PROGRESS IN BLACKCURRANT AND RASPBERRY BREEDING IN ROMANIA

At the Fruit Research Institute Pitesti-Maracineni, the main centre for small fruit breeding in Romania, an active breeding programme for the most important berry crops: (blackcurrant, raspberry, blueberry and blackberry) have been in progress since 1980. The objectives are to obtain new cultivars with better adaptability to the local climatic and soil conditions, productivity, quality and a higher tolerance level to diseases and pests.
The black currant breeding objective include the most severe foliar diseases, yield and quality (size, colour uniformity, pre-harvest fruit drop resistance). For raspberry, new cultivars are expected to posses a high level of winterhardiness, yield and earliness in both summer and autumn (primocane-fruiting) cultivars.
To produce the variability, conventional breeding methods are the main tools (direct and reciprocal, intra and interspecific crosses), with early selection and artificial inoculation of the hybrid progenies.
The newly released blackcurrant cvs. ‘Abanos’, ‘Deea’ and ‘Ronix’, and raspberry cvs: ‘Star’, ‘Citria’ and ‘Ruvi’, have met some breeding objectives and growers’ requirements.
In addition, other promising selections are in advanced stages of evaluation.
The main agronomic characteristics of some of the new genotypes are presented.

VIII International Rubus and Ribes Symposium

P. Mladin

Cultivar, selection, yield, bush and berry characteristic

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2002.585.21