Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti NDSU Researcher

Tyler Bertsch: All right, so this is Tyler Bertsch and I'm here with—

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Harlene Hatterman Valenti.

Tyler Bertsch: Harlene, you want to just give a little background of yourself and how you got into the madness of growing grapes?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Okay. Yeah, so I got my Master's at UNL and with that, that's when I met my husband and we ended up—he was a weed scientist, he has his Master’s in weed science. And so that was probably during a time when there were quite a few companies and they were really expanding, agro-chemical companies. So we went out to North Platte, Nebraska and from there we moved to Ames, Iowa. And I had the opportunity to work on my PhD. I was still in the horticulture realm but more in the weed science because they needed—it was a pre-doctoral extension associate position to cover all the weed management questions other than row crops. And in Iowa, there’s corn and soybeans and then everything else is thrown into one little group.

But after that, then worked with an agro-chemical company for a while as a biologist and in the herbicide discovery and then we had the opportunity to come back to the Midwest. We were in Sioux Falls, which we drove through, and I was an instructor at the community college there for a while. And then Steve got his job with Monsanto here and I applied for a position for high-value crops and got that position. I was notified the day we were moving up here.

And yeah, initially I was going to be working on potatoes primarily.

Tyler Bertsch: Not nearly as cool.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And then in 2003 was the start of the legislation session and then it ended in 2004. And then in July of 2004, the Farm Winery Act of North Dakota became a thing and people were like, "Oh geez, now what do we do?"

Tyler Bertsch: We can sell wine but we need grapes to do that, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, so it was a lot of "Let's go to Minnesota and get information." And I went and I said, "Well geez, I worked with grapes at UNL when I was getting my Master’s" because that hort farm's just—well, yeah, it was cool. That horticulture had their own little research farm right there to the east of campus, I think on East Campus. But anyway, so I went and I said, "Well, let's start off with a variety trial." And we put in a variety trial and then we just kept trying to figure out management because pretty much everyone was saying, "Well, this is what they do in California." And it’s like, well, we can’t—first of all, we can’t grow California grapes. And so it was a lot of trial and error and talking with growers and, as I told you, Greg Krieger probably had the first grapes. He had been dabbling in grapes for a long time before the law was passed.

Tyler Bertsch: I think he started in '96 or '97.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, before I was even here. So, and then a number of them went and formed the NDGGA, it was the North Dakota Grape Growers Association. And this is where I thank having Rodney Hogan—because he worked with Rudy Radke who has now passed away, but Rudy was a regional extension specialist and got things together on that. And Rodney was also very instrumental, as well as a number of other people. But so the organization got formed, and, at first, it was the Grape Growers because, if you can’t grow grapes, what good is wine, because of the way the law was put together.. And so the emphasis was on learning the best way to grow the grapes. I remember talking with Peter Hemstad at U of M, and I said, "Hey Peter, would you want to come up and talk to the growers about what you guys are doing in your program?" And he goes, "Yeah, as long as it's the month of July." Otherwise, he goes, "I don't think so." I was like, "Are you too busy?" He goes, "No, I just don't like your weather."

Tyler Bertsch: You said there's been recorded snow in North Dakota every month but August or something, I think you said?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And that was interesting because I said something like that at a—I applied for some money through APUC and one of the farmers went, and I said "snow every month but August" and he goes, "Well, I had some beans that died from a frost in August."

Tyler Bertsch: In August? Oh my goodness.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And I should have went and said "I said snow, I didn't say freezing temperatures." And I still need to want to follow up on that because I read that in—it had the historical agro-climatology information of North Dakota. So, but he went and he said he’s had frost every month of the year.

Tyler Bertsch: Oh my goodness. Yeah, I think I would just raise cows at that point. That’s nuts. Well, that gives me a good little background. So what I wanted to do was go back through some of the prior research that you’ve done, grad students, different people at NDSU in relation to growing grapes. The first one was in 2016, "The Alternative Weed Control Methods during Grape Establishment in the United States Upper Midwest." And I’ll give just a brief summary for the people that are listening and don't know what it was about. But basically, in a sentence here, this study compared organic mulches like straw and wood chips against synthetic fiber and traditional herbicides to see how they impacted weed suppression, soil moisture, and early vine growth. Is that accurate?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: You bet. It is.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay. So do you remember what spurred the reason for doing that?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yes. Initially, we had—it was we were part of a grant with Purdue and Iowa State that we were looking at soil health. And we, on that one, we were looking at what would happen if we went and, initially, put down a whole bunch of straw as a mulch for weed control, thinking that "Oh, this will get broken down and the whole effect of soil health and increasing your microorganisms, vertebrates, earthworms, etc., etc." And what we saw, and what we then confirmed with this study, is that when you have such a high carbon source, it really—all those microorganisms are breaking down that carbon, and they need nitrogen.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: So they take it from the soil, and your grapes do not get it. The other thing, we tried a living mulch. And we also found that any kind of grass, even if it was creeping red fescue, planted initially with your grapes, is going to outcompete your grapes and stunt them.

Tyler Bertsch: Interesting. Even in between the rows or underneath?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Underneath. We put them, it was a—we thought, "Well, let's try creeping red fescue, get it established."

Tyler Bertsch: Was this the same, or was this a different—

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: That was with the Purdue and Iowa State soil health thing. And actually, that treatment was the most severe. So when John wanted to do this, I went and said, "We’re not going to put any kind of grass in the row because I know we can have very small grapes and that would—and so, but we really found that weed competition or just competition initially for nutrients—not so much water because we provided water—but just for those nutrients, that first year is really, really key.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. So do you think the fabric was the best option of all of them besides herbicide?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: It was. Just for the fact that you didn’t have to be out there constantly because our weed seed bank is probably pretty populated with lots of weeds that will keep on coming up no matter what. And the other thing is, I mean, we weren’t in an area that we had lots of perennial problems, perennial sow thistle or Canada thistle or anything like that, but that is one of the first things I tell everyone is: "Get your perennial weeds under control because otherwise that just—it never gets easier, it only gets harder."

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. Did you ever try white clover?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I didn’t on that—well, we didn’t on that. I put together a proposal, and this was more on vegetables, that I wanted to go with—look at the micro-clovers between the rows and just see how much nitrogen you could actually by mowing and then just continually cultivating just where you have your rows where you make your rows with a plastic mulch and how you could incorporate some of that nitrogen and reduce making a lot of nitrogen applications. But we haven’t—we haven’t experimented with it.

Tyler Bertsch: Paul Read and—I can’t remember the gal’s name down in Nebraska—they did a study on clover and then I think it was glass, some type of glass. And so the clover, if I remember right—I have to re-read it—so I think it helped with the nitrogen but I can’t remember. But that’s something that, I have talked to a lot of Nebraska growers in the more clay soils up on the hills, they're looking for something to stop the erosion without competing with the vines.

I also—something interesting in there was it delayed bud break for five days in the first year, but then in year two, it didn’t do that. Why do you think that happened? Or was it just an anomaly or was there—you think there's a reason behind that? Just kept it cool for just that one year? And was that the straw or the wood, do you remember?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I thought it was—it could have been—I thought it was the straw. I think it was the straw, yeah. And so we probably had a much thicker—we did add the following year trying to maintain that layer of hay or straw. But even—someone asked about the landscape fabric and they say, "Oh, you got black landscape fabric, that's going to get really, really hot." But the thing is, with that landscape fabric, it isn't—I mean, it kind of—you get that little vapor barrier in between the fabric and the soil and that actually—it’s kind of like a double-pane window where you have that—

Tyler Bertsch: Kind of a buffer, a little thermal buffer.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: It’s a great buffer. And so it provides that insulation so you don’t have that constant—I mean, if the landscape fabric was just laying on the soil, I’m sure there’d be a lot more transfer of heat, but generally, it isn’t. The sides are—and it’s—

Tyler Bertsch: There's like an inch to a half inch? Yeah, I get what you're saying. I wonder with that—with my PIWI and vinifera experiments under the geotextiles, I opted for white ground cover because of that, but Sam Wortman had said to try the black too to see the difference. So it’d be interesting to see what the difference is. But otherwise, yeah, I do think it keeps it cooler.

Now in North Dakota, I mean, this last spring, heck, I mean, we had very cold soils. March, we had snow still on March, April. We’re like, "Are we going to even see spring?" And then May all of a sudden we went from very cool, cold conditions to boom, 90. And then now back down to a little bit more moderate weather again. But so weather—I’ve been here now 26 years. I don’t think I’ve seen one spring that’s been the same. So I think the weather conditions had a lot to do with it as well.

Tyler Bertsch: Only thing that's the same is there's going to be a bunch of wind.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yes, that is true.

Tyler Bertsch: So, with this, do you think cost-benefit-wise, do you think herbicide’s still the way to go? Do you think maybe doing the fabric? Trying that for growers in different regions maybe?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And I think it all depends on the topography. I mean, if you had more of a problem where you’re concerned about erosion and like that, then definitely the landscape fabric’s going to be a much better because you’re not going to get things moving around. And also, I think it also depends on: do you have the kind of setup to be able to make those timely applications? Or are you growing grapes and having two other jobs and this is a weekend thing where weed control—timing is everything with weed control. And we know that there’s a lot to do with grapes. It definitely is not one of those crops that: "Oh, we get it planted, then we play golf for the rest of the summer, then comes fall, we harvest."

Tyler Bertsch: Oh man, a guy can dream, right? All right. The second study that I thought was really pertinent was "Contrasting Responses to Environmental Conditions by Three Cold-Climate Wine Grape Cultivars." And these were three really good ones because they are pretty prevalent throughout our region: Frontenac Gris, Marquette, and St. Croix. So basically, this paper tracked Frontenac Gris, Marquette, and St. Croix through the autumn to prove that different cultivars use completely different environmental cues to enter dormancy and acclimate to the cold. Is that right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: That summarizes it.

Tyler Bertsch: Do you remember what the impetus for that was? Or what you guys—the background there?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: The main thing was everyone wants Marquette because it is a good cold-hardy red grape. But you see that poster from the University of Minnesota for Marquette clusters and we’re like, "Wow!" And the clusters we get—not so wow. So we just wanted to see just what was going on, where—because we know we’re just getting secondary clusters, buds. That’s our fruitful buds because our clusters are half the size. And thus we’re trying to figure out just where are we getting the injury? Why are they dying? Is it because they’re supposed to be hardy to minus 25 and occasionally, yes, we’ll get beyond minus 25, but I think for the most part that we don’t get that cold.

Tyler Bertsch: Then you got snow sometimes too with it, which helps.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Generally we’ll have snow. By the time we have that minus 25. Right. And so sometimes lots of snow cover. So yeah, that was just trying to figure out more of the acclimation, deacclimation.

Tyler Bertsch: So they don't acclimate the same way, as what I was understanding, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Correct. Yeah. That’s weird. Marquette, if you—with Marquette, if you go and get that Indian summer—all of them will go and take a lot of environmental cues, the short days and the cooling temperatures. But then it seems like we always get that early freeze and then it warms up again or a frost event and then not that it completely kills everything, the impatiens might get nipped, but then it warms up again thinking, "Oh yeah, now we have..." And Marquette gets fooled into Mother Nature’s little thing in which, when that happens, then you get nice weather again, it won't continue to acclimate. It thinks "I have maybe I don't know how long."

Tyler Bertsch: Do you think that has to do with in its pedigree the vinifera, riparia, or which?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yes, I think it has to do with the vinifera. And so the Mediterranean environment is very much like that: "Keep going, keep going." In North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, the door shuts and that’s the end of it. Yeah. And so sometimes Mother Nature teases you and then she just slams it into your face. And I think that’s where we get most of our damage is, you know, some of these grapes can really—I mean, you get that first cold temperature and they—it’s like defense mode. They can really be quite hardy. And then others, they really have to take a long time and then they get the wires crossed.

Tyler Bertsch: So which—I can’t remember how many, but I think there’s like 17 cultivars that I’ve been drilling down on people that are widely used in our region—which ones do you think are the best at getting out of dodge? Like they know to go into dormancy fast and which ones are the worst? Sounds like Marquette’s not very good.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Marquette’s probably the worst. And I actually thought La Crescent wasn’t that good, but I talked—and this might just be differences in location—Horst Caspari in Grand Junction, Colorado, he says La Crescent for him, that thing—looking at DTAs, you get a little cold temperature and he goes "Those buds are hardy down to minus 15 just like that." Really? And so he feels La Crescent—and that’s one thing that we want to start testing: subjecting these vines to like that cold cue and then go and look at your differential thermal analysis where we can actually test where—how cold the buds can take before they die.

And North Dakota is also a nice place where we will go and get those all-of-a-sudden arctic blasts before it’s actually really even late fall.

Tyler Bertsch: Because you can get those in October, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Oh, easily. We can get those in late September.

Tyler Bertsch: Like how cold are you talking, late September?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well, we could get down to 25 degrees Fahrenheit. It’ll be a good freeze. It’ll take all the leaves off and like that.

Tyler Bertsch: So you're getting more damage from that, probably, than the spring.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I feel we are. In Nebraska, we’re probably getting more in the spring. Wisconsin, I think they’ve talked they’re more spring too. I think, yeah, well, a good example was this year. The East Coast, heck, they had some 70 degrees in February and March and heck, we were like, "Okay." If it got above freezing, we were back down to like 10 degrees overnight. So lots of fluctuation in temperature. That’s another thing that I think would be really interesting to look at is, okay, what is the amplitude of difference in temperature daily that will actually start to wake up? We know that once those temperatures go above freezing, things start flowing and deacclimation starts. Right. But when—

Tyler Bertsch: It’s not all at once, it’s usually kind of a multitude of factors.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, it’s rather quick. And it really varies with the cultivar too, how fast. I have a grad student that she was looking at—she did DTAs in January. She had something that—now this is in Celsius—something minus 27, one that was like minus 23, another one was minus 26. And then she did it in March. And the one that was at minus 26—one of them, minus 10 in March.

Tyler Bertsch: Just lost it all.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Lost it all. Another one only moved like three degrees. It was like minus 24 and it was now minus 21.

Tyler Bertsch: Do you remember which one?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well, these were from a population that actually was a cross between a vinifera and a riparia. So we have a little bit of everything. And the nice thing is this population is out in California. So we could propagate it and bring it here and actually then test and see what’s dying and what’s not, versus if I made this population and put it out there and the first year, what happens when 16 individuals die? I don’t know what they died from. But now we know actually by doing the DTA that we had some very susceptible that they were even more susceptible to the cold than the vinifera that they came from. Huh. We had some that were just like the vinifera. We had some that were a little bit of riparia and vinifera as far as cold hardy. And then we had those that were just like riparia and were cold hardy. We didn’t get any that were more cold hardy than riparia, though.

Tyler Bertsch: So some of these are acclimating through light and then some of them through temperature? Or is it a combination or what’s that?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: That’s a good—another darn good question that—because we were at the ASEV Eastern Section in the national meeting just this week, we just got back. And Peter Cousins was talking about how when he was at Cornell, he remembers seeing some grapes that were under the streetlights that were still like green in October or like that.

Tyler Bertsch: You almost need to do an experiment where you put greenhouse lights out in the field.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: That's what he said. He goes, "You got to get some LEDs and put them out in the field and just see."

Tyler Bertsch: I got an idea for my website now. I’m going to try that. I like that. The other thing too, you know, implication for that would be canopy management if they really do respond to light. I don’t know if any kind of late-season leaf pulling—there’s minuses to that because obviously you’re pulling their starches away—but I didn’t know if maybe that could be an implication if they just need more light. Some of these varieties get pretty bushy, I don’t know. But usually, the varieties it seems like that are really bushy are the ones that know how to harden off too.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well, and I think Tim Martinson at Cornell at one time did a—said "Okay," and like you said, they did 100% leaf pull and they found out, "Okay, that wasn’t a good thing." You’re going to need some sugar to—well, yeah. And it was kind of the whole thing of a stress and ABA and how that influences dormancy and then how that could, you know, delay bud break in the spring.

Tyler Bertsch: You say ABA, you mean hormones, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yes, plant hormones, abscisic acid. And basically they found out, yeah, when you did—removed everything, that was really, really bad. But if you just removed like 10% of the leaves, the vine didn’t really even understand that it missed out on 10% of the leaves.

Tyler Bertsch: It’s just a slow Tuesday. Yeah, Japanese beetles, I’m used to this. So with that real quick, if you had to just top your head, which cultivars would be the best and which ones are the worst? So I’ll just throw some of these out there: Brianna, Frontenac, LaCrosse, St. Croix, Petite Pearl, Crimson Pearl. I’m just throwing out all the varieties we have. As far as acclimating and—or you feel like they harden off better? Like they don’t play the games that Marquette plays?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I think Frontenac for sure and the Frontenac series, if we shall say. Frontenac doesn’t respond to anything. I swear. It really doesn’t. The acid won't drop, you can beat the daylights, it's going to do what it wants to do. Yeah. And that was what Andrej also—he said, "Well, let's see if we can just fruit load." And it doesn't even respond to fruit load. We tried leaf pulling—it doesn’t respond to leaf pulling. It just does its own thing, you know? I actually included that—we’ll come back—I included that study because I think it’s kind of fascinating. It aligns with what other studies have done in Nebraska, and I think there was one at Iowa State too. So that doesn’t surprise me.

Tyler Bertsch: So Frontenac's good. What else are you thinking?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I think Tom Plocher’s Petite Pearl and Crimson Pearl. They—yeah. I’ve heard good things about Crimson Pearl in that regard. Up here, Petite Pearl’s—maybe I don’t know, is it hardy enough up here?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Both of them, I’d say Petite Pearl’s probably a little bit more hardy. Really? Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: Oh, okay. So the bad ones, you'd put Marquette in that bucket. Any other? You thought La Crescent.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, La Crescent. Well, and the problem is with La Crescent, if you get some winter injury, you just—you’re fighting a—it just likes to throw out all those bull canes. So for three years you’re trying to wrangle it in to go and get it into—and it’s one of the most vigorous, right? It can be. What about La Crosse?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: We don’t have much La Crosse.

Tyler Bertsch:And you don’t have Edelweiss, I’m assuming. Too tender for up here?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: All right. Next study, which I found fascinating, was when you guys found this mutant ND Mutant 1 is what it’s called. And it was "A Novel Determinate Interspecific Grapevine for Genetic and Physiological Study in Breeding Applications." This was done in 2018. But basically what this was, was this research introduced a unique bush-like dwarf grape mutant with viable pollen but non-viable seeds, serving as a powerful new male parent tool for genetic studies in compact vine breeding. Is that right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And that was John Stenger, who was a PhD student and a very smart guy. And he was really for the project—he was taking on a lot of the responsibilities of crosses and pretty much saw this and went and said, "Well, that's—"

Tyler Bertsch: How rare is it though? For the people that don’t do this kind of work? Is that extremely like one in a million, one in a thousand, one in a hundred?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well, I mean, I think there’s those possibilities to always occur. It just takes having that trained eye to go and notice it.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. Because what was unique about it was it was like a perennial flower that’s constantly flowering throughout the season, right? Like a citrus tree? They just constantly going. That's interesting. Did you guys ever have any progeny from it? Did you cross?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No, we didn't.

Tyler Bertsch: Do you still have it?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I'm pretty sure we still have it. I know we went and we sent material to—I want to say—we probably sent material to Geneva to the repository. And then we had some requests for teaching purposes, and so we propagated it and sent that.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. I don't know how you can maybe opine how useful it is, but I just thought it was so cool. I find stuff interesting, just random mutations or random things like that.

Another study was utilizing pruning and leaf removal, which we kind of talked about, on optimizing ripening of Vitis riparia based Frontenac Gris and Marquette wine grapes in the Northern Great Plains. This project evaluated how altering bud counts and pulling canopy leaves affected fruit ripening and acid levels and vine health in Marquette and Frontenac Gris. So basically I’m assuming the main point of this was trying to lower the acidity and whatnot.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Right.

Tyler Bertsch: So, back to what we were talking about, Frontenac being a genetic wall basically. So it's pretty much locked in a steel box. Like you can't really do much with it is what I’m gathering.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yep. And Gris acted the same way.

Tyler Bertsch: Right. Whether it was 20—because I think you did 20 to 40 nodes—and it didn't matter. You guys were trying to overcrop it. So this is basically something where the battle has to be fought in the winery, not in the field. There's not much you can do, right? With the Frontenac.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: With the Frontenac, yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: But what about Marquette?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: The Marquette did respond to leaf pulling.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And we could actually drop the acids with leaf pulling.

Tyler Bertsch: Nice. So do you think again that’s the more vinifera? Riparia just doesn't play the games, it just wants to do what it wants to do. Because if I remember right, Frontenac is basically 50% riparia, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: When you did that, when you pushed it and you overcropped it and whatnot, did that do anything to the winter hardiness? Did you see it?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No, it didn't even affect winter hardiness.

Tyler Bertsch: What about Marquette? Did you overcrop that to see what happened?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: We didn't try to overcrop Marquette. On that, the thought was more like Pinot Noir and how they go and keep thinning instead of pushing it the other direction. We thought, "Okay, can we increase our quality by reducing the fruit load?" as they do with Pinot Noir. And we didn’t see so much that you could reduce that crop load to have maybe get to that fully ripening stage better, because that is always the challenge up here. But we did find that leaf pulling for Marquette would definitely help.

Tyler Bertsch: Do people grow at VSP up here? Or high wire?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, most of them do because hey, that’s what California does. Now I think quite a few of them are changing over to the high wire cordon.

Tyler Bertsch: That’s what they all have done in Nebraska, the ones I’ve talked to. And if you listen to some of the interviews you’ll probably hear that, but it's definitely a GxE, it does weird stuff in Nebraska. Did you ever have it ripen earlier on you? Like as it aged? Did you ever hear that?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Uh-uh.

Tyler Bertsch: In with a VSP?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: With any trellis system.

Tyler Bertsch: Did you ever have Marquette change its date and start moving up ripening?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay. Interesting.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: But I do know there were two growers out in Montana that said they got the same from the nursery, they got the same Marquette. But one of them, the berries and the clusters were big, and the other one, they were small. And they’re like, "How can this be?" and they swore they were the same. But one was on a very much gravelly—and they both were growing on VSP—had more of a gravelly base and the other one was more soil.

Tyler Bertsch: Loam?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: So the one that was on the gravel did better.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yes.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay, that doesn’t surprise me because this is another data point that I’ve found talking to all these growers in Nebraska, the ones that are on heavy loam do not do well.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Ah.

Tyler Bertsch: Interesting. So that’s another reinforcement there. I don’t know if that’s true, but it might be something to keep digging into.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. Because the one is basically a gravelly riverbed type thing and they said, "You would not think they were from the same, even closely related" just because of how different they were.

Tyler Bertsch: Well, that’s very interesting. In 2021 you also did leaf pulling and whatnot on Frontenac. And we kind of already talked about it being a steel box. But one thing that is interesting I've seen in other studies in our region is the people seem to get more yield on Geneva Double Curtain and it's better, but yet I don't know many people that do that. Do people up here—are they putting on GDC?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Most of them are high wire. There was one grower that was going GDC. But see, we just don't get the kind of GDDs that you can afford to try to grow these huge monster vines because they just won't harden.

Tyler Bertsch: They just won't harden off.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, you got twice the crop load. And I remember south here there was a grower that with Marquette was just pushing those. He had way too much overcropping things and we’re like, "This is September and you barely have gotten to veraison because you have so much fruit on those vines" and it was like, "This isn't going to be good." And he was like, "But he needs as much as possible." And so yeah, that—

Tyler Bertsch: Did he win the lottery or did he lose?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No. I haven't really seen much loss as far as—it's like a Wheel of Fortune, you spin it one more time and then you hit the bankrupt. So and even with that study that Brittany was doing it was, yes, they’re vigorous enough to go and do a GDC, but boy, it’s just the work to go and get that, and then, yeah, depending on the year. Boy, we have some really bad years where we don’t have much for growing degree days and then others—

Tyler Bertsch: So up here it’s maybe not practical, but down in Nebraska it could be.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Oh yes. You’re a zone further.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, you can make it work. All right, the “Vine Apocalypse”. That's what I'm calling this, sorry. This is "Cold-Hardy Grape Cultivar Winter Injury and Trunk Re-establishment Following Severe Weather Events in North Dakota." So give us just a little summary of what happened here.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: So, yeah. 2019 Polar Vortex, right?

Tyler Bertsch: Right.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And the biggest problem with that was that it was a rather mild winter until that came. And that came late in the winter if I remember right.

Tyler Bertsch: It got down to negative 37, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yep.

Tyler Bertsch: And there were 35 genotypes that got hit, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Okay. So that was our variety trial that we went and said, "Oh, okay." We just kept cutting trunks off and so Andrej went and said, "Well this will be a good time to go and establish—see what happens on re-establishment."

Tyler Bertsch: So with that, did you guys come to a conclusion on how many suckers you should have? After that event, did you allow a bunch of them and then the following year you pruned them or did you focus on one, two, three or what?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: It depended on the variety. Yeah, I think it was three and five because we pretty much always go to two trunks. And in reality this isn't the way you should do it, you should probably bring up a different one the following year, but so we looked at just different methods of do you one, three, five? What would be the best?

Tyler Bertsch: So pretty much, I think out of these 35, you had Itasca, you had La Crescent, you had all the Frontenacs, you had Bluebell, Valiant, which Valiant I think did the best if I remember right.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. I would say it is our most cold-hardy.

Tyler Bertsch: Even a little bit more than King of the North?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, I'd say they’re a one-two. The nice thing about Valiant is all those blind buds can go and produce fruit. So it can become very fruitful even though it can get whacked and still produce a lot of fruit.

Tyler Bertsch: Hmm. So which other varieties do you remember did better?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: You know what we were really surprised at is something like Bluebell. So it seemed like anything that had some labrusca in it did better.

Tyler Bertsch: Huh. Did you have La Crosse in that 35?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No.

Tyler Bertsch: No. Okay. So that's kind of out of North Dakota. And then some of the other ones—if I remember Petite—did you have any Tom Plocher's in there?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, and they didn't do so well. Verona really is very—that’s a little bit more tender than the other two, yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: I’m trying to think what else was in there. So you guys kind of figured out it was three to five suckers the first year?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, if I remember right.

Tyler Bertsch: I did see in the study that La Crescent seemed to bounce back the best of all of them. And so that would go to the labrusca comment that you were making, which is interesting. What soil type was that? Do you remember?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: So we have a sandy loam out there.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay. Is it what's the pH on it?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Oh, we’re probably at eight, eight and a half.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay. Is the iron pretty low, do you know? Because sometimes the labrusca—it depends the iron levels mess with it a little bit.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And so we have had to go and because of—yeah, Bluebell would always be showing us the iron chlorosis so we would go and add some sulfur. But I think our pH is still right around, for those specific ones that have the labrusca in it and if they’re showing any signs like that poor darn silver maple there...

Tyler Bertsch: You just want to go pour some fertilizer over the fence? Oh god.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well they had another one in between and I mean this thing was almost white, it was so bad. And they took it out last year and they probably should have taken that one out with it.

Tyler Bertsch: For those listening we're talking about a neighbor, some maple trees. But yeah, I've heard that there can be iron chlorosis problems on labrusca.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yes. And we have seen that and so anytime...

Tyler Bertsch: You guys see that out west? Because we have it out Western Nebraska growers have issues with that.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. I don't know of any growers out west that are growing Bluebell.

Tyler Bertsch: Well I mean labrusca in general, like La Crescent. Is La Crescent labrusca?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I didn't think it had that much if it did.

Tyler Bertsch: Edelweiss, Brianna... people are not really growing those out there.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Right. And Elmer Swenson’s—Elmer put labrusca in it because he wanted bigger fruit, bigger berries. So he put more and Bluebell's a perfect example. I mean wow, what nice-sized berries those are.

Tyler Bertsch: If we could just get the seeds out of them, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And so and we don’t have another one that would have been like Crimson Red or Swenson Red. You know those are nice size berries too, but see, that’s not cold-hardy enough so nobody’s growing something like that.

Tyler Bertsch: All right, another study: "Complex Plant Process Trait Evaluation Through Decomposition of Higher Order Interaction: A Case Study in Acclimation Responses." So summary on this was: this highly technical study used advanced multi-way data modeling to separate how wild grapes and commercial hybrids prioritize daylight length versus temperature when hardening off for winter. We kind of touched on that a little bit. But one of the things—and maybe it was another study—you guys were looking at the periderm, the color of that and was it the fifth node? If I remember it was where you were getting the most accurate because you were looking at the starch levels or something too with them.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, we were looking at just tip formation, your periderm, the final bud, that dormant bud. There was a number of things that we were trying to measure. And actually another grad student that's trying to finish up, Avery, he was trying to use a hyperspectral camera to go and determine if there is a way besides just trying to measure periderm formation for cold hardiness or acclimation, if there's other cues that we can use to determine and characterize acclimation.

Tyler Bertsch: Which would be great for a grower might be—you could have a phone app or something you could hold it up and it could do that. That would be kind of cool, based upon your date and where you're at or temperature with historical temperature data with AI it could maybe... yeah, just an idea.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well yeah, now what they’re trying to do with some robots or even fly over with drones and like that. The problem here is... so if... I remember being in Turkey for a meeting and they get kind of cold temperatures just like we do. And but they're growing vinifera, but it’s vinifera that has been in their country for a long time. And I go, "Well how can you make sure that they can withstand this minus 15 or 20 degrees Celsius?" and they’re going, "Well we just stop irrigating." It was like, "Ah, we can't do that in the Midwest. Mother Nature decides for us."

Tyler Bertsch: We’re going to have problems with the desiccating winds will pull out all the water so we have to water them, but the downside of that is sometimes that can encourage them to keep growing so you kind of have to be tactical with that, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And here—and you're talking more Western Nebraska because I know Northeastern Nebraska there's no need for irrigating.

Tyler Bertsch: Right now I don't irrigate my vineyard.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And the worst part is getting those rains just at the most inopportune time when you really want those vines to start to acclimate and get ready for winter and then we get rains and then we get some warm temperatures and you're like, "Oh gosh, this is not what we need."

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. Another thing was the LTE, on the bud hardiness. Was there a correlation to the age of the vine for them being more hardy or was it kind of—that didn't matter. So a little two-year-old vine versus a seven-eight-year-old vine, don't you think it matters?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No, that didn't matter. Okay. I do think though that with—and that’s one study I've always wanted to do, but how just to set it up—a couple years ago there was all this talking about trunk diseases and how we have lots more trunk disease problems.

Tyler Bertsch: Richard Smart... yeah, he came through, and everybody was freaked out about trunk diseases.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And you—well I think every darn tree is probably going to be subjected to a little bit of trunk disease over time. And in grapes that just complicates the whole winter cold hardiness situation. And I've always wanted to go and say, "Okay, just like with my shrub there, I have to take out some branches and rejuvenate it" or some stems. And you should always go and do something like that to rejuvenate a multi-stemmed woody plant. So with grapes, I remember being down in Missouri and they had these Nortons that were probably 150 years old. The root system was, not the trunks. They had redone those multiple times. And I'm going, "You know, with the kind of stresses that we have here, we need to figure out when a younger trunk's going to be much more resilient than an older trunk," just like you 20 years ago would probably, man you could go up and down that hill like 30 times and now you're like, "Why?" First of all, but I mean it's just so how to figure out when you should turn over and start to rejuvenate a vineyard? Because we have way more environmental stresses on these vines than California ever is going to have. They can go and have their 50-year-old trunks. If we had a 50-year-old trunk it would look like crap. I mean, there's just like I've been trying to find a big old riparia that has a trunk on like that and every one that anytime I've ever found a big trunk it's a male.

Tyler Bertsch: Huh. I'm trying to think in my trees in my farm, I have some big trunked ones. I've never seen any berries on them, that doesn’t mean the birds didn't get to them or whatever but interesting. I didn't know that. I'll have to ask Jason when I talk to him in a couple hours what...

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Now they have a pretty nice one that is right down by the river where they've gotten most of their wood that is—I mean has good clusters for riparia and like that—that probably has a pretty sizable trunk on it, but rarely do you find something like that.

Tyler Bertsch: Most... is probably do you think it has to do with the crop load? I mean it's just like—maybe this is a terrible analogy—but if you had a woman give birth literally almost every year of her life, she's going to have a shorter lifespan than a male who’s not doing that. I don't know. It's kind of a bad analogy. Well, I put the analogy it's like, "Okay, this vine has all these berries and those are her babies and she is putting all her energy into ripening those because that’s—"

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And the male doesn't have to do that. And the male's like, "Hey, September! I think I better get ready. I’m not going to ripen nothing, better for me to..." Yeah, so that female depending on the year, maybe no problem, but other years trying to ripen that out and putting a lot more energy and effort into that fruit versus sticking it down into that root system, probably goes and has played a crucial part into that. My hypothesis. I have not been able to prove any of that.

Tyler Bertsch: Well it’s a good segue, kind of the post questions, but one of my rows was: after decades of navigating these climate paradoxes we'll call them, your lab finally achieved the ultimate milestone. You had some releases of Dakota Primus and Radiant. How did you feel when those vines finally out-survived the control varieties? Like when you walked out there and you saw everything else was dead or had a lot of damage and they looked pretty good? That’d be pretty rewarding.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah it was. And for me just trying to find cultivars that are going to help our growers is going to—or any kind of method, you know? Trying to figure out ways of helping them is probably the most satisfying and rewarding to me. I think back, getting back to when I was even at Nebraska, just as a growing up on a farm and seeing my dad help a neighbor who had a problem or something like that, kind of got that extension part into me and I get my greatest satisfaction by helping others achieve something, overcome difficulties or problems and actually trying to help them be successful.

Tyler Bertsch: Well that's the beauty of this. And I'm not just saying it because you're here but all the research you guys have done and all the breeding and all the stuff that the industry's been growing pains the last 20 years gives a lot of people with farms, small farms, gives us a chance to grow something. I'm one of those people so I appreciate it. And you might think, "Well, cultivar here, cultivar there," but I got cultivars in my vineyard that didn't exist 20 years ago and they give me a chance to actually make money because they're fruitful in the primaries, they're not susceptible to every single little disease and they can put up with the BS, right?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. I had a guy—research well he's new faculty at Tennessee—and he had seen that we did some work looking with a high tunnel, which we haven't published yet, we're working on that. We looked at Petite Pearl and Marquette under a caterpillar tunnel. So it's like a low tunnel. Yeah, it but 7 foot tall and what—we could get two rows. Oh, okay. So we could get two rows under it and we went 100 foot long. And it's called a caterpillar tunnel because basically it's just a single poly and then you put these ropes over that segments it to kind of look like that.

Tyler Bertsch: I have a couple of them. We grow flowers in them.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. And anyway my original thought was this would—because of that heat—we would be able to hasten ripening and we could then—the vines could acclimate sooner and it would be beneficial. And really what we found was Petite Pearl did not respond as well to the extra heat. It didn't really hasten things too much.

Tyler Bertsch: Probably because more riparia than Marquette, it just wasn't going to be fooled.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: But Marquette sure did. And so—and but the ultimate goal was to go and increase the cold hardiness or at least avoid more of the bud death. And we didn't see that we actually got more cold hardiness. Which probably makes sense because cold hardiness is more than just getting the fruit off early. So there’s also other cues that we probably delayed having this even though we put up the sides...

Tyler Bertsch: Were you venting it? Like a diurnal kind of like a Napa Valley where it's hot in the day then cold at night? Were you guys doing that level of management or is it more passive?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. It was more passive. It was like, "Okay it's getting too hot, we better go open it." We opened it and then as the days got cooler we brought it back down. Right. But you know.

Tyler Bertsch: Interesting. Well tell me more about Dakota Primus, Radiant, kind of just in general. What flavors, what they look like.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, so Dakota Primus is more like a Gris kind of—well, okay, so it has Alpenglow in its background. Oh, okay. So it’s kind of a pinkish. You get that fruit that if you get a good growing degree days it's pinkish red. In fact, we have one of the community colleges down in Kansas is growing it and they made it into a rosé. They thought—because it looks pretty red—that it was supposed to be made in like you'd do a red wine and so fermented it on the skins and it made a nice rosé.

Tyler Bertsch: Huh. Is it more—is it more sweet, dry? Any of them?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: So both of them don't accumulate the bricks near as much as something like a Frontenac Gris does. Or Itasca. Yeah. And Itasca is just like unreal. But one is more like green apple and the other one I'd say more like a pear. So they're not—I wouldn’t say they’re as complex as a La Crescent because you get all kinds of citrus. You can get like a lemon bomb or a peach bomb.

Tyler Bertsch: Which one’s more appley?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: The Primus. The Alpenglow probably because I know like Edelweiss can get a lot of that apple. So that’d be a good option. People make a lot of Edelweiss. I mean as you know Edelweiss is Nebraska's, to some people's chagrin. But anyways it's interesting.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: And what we really liked about both of them is the fact that our acids were—we were hoping to get something under 10, but both of them are right at that 10-11 when Frontenac Gris would be consistently at 13-15.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah and that’s probably the mother of all acid bombs isn't it? Kind of the highest of all of them. And then isn't La Crescent pretty high too?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah, La Crescent's pretty high too. I remember we were at a meeting in Minnesota and did they use La Crescent? Anyway, it was very acidic and it was like, "Yes, we made this crisp wine" and it was like, "Crisp, that’s that’s probably your puckered!" Yeah. Puckered! Crisp. That’s about as nice of a word you can go and say for that. It was like oh my god. Puckery would have been more accurate, yes.

Tyler Bertsch: So how would you describe the scientific camaraderie between University of Minnesota, NDSU, Iowa State, UNL, all these universities? What’s it been like?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I think it’s been really good. I mean working originally with Jim Luby on stuff, then Matt Clark, now Soon Li. It's been really good. I think we understand that, "Hey, we’re not the bigwigs in California, we’re not Cal Davis, but what we’re trying to bring to our stakeholders... we’re not competing against each other, we’re trying to really work together on it because we know we can't compete with those others and this is but we’re trying to go and help our help the growers and the wineries."

Tyler Bertsch: Do you think you guys are all as breeders—you said Matt Clark, you, Plocher, all you guys—do you think the methodology has changed because the climate now our problems are these swings where in the past it was always about the ultimate bottom temperature, now it's kind of like, "Well, Marquette and some of these are getting destroyed because of the violent swings." Do you guys talk about that much?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I still think for North Dakota the ultimate cold is going to be very, very important because we will get to minus 30 once every three years for sure. Oh man. That’s about a once in 50 years in Nebraska. Even though yeah, this last spring we—it was January I think we were at minus 30. And then the year before it was—that’s when we had some quite a bit of damage—we had some warm temperatures, then we got down to that minus 30. Right. And that hurt. So ultimate cold we definitely have that, but I think there’s going to be a lot more injury in the two—the acclimation part and the deacclimation—now with these kinds of fluctuations that we’re seeing. And yeah, I think that’s really important to address.

Tyler Bertsch: It’s kind of—that’s where I kind of feel like the puck is moving, right? Is just dealing with that.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: That's what I feel like too. And it's not just grapes. Any kind of a fruit tree was affected this last spring.

Tyler Bertsch: All right, I got a fun question for you. A couple more and then we’ll call it a day. But what is the unfinished business of the next great scientific mystery of we'll call it prairie viticulture, that you are leaving for the next generation of NDSU researchers to solve?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Well, we’ve been working on the cold hardiness. I actually think the whole ability of resiliency, adaptability in these grapes is probably—because we’re coming close to being able to identify cold hardy genes that then one can start to do more high throughput and say, "Oh yeah, we got those. We don’t have to spend our time on these thousands..."

Tyler Bertsch: So what you mean by high throughput for growers listening, you’re talking high throughput phenotyping where you're just going through mass amounts of seedlings and just weeding them out through—before we put them out into the field without even spending a bunch of labor on them.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah and that’s where I think it’s headed too is marker selection. I'm sure they’re doing that at University of Minnesota and different places so that will speed things up.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Right. And what they’re working on right now is more the powdery mildew which isn’t so much of a problem here but the East Coast has—it's...

Tyler Bertsch: Well I feel like maybe it's my own personal struggles but in talking to people I feel like black rot is where that—that’s the one that everybody ignores and everybody wants powdery mildew and downy because that’s what everybody on the other coast is going for. For us our cultivars don't really care about it as much, they kind of put up with it or are pretty resistant. It’s black rot that’s the issue.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. Black rot is Riparia’s Achilles heel. It is the number one disease problem for riparia. I was on a committee with a student that was in entomology and he was going out around the whole North Dakota collecting samples of riparia. And the one thing he saw on everything he was collecting was black rot.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. I feel like if—my own personal selfish—if I did breeding that’s the thing I’d be looking for. I did see there was research on Merzling and a couple grapes in Europe that they’ve found QTLs looking that have black rot resistance RGB one, two, three like they have it. And so if we could introgress those genes into what we have that would be pretty sweet. I agree. Yes. So I'm looking at maybe growing them and just breeding them for fun but I don't know.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah that would, yes.

Tyler Bertsch: Because honestly if black rot was solved there would be a lot of years where I wouldn't even have to spray in my vineyard because you know I might get Japanese beetles.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah we don't even have those yet.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah we get we get them once in a while, they seem to be getting less. Phylloxera are on the leaves here and there, but really it’s black rot is the problem. So if that could be solved that would be swell.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: I had one grower and Valiant—I mean if there’s one thing it is the most susceptible to, it is black rot. And I had one grower that said, "I have these Valiants and it just seems like every year I'm getting less and less and less and less fruit." And he goes, "It ends up that it's just all these little shriveled up" and it was like, "You have black rot and if you're not cleaning up all your leaves and like that and getting rid of those mummy berries on that vine, you're just reinoculating more and more every year." And you know took seven years but in seven years went from very productive vines to "I'm not getting anything."

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, there—I can't remember which grower in North Dakota I talked to but said it's the canary in the coal mine, their Valiant, when that starts showing it’s there and they know.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. It is probably I'd say the most susceptible to black rot.

Tyler Bertsch: All right, last question. What are you most proud of in your tenure at NDSU in regards to viticulture?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: The students that I worked with. They—yeah. I get the most satisfaction at seeing others succeed and go on and so the students that I worked with, that’s probably been my proudest moment.

Tyler Bertsch: Awesome. Anything else you want to add before I shut her down?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: No, I just you know I'm just so grateful that you're doing something like this. This is—like when I went to your website I was amazed! I was like, "Really?" you know?

Tyler Bertsch: Wait till you see the Dakota history.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Oh gosh, I'm looking forward to that.

Tyler Bertsch: People don't think there's stuff there but there is and it's pretty interesting.

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Yeah. So I appreciate it.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. With that, do the legalese. Is it okay if I post this on the website?

Dr. Harlene Hatterman Valenti: Sure.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay. Yes. All right.