Malling Juno (formerly EM6544/80) is an early ripening summer fruiting type, so-called because much of the fruit ripens in June and the name continues Knight’s classical female/goddess theme which started with “Augusta” in 1988.
“It was named this year and is being multiplied up for commercial release,” says Knight. “It is on trial in the HDC Summer Fruiting Trial 2 at Rectory Farm, Stanton St John in Oxfordshire. This trial is funded by the HDC and headed by Janet Allen of ADAS, the national cane fruit specialist. I am also growing it in my preliminary breeder’s trials at East Malling and last year it cropped from June 17 to July 22.”
While Glen Moy is still the industry’s early standard, it is very susceptible to disease, and many growers prefer to advance the season of Glen Ample and Tulameen - the midseason standards, says Knight. Malling Juno has a slightly earlier harvesting season than Glen Moy, it also has a good flavour and an attractive colour and shape. The fruit is being multiplied by micro-propagation and large scale commercial trials will be planted as soon as possible. These trials should produce a substantial quantity of fruit in summer 2007.
EMR has another, as yet unnamed early ripening summer fruiter, known as EM6166/98. “It has a fairly similar season to Glen Moy but ripens later than Malling Juno,” says Knight. “It has medium-sized, very regular-shaped fruits, good colour and pleasant flavour. The plant habit is excellent and it could do very well under some kind of protection, either glass or heated tunnels.” The selection has been planted in three large grower trials in Kent and Cambridgeshire which will start cropping in 2006. It is an ideal variety for gardeners and it will be released initially for the amateur market.
The third new variety is Malling Hestia (EM5928/114), a late ripening summer fruiting type which has also been released for the amateur market. “It has got very attractive bright red fruit, a very good shelf life and is quite firm,” Knight says. The ripening season is similar to Octavia but the fruit size and yield of Malling Hestia is less than that of Octavia. It is not the strongest contender in terms of fruit size but performed very well in HDC SF Trial 1.
Determining the taste value of new varieties can be challenging because there are often only minor distinctions between different selections and flavour is not a variable which can be measured objectively. “In the summer I have meetings with growers, propagators, producer organisations and soft fruit technologists from the supermarkets where we walk up and down the rows in the field and taste the fruit of different selections. We score them on a scale of one to five for appearance, flavour and texture. I use Tulameen and Glen Ample as controls and if any score higher or similar to the controls they will go through to the next stage,” says Knight.
While raspberry growers are having increasing success in using protected cropping to extend the season, Knight says not all of her breeding material is under protection. “All of the seedling progenies are grown and selected initially in the open field,” she says. “The selections are then planted under tunnels but the polythene is only put on immediately before harvest to protect them from rain during the picking season. I’m not trying to advance or delay the season of the different selections. I want to record their actual fruiting period so that I can select for very early and very late ripening. We are aiming to produce several varieties which ripen sequentially over four to five months and growers can determine the cropping season using a combination of variety and growing techniques.
“The industry and the market are very happy with Ample and Tulameen in the main part of the season. What they would really like is a very early ripening version of Ample or Tulameen and a primocane fruiting cultivar with similar fruit quality. Getting fruit quality up to scratch in the primocane material is proving difficult and none of the newer primocane varieties are as good as Ample or Tulameen in terms of flavour, size, colour and texture.”
While breeding effort used to be divided equally between summer fruiting and primocane fruiting types, Knight says she is now devoting approximately 60-70 per cent of her activities towards improving primocane types because there is a greater requirement across the industry for better primocane varieties. “We have some which are very early, some with very large fruit, some with an attractive bright red colour, some with a good flavour and some that are firm but none of them are all these things - getting a really good combination can take a very long time.” Knight says breeding a new variety takes from 10-12 years (from making the initial cross to naming the variety) with another five years for virus-testing, propagation and full commercial development. Octavia, a very late ripening summer fruiting type, was named in 2002 and, although some fruit was available that year, there has been increasing amounts since then and the increase will continue until at least 2007.
Knight says she picked 42 primocane selections last year of which 40 were picked for the first time. Six selections from Family 6727 were particularly interesting with high yields of large, very bright fruit. “It was decided we will pick them all again in 2005 rather than dig up the plants last winter so I am hoping that by this November we will have selected the best, but how many will be going forward for commercial trialling is not yet determined. It will depend on the 2004 and 2005 results and on the opinions of the members of the East Malling Raspberry Breeding Consortium when tasting the fruit in August and September. I hope there will be a consensus and, say, five out of 42 are considered worthy of multiplication to be grown on a much bigger scale.”
The shift in emphasis towards primocane varieties was one of the decisions implemented by the EM Consortium. This was established in 2003, at the instigation of Defra and as a pre-requisite for continued funding from the ministry. Its role is to define the requirements of the UK raspberry industry, help set objectives for the breeding programme and provide feedback and commercial opinions on the suitability of the material coming out of the programme.
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