BREEDING PRIMOCANE RASPBERRIES IN RUSSIA

The present study summarizes the efforts of 40 years of breeding activities conducted at Kokino Experiment Station of All-Russian Breeding Institute of Horticulture and Nursery. For the past 4 decades a concentrated programme of inter-varietal and interspecific crosses amongst a hybrid pool of primocane raspberries has been carried out resulting in the production of 300,000 seedlings. An evaluation of agronomic traits, yield and quality of fruit has been done and the donors for major desirable traits have been identified and the possibilities of their combination into an elite genotype have been explored and fulfilled.
The prospective potential of developing ecologically adaptable, high-yielding cultivars of primocane raspberry based on interspecific hybridization has been outlined.