The team at James Hutton Limited usually has a very busy calendar of events, especially over the summer season, which is the prime time to take our soft fruit selections and new varieties out into the world to let potential propagators, growers and retailers taste them and above all else, give consumers a chance to have their say on what they think. 

Of course, these opportunities have been few and far between in 2020 and so we roped in a few of the teams' family and friends to sample some of our raspberries and let us make film of their reactions. 

To make it fair, for any of those nearest and dearest who might have been subjected to a blow by blow of our working days, the raspberries we gave out as samples were identified only as A, B & C, which were as follows:

Raspberry A - Selection 0658C5

As a Raspberry Breeding Consortium selection, this means that 0658C5 may possibly, one day, become a raspberry that you'll find on your local supermarket shelves.  It will be given a name prefixed with Glen, like all James Hutton bred floricane raspberries but before that, it has to go through many trials and be assessed for a whole range of elements including size, shape, yield, agronomy, shelf life and much more. This raspberry has been on our radar for a while. It's performed well in our trial and demonstration plots at the James Hutton Institute and it's being trialled by several consortium members this year so we're excited to hear the feedback from them.  0658C5 was included in an Innovate UK flavour study and compared with 13 commercial cultivars came out top.  Take a look at what our home testers had to say about it below. 

Raspberry B - Glen Mor

Glen Mor is the newest floricane variety from the UK raspberry breeding consortium and was only released this year.  It is an early floricane variety from a floricane x primocane family.  Productive over a long picking season, Glen Mor has had good feedback on yield and size and superb retailer feedback for flavour.  Most importantly for growers though, Glen Mor is Phytophthora resistant.  This is a real benefit to growers, providing the option to return to soil production, rather than growing in pots, which makes plants much easier to manage at a lower cost. You can read more about it here and you can see what our testers had to say below. 

Raspberry C - Glen Carron 

Glen Carron is a real favourite of the Raspberry Breeding Consortium.  It's a sweet tasting, large, juicy, floricane variety with such a beautiful colour and a high gloss which gives an absolutely stunning appearance.  Glen Carron has a real 'premium feel' about it and for growers, it yields a high proportion of Class I fruit alongside good shipping and fantastic shelf-life. Read more here and hear the thoughts of our family and friends panel below.