Breeding better raspberries – US-NZ joint venture answers the call

2024 commemorates 150 years of formal scientific partnership between New Zealand and the United States. Throughout the year, Universities New Zealand-Te Pōkai Tara will highlight brilliant examples of the shared scientific research between the two countries.

The following article is courtesy of Plant & Food Research and Science NZ.

Our raspberries are markedly better thanks to a joint venture partnership between Crown Research Institute Plant & Food Research and Northwest Plant Company, a berry nursery based in Washington, USA.

The joint venture, Pacific Berries LLC, was set up in 2012 to breed and commercialise high performing raspberry varieties. These new varieties are now grown in New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and Europe. The breeding programme focuses on the traits needed by growers, processors, and consumers. This includes high yield and disease tolerance, fruit size, flavour, machine harvestability, and the ability to quick freeze. Also included are winter hardiness and a longer growing season.

Pacific Berries plant breeders screen up to 10,000 offspring of manual crosses each year to see which one or two might make the grade as a commercial cultivar. Further analysis determines if these can meet the exacting qualities they require.

Breeding for machine harvest, which requires a firm berry that releases easily from the plant, is a relatively new discipline but has seen rapid advances in the past 10 years.   

The first cultivar to be released from this US–NZ collaboration was ‘Wakefield’, marketed as Wake®Field. Released in 2009, it quickly became the most sought-after variety in Washington – the world’s highest value process raspberry sector. It is now grown in six countries. It has many exceptional attributes that deliver benefits over other commercially grown raspberry cultivars.

A second cultivar marketed as Wake®Haven followed in 2016. The premium Wake® cultivars are high-yielding process raspberries that can be machine harvested, and they fruit at different times in the season allowing growers to extend their harvest.

Meeting a wider range of needs for growers also means creating opportunities for other categories. This led Pacific Berries to release another cultivar in early 2023 outside of the Wake® family. Marketed as EarlyBell, it is an early harvest cultivar with fruit reaching maturity 1-3 weeks prior to many other popular cultivars.  

As well as cultivars for commercial growers, Pacific Berries also breeds raspberries to delight the home gardener. The world’s first true dwarfing raspberry was bred by Plant & Food Research and commercialised through Pacific Berries.

Marketed through different companies around the world it can be found in retail nurseries marketed as Raspberry Shortcake^® through Bushel and Berry® in USA, Europe, and Australia and Raspberry Mini-Me™ by incredible edibles™ in New Zealand. This innovative and compact cultivar grows to only around 60cm tall. It is thornless and produces sweet full size raspberry fruit.   

The Wake® commercialisation model entails a direct-to-grower licence fee that enables the grower, nursery, and breeder to share in the significant commercial success of the cultivars.

Over the past six years, Wake® raspberry cultivars have accounted for 37% of the total reported plant sales to growers in Washington State, which produces 90% of frozen raspberries in the USA.

Wake® raspberries are dark in colour and high in vitamin C, antioxidants and ellagitannins which are known to have excellent health benefits. A tasty brix to acid ratio makes them a favourite ingredient for toppings, baking, jams or smoothies - adding just the right amount of tart-to-sweet.