Mutation for Larger Fruit in the Raspberry

Abstract

RASPBERRY breeders have long been concerned with the problem of breeding for larger fruit. Small fruits are a feature of wild raspberries from which present-day varieties are presumed to have been evolved by many generations of selection for improved size of fruit. It is therefore not surprising that size in raspberries is complex in its inheritance, and that breeders find difficulty in combining large fruit with the many other desirable characters required in modern varieties. The discovery of a mutant raspberry with larger fruits might be of importance as a means both of further improvement in this character and, if its inheritance were simple, of simplifying the breeder's task.