work, just getting a real program really started looking at Ilex vomitoria potentially as a native tea plant. So it’s our only North American native that produces caffeine. It’s a substantial amount. So collaborations there. I had a student that was working on American chestnut, trying to do somatic embryogenesis and other things. And then final student who should be finishing this fall, she’s been working on breeding Salvia coccinea.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: Trying to come up with some novel colors and as well as doubling the chromosomes of Lagerstroemia, crepe myrtle, which has been a challenge. 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 techniques in combination with some of the new technologies that 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, ploidy manipulation. Just now getting into the molecular world, again, doing genotyping by sequencing and various methods to map the genomes or look at the populations and diversity and relatedness and those sorts of things to make more educated breeding decisions. 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. Yeah. Yeah.
Advice for the Next Generation
Ping Yu: And I don’t know how many graduate students have graduated from your breeding program, and a lot of them I know are very successful. and the fact that in one of the ISHS germplasm symposium that three of your students got first place, second place, and third place of all those awards for students, which is great. So can you tell us or share some of your suggestions for any of those students who wanted to become a successful breeder like you or for any of other faculty members who are younger, 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. You know my method of doing it is, you know, we agree on a project and then I turn the students loose to do it. I don’t baby them, I don’t hold their hand, I don’t call them every day and say this is what you’re doing today. I expect them to do that. If I have the resources available, I actually let them actually hire their own student labor to help them. So that helps them become a manager, which particularly if you’re going to go into the industry or even in academics, you know, it’s beneficial to learn how to be a boss and deal with hiring and letting people go and people not showing up and doing, you know, training them how you want things done and how to get everything labeled and do all that. So that’s, I think that’s one of the things.
Being available when they need you, you know, within reason. And so just being there to chat and talk and, you know, be available, have fun. Very important. Yeah, you know, have a good time.
Meetings, Introductions, and Road Trips
John Ruter: Yeah, getting them getting them out getting them introduced to the different companies and to meetings and other people in the industry I think is very, very important. So I tried to take all my students on to professional meetings or whether it be something like IPPS or an ISHS meeting or ASHS. I just had one of my students and my trial garden manager, we were just up at the International Plant Trialing Conference.
So getting your students as much experience. Whenever breeders come, or I mean companies, nurseries, programs come by, if the students are available, I ask them to be out there and participate and talk about your crops. What are you doing? What are the interesting things? What have you found? Show them your elite selections and be involved in the whole process. And I let them come up with ideas and they can come and talk to me and say, “Hey, it would be great to have X.” Yeah, I’m like, okay, how are we going to benefit from having X? 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. Yeah. You got to get your work done, but we can have fun too. I just have a fantastic group right now.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
John Ruter: They all get along with each other. They all help each other. they do things outside of, you know, school and research together. And they’re, you know, they’re a blast to travel with. And I think back when I would only have one or two students at the time, you know, particularly the PhD students, I’d usually try to take them on like one big trip during their program where we head up the Atlantic or we go along the Gulf Coast and just introduce them to everybody you can in seven days. Yeah. And visit nurseries and garden centers and whatever.
Ping Yu: Yeah and also more importantly I think it’s the networking 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. And it’s a lot of it’s because, you know, one was that they had outgoing personalities, but two, getting them introduced to the right people. Sitting down and having lunch with the right people at some meeting and being able to make those connections for them and then see their success. And yeah.
Come Visit, and Watch the Patent Clock
Ping Yu: Yeah, look after your kids. Oh yeah, oh yeah. With that in mind, if people want to keep a finger on the pulse of what you are doing, following along with your breeding work, where do you recommend they go and look for more?
John Ruter: Yeah, the best thing would be to come visit us. You have to be very careful with plant breeding, of putting stuff up on the internet and… People are welcome to take pictures when they come visit. They have to realize that it’s for in-house use only. Yes. And because, yeah, if somebody posts a picture of something of yours and that is taken as being for sale, it starts a clock on a patent application. And you only have a year. Somebody accidentally puts it in their catalog and doesn’t tell you. You have one year from the time that catalog comes out to suddenly get that plant patented and everybody’s really good about doing that and… 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. It’s always good to talk about things that you normally wouldn’t in other occasions.
Closing
Ping Yu: I thank Dr. John Ruter for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with us. And as always, go check with the show notes to learn more about this topic and other topics we featured on the show. Make sure you hit that subscription button, consider giving a review for the podcast, and donating to the podcast to support the show. Thank you for listening. Till the next time, stay healthy and go plants!
Transcript produced for Blooms and Beyond / UGA Center for Urban Agriculture