French strawberry breeder SA Darbonne has granted Hargreaves Plants a licence to produce its own plants of new strawberry variety Darlisette.

Announcing the plan, Hubert Darbonne, chairman of the group, said: “We have some very promising trials results in the UK from our collaboration with Hargreaves Plants. It gives us the confidence to give them a propagation licence to develop Darlisette in the UK”.

Darlisette is the most recent success from the Darbonne breeding programme based south of Bordeaux in south-west France. The company made a major impact in Europe with Darselect, widely regarded as a top quality table strawberry.

Darlisette produces an average berry in the UK of 30mm and a consistently high brix level of 9.6. It is a bright, orangey-red, firm and has good flavour. To date it has given 98 per cent class I fruit. It has a four-day shelf life making it ideal for supermarket sales.

In addition to Hargreaves Plants’ own trials near Spalding, Lincolnshire, Darlisette has also been grown on a larger scale by five leading fruit producers representing all the major UK marketing companies.

Production of the new variety from both the UK and France will be widely sampled in the market from next April’s crop.

Also under scrutiny are Darbonne varieties Daroyal, Daisy and Divine. All three varieties will be in scaled up trials during 2006.

Paul Taylor, chairman of Hargreaves Plants, said: “We intend to learn about the novel plant physiology of Darlisette, there seems to be some very interesting manipulations possible to modify production and excite growers”.

Hargreaves expects Darlisette to offer positive alternatives to Elsanta and Sonata while Daroyal is seen as a significant improvement over Honeoye and following further trials to confirm this, the variety will then be introduced.

The characteristics of Daisy show clear merits over and above the popular variety Florence. Further trial evidence will justify its release to replace Florence in the late season category.

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