Horticultural Science and Technology ISSN:1226-8763(Print) 2465-8588(Online) 원예과학기술지

The cultivar of moon cactus, ‘Bulbit’ with dark red color and many offsets, was bred by National Institute of Horticultural & Herbal Science (NIHHS) in 2015. For breeding the dark red cultivar with good propagation, ‘Gohong’ cultivar and ‘0708047’ the line with the similar color were crossed on August in 2011. Fruits were harvested after 2 months and seeds were separated from the peel. They were sterilized by C₂H₅OH 70% and NaOCl 2%, and then sowed in 100 mL mass flask filled with Kyoto medium + charcoal 0.1%. A young shoot was cut and root was removed, and then grafted into a young vine cactus, Hylocereus trigonus, in vitro. This grafted cactus was firstly planted into test tube with the same medium. After 6 months, a young moon cactus, only the scion, was secondly grafted into a vine cactus in vivo. The phenotypic characteristics of this were surveyed three times from 2013 to 2015, according to guidelines of Gymnocalycium mihanovichii. ‘Bulbit’ has flat round shape, and dark red skin (R 46B). This cultivar has average 10.4 ribs. The spine in the areole was brown color. The spine averagely grew to 5.2 mm in the straight shape. The shape of tubercle on the rib was projecting. This was 39.7 mm in diameter and averagely produced 18.3 offsets for 10 months from planting. The preference score of this was 4.5 on a five-point scale. On June 12^th 2017, ‘Bulbit’ was registered (registration No. 6753) and is now protected by Korean Seed Industry Law.