2012 - Washington Red Raspberry Commission

2012 PROGRESS REPORT
Title: Red Raspberry Cultivar Development
Personnel: Chaim Kempler, Research Scientist, Michael Dossett, Visiting Fellow, Plant Geneticist
Brian Harding and Georgia Kliever, Technicians
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre, PO Box 1000, 6947 #7 Hwy. Agassiz, BC, Canada, V0M 1A0,
Chaim.Kempler@agr.gc.ca Tel: 604-796-1716 Fax: 604-796-0359 cell: 604-819-0175
Summary:
In 2012, the PARC program evaluated two machine-harvested and two hand-harvested plots at the Clearbrook
substation. This was tremendously successful at providing critical information on machine-harvestability of fruit,
particularly with regards to whether fruit tend to crumble, harvest when overripe, or collapse into mush in
response to machine harvesting. We plan to continue this in the future for all our replicated plots at the substation
and machine-harvest raspberry seedlings in 2013. In addition, we ran 17 root rot screens in the greenhouse,
evaluating selections and germplasm for root rot resistance, identified 7 biotypes of the raspberry aphid, and
began constructing genetic linkage maps for populations representing new sources of aphid resistance,
Phytophthora root rot resistance, and Raspberry bushy dwarf virus resistance.
Machine-harvested Trials
Two machine-harvested trials were run in 2012 at the Clearbrook substation. The first was a replicated yield trial
of 3-plant plots planted in 2008 (Table 1). These plots were hand-harvested for the first two years. We decided
to machine-harvest these plots to examine the feasibility of machine-harvesting small plots and also to compare
yield and other data with previous years. While one year is not enough to make a judgment on the full potential of
this method and plot size, the crumbliness of the fruit was very consistent from harvest to harvest, which will
allow us to focus much more closely on machine-harvested fruit quality. This field has been removed, but we will
be using this method of evaluation in our other 3-plant replicated plots next year.
The second machine-harvest trial consisted of non-replicated 112 plots of 10 plants each. This was the baby-crop
year for this field and many of the plots did not establish well, but we were still able to evaluate how well fruit
came through the process of machine-harvesting. Those selections which were either high yielding or machineharvested
well are summarized in Table 2. Several of these selections have already been slated for trials on either
grower sites or from other breeding programs. In addition, four selections which were noted for good machineharvestability
were planted at the WRRC-sponsored machine harvest trial site at Randy Honcoop’s farm in
Lynden Washington earlier this year. This field will be evaluated again in 2013.
Hand-picked Yield Trials:
Yield trials planted in 2009 and 2010 were harvested by hand at the Clearbrook substation in Abbotsford, BC.
Most of the plots in these experiments were non-replicated because not enough plants were available to plant
larger trials. This was the second year that the 2009 field was harvested, and with the exception of BC 93-15-40,
not many of the selections stand out (Table 3). The 2010 yield trial was harvested for the first time in 2012 and
includes a number of selections from the AAFC breeding program in Kentville, Nova Scotia (Table 4).
Other Projects:
In 2012, we finished work confirming the presence of 6 biotypes of the raspberry aphid Amphorophora
agathonica in SW British Columbia (Biotypes A-F, Table 5) and have tentatively identified a seventh (Biotype
G). In addition, we have identified three sources of resistance, each from wild North American red raspberry, that
hold up to these aphid biotypes. So far the data suggest that two of them (BC 90-19-34 and BC 93-16-43) are
controlled by single dominant genes. The important messages from this work are: 1.) We need to identify more
sources of resistance if aphid resistance for virus control is going to remain a realistic breeding target, and 2.)
Aphids will continue to evolve and adapt to new resistance genes until we change the approach for selecting for
aphid resistance - it will probably be necessary to pyramid resistance genes in order to continue development of
cultivars with durable aphid resistance. A publication describing this work in detail has been accepted by the
Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science and is In Press.
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