research update
Nis’ga (left) and Stolo strawberry varieties developed at the Pacific Agri-food Research Centre. Tough, but still tender and tasty
ChaimKempler reports promising results with new Stolo and Nis’ga strawberry varieties; increased popularity for Chemainus and Saanich raspberries.
By Judie Steeves B
erry breeder Chaim Kempler is searching for the best berries. He wants tasty, but tough— tough enough to withstand attack from pests and disease, but also the sometimes rough handling of machine harvesting, or of processing equipment—not tough on the teeth. Pest and disease resistance is a top concern, so the plant breeding program at the Agassiz Pacific Agri- food Research Centre facility is focused on breeding that into new varieties of berries.
There will be a quarter-million plants available this spring of a new strawberry variety developed at the facility, says Kempler.
Stolo shows good resistance to diseases and pests such as the root weevil as well as producing large, firm fruit of excellent quality, suitable for both processing and fresh market.
“It’s still in the experimental stages,” commented Kempler, but if it’s successful, there will be an increasing number of plants available.
The harvest season for the new Stolo strawberry starts a few days after Totem and lasts a week longer. Plants are vigorous and healthy with sufficient runner production to create a satisfactory matted row.
In a 2002 planting at Washington State University, Puyallup, it had the highest yield and the largest fruit size for the two harvest years following its planting. It was particularly noticed for maintaining high yield in its second harvest year, because of its tolerance to root weevils, a characteristic inherited from it parent Whonnock. The other cross for this new variety is Puget Reliance. Today, 26 per cent of the strawberry acreage in the Pacific Northwest is in Totem, a cultivar released from the PARC program in the early 1970s, but Stolo has more resistance to diseases and pests, noted Kempler. A PARC tradition is to name new varieties after First Nations people. The Stolo people are from the Fraser Valley. The name translates as “people of the river.”
To cover the early strawberry market, Kempler and his staff developed the Nisga’a variety and a few trial plants were available last spring from the PARC breeding program. It is a cross between the red stele fungus-resistant variety Cavendish from the ministry’s
10 British Columbia Berry Grower • Spring 2010
breeding program in Nova Scotia and the flavourful PARC variety Nanaimo. Nisga’a was tested as BC92-20-85, and is a high-yielding, large-fruited variety that ripens three to five days earlier than Totem. It is a medium to
CONGRATULATIONS TO BC BERRY GROWER MAGAZINE
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SOUTHWEST Chuck Mouritzen
4355 StewartRoad Chilliwack, BC V2R 5G2 Ph. (604) 823-0158 Fax (604) 832-0159
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