Year round production of the primocane raspberry 'Kwanza'

The raspberry ‘Kwanza’ has attracted much attention since its introduction in 2011. ‘Kwanza’ fruit is light in color and extremely firm, making it compared to other previously grown ‘primocane’ cultivars highly suited for the West-European market. Before the introduction of ‘Kwanza’, raspberry production was dominated by ‘floricane’ varieties. In such systems harvest is preceded by an intensive nursery year necessary for optimizing production the following year. The introduction of ‘Kwanza’, a ‘primocane’ fruiting type, offers growers the opportunity to explore new growing techniques and innovative methods with plant material to create greater production efficiencies. Ideally year round production of Kwanza with minimum gaps in supply would be achieved. This is therefore the objective of recent research efforts taking into account cost, quality and production parameters. To this end various cultivation techniques have been developed the last 7 years, whereby a range of trial possibilities is created by each. Variation in the sequence of crops, planting date and storage time are a few examples. The purpose of this article is to show the current potential and limitations of ‘Kwanza’.