When Knock Out® (cv. RADrazz) was first introduced as an AARS winner in 2000, we immediately grabbed it as a parent because of its fantastic black spot resistance. As is the case with Murphy's Law of hybridizing, the variety soon revealed itself to be completely female sterile, but the pollen was viable.

One of the many females we used that first year was an unnamed pink blend seedling out of City of San Francisco crossed with Baby Love® . Despite its bland pink color, it carried the genes for red and/or yellow coloration from its parents. It also had great resistance to powdery mildew plus the potential genes for strong black spot resistance through a completely different bloodline (via Baby Love®). So the goal was to achieve either a red or yellow seedling with resistance to powdery mildew plus a double dose of black spot resistance from different sources.

It's 'Dad' is plagued with powdery mildew on the West Coast....and it passes that susceptibility freely to its offspring. From the 288 seeds achieved in the cross, only 3 survivors showed themselves to be clean in the greenhouse and the field. Only one was red; another being pink; the third being white. The pink and white were not up to our level of quality so they were dropped. The red baby soon showed itself to be superior in the qualities of habit, color, floriferousness, etc.

With only 10 plants, we took a chance (knowing the bloodlines) and moved the propagation level up dramatically so we could quickly find out if the variety would own-root successfully. It passed our prop tests with flying colors. So now it was time to see if the level of black spot resistance met our expectations. Continued