Raspberry: Summer Fruiting Variety Trial

This project seeks to meet the industry requirement for identifying new raspberry varieties which offer consistent cropping of high-quality fruit over an extended season, primarily for fresh market production.  The trial proposed focuses on promising summer-fruiting cultivars produced by non-UK breeding programmes, to examine their performance under UK climatic and crop management regimes.  It is hoped that funding for trialling advanced selections from the Scottish Raspberry Breeding Programme will be forthcoming to enable assessment of these to be undertaken in tandem with this project, though this has not yet been confirmed.

The cultivars and advanced selections proposed for this trial have been selected from those showing significant promise from trials or commercial production in their countries of origin.  In particular, they appear to offer desirable attributes (e.g. cropping season, marketable yield, berry size, quality, shelf life, ease of plant management, pest or disease resistance) better, or at least on a par with, the current industry standards Tulameen, Glen Ample and Octavia.

The replicated trial will compare 8 varieties covering the UK natural season of cropping for summer-fruiting raspberries with the cultivars Glen Fyne, Tulameen and Octavia.  In addition, up to 8 single observation plots, primarily for visual comparison, will be established, each with an advanced selection or cultivar from a non-UK breeding programme, which claim to offer traits particularly useful to the UK producer e.g. resistance / tolerance to raspberry root rot, very firm high quality fruit, very early or very late cropping.

Overall aim of the project

To identify and recommend cultivars and / or advanced selections from non-UK raspberry breeding programmes which could confer benefits to commercial growers of fresh market raspberries in the UK.

Specific objectives

To trial and identify cultivars as above with improved cropping characteristics compared with current industry standard cultivars, namely:-

Marketable yield, fruit quality (size, shape, appearance, flavour, shelf life), plant habit (cane habit, vigour, ease of management, evenness of bud break), harvest attributes (lateral habit and position, strength, fruit presentation and ease of detachment)

To increase the number of cultivars capable of meeting the market demand for high quality fruit for UK fresh market sales, replacing, where possible, cultivars currently being grown with those which have improved agronomic traits e.g. those offering opportunities to reduce pesticide usage, costs of crop production or harvesting.