Company’s Gil Program releases first raspberry after years of development, with plantings planned in southern Europe, Morocco, and Mexico
Italian berry breeder G-Berries has released its first ever raspberry variety, one which it says offers growers and marketers significant advantages in terms of fruit size, shelf-life, and speed of production.
The variety, which is yet to be named, will be grown in southern Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, with assessments underway to consider potential plantings in Poland, UK and Mexico too.
It constitutes a major breakthrough for its creator Gil Program, a berry breeding project based in Cesena, Emilia-Romagna.
With a dedicated team in place and having invested in a new research centre called Cerchia 2, brothers Matteo and Luca Molari have overseen the company’s expansion in recent years as managing partners, building on their late father Gilberto Molari’s early work back in 2018 and 2019 to create a raspberry breeding programme.
Matteo Molari says they cannot wait to get started. “It’s a dream come true,” he says. “Years of hard work have gone into testing this strain in various environments, and we’re now ready to launch.
“To launch it on the market, it was essential for us to have excellent feedback on its shelf-life, not only static but also post-transport, and to have top-quality nursery stock.”
Premium positioning
Alessandro Gualandi and Alessandro Gasparrini, respectively variety development manager and R&D specialist at G-Berries, talk about fruit size, shelf-life, and ‘earliness’ – it apparently yields a crop just 90 days after transplanting – when asked about the new raspberry’s built-in advantages.
“This variety is characterised by an open [canopy], high reflowering rate, and natural growth potential,” they say. “It is vigorous and offers excellent adaptability to numerous cultivation techniques, a feature we greatly appreciate and which allows us to have material capable of covering very interesting production windows, such as winter or summer periods where conditions are increasingly complex.”
With large fruits that are “firm, dry and shiny” and last for more than ten days after picking, Gualandi sees the berries being sold very much at the top end of the market.
“With this new variety, we aimed to create a material capable of positioning itself in a premium segment, without ever compromising ease of harvest and productivity, which stands at around 28 tonnes per hectare over the double cycle,” he notes.
Rapid expansion
For Luca Molari, the arrival of a “very early, pure everbearer” should offer growers a new opportunity to improve winter production in southern areas, or in challenging climates.
“This year, the new variety will be planted in southern Italy, especially Calabria, as well as in Spain and Portugal,” he comments. “We’ve also decided to conduct some tests in more temperate areas such as Poland and the UK. Development is starting immediately in Morocco, where partner companies are currently planting, and we’re finalising the strategy in Mexico, ready to launch in early 2027. Two other new markets are also being defined.”
He adds: “We have other materials ready for launch in the near future, including a genetic with excellent characteristics suitable for the classic double cycle.”
Those wanting to know the variety’s name will have to wait until early September, when programme members and guests will be invited to a special launch event.
