Does anyone know if there are any institutions doing fig research? I'm thinking something like a breeding program for cold hardiness. I've heard of LSU doing some but are they still doing research? Would anyone except a GMO fig that could survive northern winters? Just a thought.

define research. if you are talking about educational institution.. i think LSU was one of the biggest, not sure if they are still doing it.

if you are looking for cold hardy figs, there are members who are trying out number of known varieties in north east and canada. 

as to GMO figs, i wouldn't touch them. breeding program using existing known varieties doing manual pollination is fine, but genetically modified by gene insertion and so on.. no thanks. 

LSU program started in the 50's lasted about 10 years and lost funding, figs just are not the money maker some other crops are. The still have a smaller research orchard but the biggest one was bulldozed in the 80's. As far as I know UNC Davis would be the only place that might have active fig research..breeding fine GMO messes up too much stuff, we won't know the full repercussions for years with that stuff....

I wouldn’t have a problem with a GM fig. We already are eating GM corn, soybeans which are in just about everything we eat. If they could take what makes apples and pears trees survive the cold winters and put that into figs, that would be a good thing in my view.

true, therefore, i want to keep control over figs i grow at least.

There are people doing fig research in Italy.  There are several members of this forum doing (private) research on testing cold hardiness of various cultivars, or at least suitability for particular climes.  I don't know of anyone doing breeding research connected with cold hardiness.  (There might be, but I don't know of them).

Mike   central NY state, zone 5a

There are many wild figs (from bird poop) growing in California (growing like weeds!).
Figs from seeds (nature and/or human bred) should be unique.

I have heard that some people went fig-hunting for any 'good' ones...
Can this be considered as 'fig research' ?!?

If I wanted to cross a Hardy Chicago with a Brooklyn white, How would one do this?  

I'm perfectly OK with GM figs if all the dna material is ficus, but NO if they are combining dna material of different species.  They have inserted fish dna into tomatoes for cold hardiness and other attributes. That is breaking every law of nature and unknown consequences are down the road.  All of nature has built in barriers that prevent this. Nature even sets limits within some very similar subspecies when the genetic range reaches the limit, it is blocked by producing sterile offspring and lethal genes that destroy the embryos or fetuses. Horse+ Donkey,  and sheep+goat are two we know of.  I've heard the occasional moose + cow breeding has produced steril offspring, but cow+ buffalo produce fertile offspring.

I found this on the web:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fig/msg0610183712230.html?17

louborges. I think most back yard orchardists would frown upon GM figs. It's not so much that there would be something wrong with the fruit. But it's that whoever develops a GM fig, would be the one in control of making it available. Large corporations already have way too much control over crops that are grown. We need to be moving away from this massively self-destructive trend. Not further into it - IMO.

Selectively cross-breeding on the other hand is not such a bad idea. Genetics are often strengthened when crosses of this nature are done. The term "hybrid vigor" comes to mind.

As Pete said though. You need to start with a caprifig for male pollination. I would assume a lot could be learned if you took the time to see if you could dig up any research papers done by the late great LSU fig breeding program.  

Here is another page that explains the sex life of figs in some detail, explaining the need for a certain type of caprifig.

http://figs4fun.com/links/FigLink006a.pdf

Lou, the lack of university breeding program is not really a big deal IMO. They mostly foucused on dried fig and paste production, where as home orchardists are interested in fresh figs. This leaves it open to amateurs to make some really interesting progress. Myself and about 4-5 other members that I know of are interested in doing just that. If you are also interested, the first thing to do, as pointed out above, is to get a caprifig. Not just any caprifig will do if you want to breed figs that don't require "the wasp". The caprifigs that came out of Condit's program are probably the best to start with: 271-1, 228-20, 347-1. I'm growing the first two and will be happy to share pollen, seeds from crosses or cuttings once they start producing. Next year? My cuttings came from Jon, so you could pick them up from him too.

I see no reason why we amateurs can't do more interesting (at least to us) fig research than the large institutions have done.

As I see it, the idea of breeding for cold hardiness is intriguing.  The problem with using Condit's or UCR caprifigs is that they are not selected as cold hardy, giving you a poor start to the breeding process. You are diluting your 'cold hardy' genes from your common persistent 'cold hardy' cultivar from the start.   Ideally, you should get a cold hardy caprifig to begin the process - where???  Less ideally, you select out in the first generation of thousands of fig offsprings a cold hardy (or hardier than usual) caprifig as the 'male' parent for the next round.  But you need time to figure that cold hardiness out, and then the caprifig has to be persistent - how do you determine that? 

Breeding for better tasting figs, or other qualities like closed eye, size, etc is less interesting to me - people in better climates can do that.

Ed, I have looked in to that a bit. The Condit caprifigs are all descendants of Croisic/Gillette, which does well in the PNW. While maybe not super cold hardy, Gillette should be at least cold tolerant when ripening. The first crosses I am planning are with the most cold hardy common figs I have found. That would provide at least some cold hardy persistent caprifigs I would assume. The problem of where to grow out all those seedlings is one I have not solved yet, but in theory, if every active forum member grew out ten you would have a good chance of finding something interesting. The question of how to identify a persistent caprifig is an interesting one. I have been working under the assumption that you could tell by the fruit. If that is not the case, it would make breeding much harder. HarveyC, there is a great question for a fig breeder, how do you tell if a caprifig seedling is persistent? Maybe Jon, or someone else that has experience with them can chime in with an answer.

2012 got me an experience started on cold hardiness.
The story began with a 2 stems tree of height of 2 meters in fall 2011 - a really beautiful and promising tree.
I had always winter protected it a bit, but in 2012, the tree did not come back on normal time next spring. Some weeks later a bud appeared on one of the two stems at ground level.
I was expecting it to grow like crazy - which it did not. Some roots appeared and I had to put some dirt against them . In September 2012, I started wondering whyyyyyyyy is it growing like a cutting !
It appeared that only those cells had survived ; everything up the stem was dead, as well as for everything 5 centimeters under - all roots dead as well.
On the second stem, everything had died.
I'm protecting that small tree for now, and have great expectations for it as roots and stem (still a single stem as for now) where sprout by cells that survived bad frosts .
This year, the tree showed some pea sized maincrop figs, which gets me expecting some brebas for this year... Time will tell !

Fig pollination is still an unclear process - search for my thread on pollination myth kill !

I'm no scientist but I'll take a guess that cold hardiness has something to do with how much glucose is stored in the bark of the trees acting as an antifreeze. If this is true wouldn't it be easy to test a tree's hardiness by seeing  how much glucose is stored? Just my theory.

Ed,
I revisited the reading I had done by W. B. Storey about breeding figs, specifically looking for answers to the question of persistence in caprifigs. There are two things mentioned that suggest it should be easy to make the determination by the syconia alone. First, the syconia of a caprifig will drop if not colonized by the wasp, just as Smyrna syconia do, unless the caprifig is persistent. In the absence of "the wasp" this alone should make it easy to rouge the majority of the seedlings upon fruiting. Second, there is an interesting statement about the pulp of a ripe persistent caprifig, "[persistent] type caprifigs are unsuitable [for colonization by wasps], because the pulp is juicy when the syconium is ripe and tends to preclude the wasps". So it sounds like a caprifig that does not drop the majority of its syconia and has juicy pulp when ripe is likely to be a persistent caprifig.

I completely agree about the genetics of cold hardiness. The only way to find out just how complex it is, is to start making crosses and testing them. 

Lou,
Interesting hypothesis. I'd bet it was more about the total dissolved solids, not just glucose. Perhaps similar to how KDL is suspected to help provide a few degrees or frost protection to buds in the spring. If that was the case it might be easy to test at home using a refractometer and taking brix readings of a carefully made "tea" from powdered bark.

Andy-that is interesting info. Is that writing by Storey online? The name sounds familiar. I glanced through the list of linked resources that Jon has compiled but might have missed it.

For you fellow fig-nerds :)

There are a number of "research" facility around the world (for instance NAGREF in Kalamata, Greece.) I understand most of these are more interested in trial-ing existent global cultivars in certain areas to see if they are worth growing commercially. Others (I believe in Central Asia) are similar and are backed by USAID in specific projects to find crops that specific groups (e.g., women) can grow as part of a bootstrap project. 

Here's an excerpt from Mr. Hunt's work in Georgia (early 19th century): http://books.google.com/books?id=71JMAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA89&lpg=RA1-PA89&dq=bw+hunt+fig&source=bl&ots=C-KHZJHZFL&sig=hwgsbtmyfD4FYQbbiEVqlGZgsdg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hCTtUoK5BPP7yAHDy4GgCg&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bw%20hunt%20fig&f=false
He discusses his thoughts about smyrna (mule-type?) and celeste caprification briefly. In the end, Hunt brought in caprifigs from California and hand caprified cultivars like green ischia and celeste. The Hunt fig is a result of his work. I think in the end the time it takes to raise seedlings and experiment just takes so long that it's hard to justify funding. 

There are other cases, like in Israel, where Brazilian brown turkey variants "Roxo de Valinhos???'" have been imported and are doing very well as a major crop.

This doesn't answer your question, I know, but hope it helps. I think to a degree, there is an issue of genetic isolation. Such that normal hand-caprifiication methods might yield very random and unexpected results...as opposed to yielding specific traits in offspring. 

As for as LSU, O'Rourke's fields were repurposed in the 1970's but were "rescued" to another plot, eventually revisited and released:  http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/southerngarden/Figcitrus.html. 
Excerpt :
The LSU Fig breeding program was established in the 1950's by Dr Ed O'Rourke, who developed several fig varieties and trained a number of graduate students in the program. Unfortunately in the early 1970ís his fig program was discontinued. His fig orchards fell in disrepair and were soon scheduled to be taken out. A research associate by name of Benny Williams made cutting from the remaining trees and moved the fig plantings to the Hammond Research Station in Southeast Louisiana. Unfortunately the figs did not thrive at the Hammond Station and never fruited. Dr Wayne Bourgeois took cuttings from the trees at the Hammond station and brought them to the Citrus Research Station in Port Sulfur, LA. The trees thrived and bore fruit at the Citrus Station.Promising fig selections identified by Dr O'Rourke at the Station were LSU Purple, LSU Gold, Golden Celeste and Improved Celeste. After cuttings of all the promising selections were rooted, the trees were distributed to interested individuals in 40 different parishes.

As for cold hardy, Gusti Berchtold of Lubera Nurseries in Switzerland has a line of cold-hardy figs not available stateside "Gustissimo Figs". I think they are selections (or seedling of) known cold hardy varieties of Europe. I think Berchtold has been trial-ing about 300 cultivars in his area near the Alps.

There is an isaely research program and the figs are copyrighted as FIGARO..
i have an article that states that they are making cultivars for a specific weather or location... dont know how?
anyhow they are sure making the figs better by genetic engineering and markers..
gonna translate it soon...

Ed, I don't think it is on line, but it is cheap on amazon. Storey wrote the chapter on figs in Advances in Fruit Breeding. It's a 70s text book. Worth picking up if you have an interest in the topic. W. B. Storey was a colleague of Condit's and his successor as I understand it.

Rick, the Swiss project sounds interesting. Do you know if anyone from this forum has been in contact with Gusti Berchtold?

Interestingly enough, Monsanto is applying their genetic knowledge to traditional plant breeding

Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie - Wired Science