Research grants clear way for new berries

By Andrew Arbuckle
Published on 06/02/2013 01:36

Two research grants totalling £1 million were announced yesterday to help bring forward the next generation of raspberry varieties and to develop lowbush blueberrys as a new crop for high quality juice production.

TWO research grants totalling £1 million were announced yesterday to help bring forward the next generation of raspberry varieties and to develop lowbush blueberrys as a new crop for high quality juice production.

Making the announcement at the Scottish Society for Crop Research meeting in Dundee, Dr Julie Graham, soft fruit geneticist at the James Hutton Institute, said: “Currently there is great scope for increasing soft fruit production in the UK to meet demand from consumers and processors.

“Soft fruit is a success story for the UK, a valuable and sustainable horticulture industry with the associated broader health benefits derived from consumption.”

The raspberry project will use genetic markers to speed up the breeding process as traditional breeding takes up to 15 years to bring a new variety onto the market.

The second project will study the feasibility of replacing imported European blueberries with home-grown cultivated lowbush blueberries for use in the UK processing industry.