THREE GENERATIONS OF INBREEDING AND S2 FACTORIAL TEST CROSSES IN RED RASPBERRY CULTIVARS

Abstract

In selfed (S₁ to 3₃) progenies of red raspberry cultivars, inbreeding depression progressively reduced plant height in spite of selection for vigor. Parent-offspring correlations indicated high realized heritability of this character. High yield was correlated in this material with many laterals, early flowering, tall new canes, and good berry quality but not with winter resistance. Heritability in the broad sense was high for early vigor, plant height and winter resistance, lower for berry weight and flowering day, and very low for yield and its morphological components, but selection for vigor may have influenced these estimates.In a second experiment five S₂ progenies and their parent cultivars Muskoka, Trent and Tweed were crossed with three tester plants, Ottawa Latham, Viking and 45-01-56. Some of the S₂ × tester progenies were superior in a number of yield characters to those produced when their parent cultivar was crossed to the same testers. The results were similar to those with strawberry (Spangelo et al., 1971), suggesting that inbreeding may sometimes be a useful step in a raspberry breeding program for higher yield. However, inbred × inbred crosses were generally poor. General and specific combining abilities were mostly similar in three different samples of factorial ("¼ diallel") crosses, but there were many exceptions possibly due to genotype-environment interactions. Most of the correlations were significant in this trial and the highest ones were in agreement with the correlations in the inbreeding trial.