Hmn...interesting about that Brodbeck cherry, is it lost?

Don't know it. Things get renamed and lost. Who's to know it isn't bali or evans? (laughing) Here is another view back in time that explains the "ease of directional crosses" and "2 generations to produce a duke",

....as a future breeding strategy.

Right now as a test find balaton scions from "nursery on the river" in Clearwater BC for grafting around Edmonton? Maybe email me and I can try to identify if what I posted is the proper business name for you.

Duke....apparently there are over 60 subspecies.

This is what I found on Duke...

The trees are less hardy than even Sweet Cherry trees, and less
productive than sour ones. For this reason, plus the fact that they are
hard to sell in a market that thinks of cherries as being either sweet
or sour, they aren't grown much.
The cherry has red skin and flesh with a red tinge to it. It gives off clear, tangy juice.

Doesn't sound too promising being less hardy then Sweet cherries

It never makes sense that crossing two closely related species would become less hardy then both until you consider the facts of lethal gene combinations. For example organisms that mate accumulate genetic changes in DNA at a very gradual rate. Most of these (after mating) causing potential negative side effects or death. This kind of means the diploid sweet cherry can carry mutations as "recessive" (remember high school biology) that usually never become manifest in the next generation unless it becomes mated with a sibling that inherited the same recessive. Another way of causing problems other than mating siblings comes from a problem breeders use to increase fruit size (ie grape breeding) is to double the amount of DNA. When combinations of bad and previously un-noticible recessive genes from the original material are multiplied, the problem suddenly becomes manifest. I tried this with sweet cherry seedlings using a chemical and I could always see the ones that would become more diseased. This is (google it) "recessive lethal" and in the case of breeding grapes there are always a few vines that are well enough that can fruit and carefully be selected upon to become stable again, alas -our large table grape.

While it is so true that the old brodbeck cherry article could be a paid advertisement in the paper, it could also have been developed and refined as above per grape. I never mention this in any hybridization forums because sweet cherry have a much different method of behaving in comparison to the other talked about fruits they discuss about there. The old image of text I posted yesterday is a suggestion to this forum of that odd behavior that diploid sweet cherry crossed to tetraploid sour cherry does throw out unexpected numbers of polidy in offspring.

Those tetraploid sweet cherry I had all died over the winter. So in retrospect of this subject the new plan for me now is to gather seeds from tetraploid dukes to grow them out and search for gained hardiness characters from amoung them.

If you haven't before you might want to focus on fruits developed for use in Russia. Raintree nursery in Morton, WA has been offering a selection of these for years.

Ya, I read your email Konrad just now about no fresh market for it. The goal is to have a couple generations breeding. First select for hardy, then after that for sweet cherry imitation of flavor. Like grapes were doubled then 1st most fertile were selected until they doubled it again, then same thing over..