Columbia Giant

Columbia Giant is a thornless trailing blackberry from the USDA-ARS breeding program in Corvallis, Oregon, bred by Chad Finn and released with the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station; it was selected in Corvallis in July 2008 from a 2005 cross of NZ 9629-1 with ORUS 1350-2, and patented as USPP28,369. Its thornlessness traces back to 'Lincoln Logan', which sits four to five generations back in the pedigree. The entire selling point is berry size: the patent records a mean primary fruit weight of 14.1 g, roughly half again the 9.7 g of its sibling Columbia Star, and the release describes fruit over two inches long. That size, combined with genuine firmness, is what creates the premium fresh-pack niche EMCO CAL points to — very few trailing blackberries can be sold on appearance alone. It is also among the earliest trailing cultivars to ripen, which matters where late-summer heat or rain shortens the window.