Location: Horticultural Crops Production and Genetic Improvement Research Unit
Project Number: 2072-21000-060-013-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2024
End Date: Oct 31, 2025
Objective:
1. Testing and develop commercially acceptable berry crop cultivars.
2. Evaluate how advanced selections and new cultivar releases respond to small fruit production and management systems in terms of yield, fruit quality, and pest/disease pressure.
Approach:
New small fruit selections identified by USDA-ARS will be propagated and placed into trial plantings at the Oregon State University North Willamette Research and Extension Center (OSU-NWREC) consisting of replicated and non-replicated observation plots. These trial plantings will be managed using current management practices from industry (irrigation, fertility, pest and weed management, plant training) to mirror a commercial farm production environment. Selections that perform well in one or more replicated trial plantings will be transferred to regional nurseries for tissue culture propagation and establishment in multi-location grower trials. Data will be collected from advanced selections planted in different production systems to better understand how these factors change with cultural system, which components can be manipulated to improve yield, and what to look for in new selections.
