Yield improvement of red raspberry by soilless cultivation with two propagation methods under northern Canadian climate

摘要

The increasing demand of high quality raspberries in North America challenges traditional raspberry production. How to efficiently grow raspberry seedlings to improve yield performance per plant is a major growing concern. To verify and optimize raspberry production using root cuttings or bare root transplants, cultivated in soil or in pots, an experiment was conducted in 2013 and 2014 in Quebec, Canada, with the summer-fruiting red raspberry cultivar 'Jeanne d'Orleans'. During the vegetative growth year, root cutting propagation together with soilless cultivation, increased both cane height and diameter. Plants propagated from either two propagation methods, and cultivated in pots with substrate, produced a taller primocane with larger cane diameter than plants grown in soil. All plants were tipped at 100 cm at the beginning of the second year, and still, soilless cultivation increased leaf area of the floricanes. There was no significant difference in yield between plants propagated from either twopropagation methods. In contrast, soilless cultivation significantly improved fruit yield by increasing marketable and total fruit number and yield. No differences were observed in soluble solids content of fruits between all treatments.