Year round production of primocane 'Kwanza' raspberry as an ultimate goal

The raspberry cultivar ‘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 West-European markets. Before the introduction of ‘Kwanza’, raspberry production was dominated by ‘floricane’ cultivars. 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 should 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 during the last 7 years, whereby a range of trial possibilities is created by each. The sequence of crops, planting date and storage time are a few examples of parameters to be optimized. The purpose of this article is to show the current potential and limitations of ‘Kwanza’.