Columbia Sunrise blackberry variety

Columbia Sunrise is thornless trailing blackberry cultivar with excellent quality of fruit. Blackberry Columbia Sunrise is introduced as a very early ripening, thornless trailing blackberry with large, firm fruit, superb flavor and good yields, that will be suited for hand-harvested fresh and machine-harvested processed markets. Columbia Sunrise should be adapted to areas where other trailing blackberries can be grown successfully. As with its half-siblings, blackberry cultivar Columbia Sunrise has the Lincoln Logan source of thornlessness.
The harvest season is identical to Columbia Star cultivar. Fruits are large, weight is about 8 g. Shape is conic. Drupelets are fairly uniformly sized, shaped and arranged, drupelet fertility excellent. Fresh fruit flavor is very good, sweet. Aroma is good, sweet-acidic balanced, typical of western blackberries. Yield is about 5 kg per plant. Very early ripening, thornless trailing blackberry with large, firm fruit with a very good sweet flavor and good yields.
The primocanes of Columbia Sunrise were as vigorous as those of Marion and Black Diamond varieties but were less vigorous than those of Columbia Star or Chester Thornless. Columbia Sunrise fruits are well suited for processing or local fresh market sales. When eaten, Columbia Sunrise fruit texture was rated very good but poorer than Columbia Star and Marion varieties, and much more desirable than Chester Thornless cultivar.
Winter hardiness and disease resistant is good. Also Columbia Star has low tolerance to heat and ultraviolet damage.

Table 1. Yield and average berry weight at Oregon State University’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center (planted in 2012)

Cultivar	Berry weight, g	Yield, kg/plant
		2014	2015	2016
Columbia Sunrise	6.5	5.06	3.74	6.53
Black Diamond	5.5	8.37	3.81	11.32
Marion	6.5	5.06	3.74	6.53

Table 2. Subjectively evaluated fruit quality traits for Black Diamond, Columbia Sunrise and Marion blackberries (planted in 2012, scale from 1 to 9, where 9 is the best expression)

Cultivar	Columbia Sunrise	Black Diamond	Marion	Columbia Star
Firmness	7.6	7.0	4.6	7.9
Color	8.0	8.3	7.3	7.5
Shape	7.6	7.3	5.4	8.7
Texture	7.8	6.8	8.4	8.6
Flavor	7.6	6.1	8.2	8.5
Glosiness	7.0	7.5	8.0	7.0
Heat damage	8.5	6.0	5.5	6.8

Table 3. Soluble solids, pH and titratable acidity of fruit for Columbia Sunrise, Columbia Star, Black Diamond, Marion and Chester Thornless varieties (2014 - 2016 years)

Cultivar	Soluble solids, %	Titratable acidity, %	pH
Columbia Sunrise	14.27	0.81	3.55
Columbia Star	13.38	1.44	3.24
Black Diamond	11.04	1.27	3.32
Chester Thornless	12.52	1.02	3.30
Marion	13.32	1.59	3.13

Table 4. Harvest season (avg. from 2014 - 2016)

Cultivar	Ripening
	First (5%)	Peak (50%)	Last (95%)
Floricane-fruiting
Columbia Sunrise	June 11	June 18	July 2
Black Diamond	June 18	June 29	July 3
Chester Thornless	July 18	August 3	August 24
Marion	June 23	July 2	July 12
Primocane-fruiting
Prime-Ark Freedom	August 20	August 27	Sept. 19
Prime-Ark Traveler	August 24	Sept. 3	Sept. 24