Scanning report Year 3 on Soft fruits Variety testing

Cultivar trials with soft fruit and small fruit species including specialty crops were reported. Results for blackberry (organic), black and red currants mainly for industry (organic and or conventional), Aronia melanocarpa, a range of new bush and tree species for machine harvest and the domestication process for Vaccinium myrtillus (European blueberry) were reported, either ongoing with preliminary results or from recent finished trials. In blackberry organic production in summer-covered tunnels Loch Ness, Loch Tay and Natchez were most promissing. In black currant ongoing tests with standard recommended reference cultivars (Ben Hope, Ben Lomond, Ben Tirran, Narve Viking) and some new breeding clones from JHI (Scotland) in an organic trial showed that a new test clone was late flowering and escaped spring frost in all years and gave the highest accumulated yield. Narve Viking, Ben Hope, Ben Lomond is the best cultivars in conventional tests. In red currant an organic trial showed that Red Poll and Roodneus had the highest yields and the highest content of color and were recommended, and better than Augustus and Rovada.
For Aronia melanocarpa Viking showed a bit higher yield than Nero in an organic trial but both had very high color content. Anthocyanin content in pomace varied depending on juice processing and pressing methods and more than 50% of anthocyanins were left in the pomace. Common garden trials with over 100 clones of European blueberries showed large variation in yield, berry size, plant growth, plant health and fruit quality. Efficient propagation methods using summer cuttings were developed and a special liquid fertilizer developed for EB. Data for selection of superior cultivars has been collected for several years and is expected to lead to release of clones in few years.
36 cultivars of 12 different new specialty species/cultivars is being tested in the DANBERRY project, i.e. hascaps, highbush blueberries, bush cherries, saskatoons, goji berries, japanese silver berries, cornelian cherries, hascaps, white (red) currant, green (black) currant, hybrid black currant x gooseberry, gooseberries. Plants were planted in 2016/2017 and first harvest with machine were done successfully in summer-autumn 2017 and fruit analysis performed for some varieties.

Documents

Scanning report - Soft fruits Variety testing, AU (English) Scanning report on Soft fruits Variety testing in Denmark, 2018. Summary in Danish included.

Details

Activity type

Publication of EIP-AGRI practitioner abstract

Activity work package

Performance of new fruit varieties

Activity number

AU-WP2-A25

Activity contact

Senior scientist Martin Jensen
Aarhus University, Department of Food Science
Kirstinebjergvej 10, 5792 Aarslev
[email protected]

Activity partner

AU

Activity country

Denmark

Last edit

20-09-2018