Three new strawberry varieties now developed in fields in downtown Kentville

If you’ve seen some larger, firmer, or slightly different strawberries while picking or buying in recent years, you’ve probably enjoyed new varieties that originated in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s research center in Kentville.

AAC Kate, AAC Audrey and AAC Evelyn (the AAC stands for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada as the source of the variety) have been in development since 2012, when now-retired research scientist Andrew Jamieson selected two plants with positive traits and the pollen from one plant on the other. Once the strawberries grew, he would pick them all and collect the seeds, which were used to grow new plants to study. The specific plants that grew the best berries were then bred, so there were several to compare side by side.

Jamieson retired in 2017 when Beatrice Amyotte took over work with the team on the new varieties. By then they had fulfilled their promise as improved cultivars and Jamieson named them after his three granddaughters. Amyotte continued to breed the plants and did field tests at multiple locations across the country to ensure consistent growth, yield and quality.

Three other test cultivars just didn’t make it. One didn’t have high yields, the other didn’t have great flavor, and the other had too many berries in the middle of the plant where they weren’t easy to see.

Final approval for the new varieties, which allowed them to be identified by name in fields and shelves, was delayed by the impact of COVID-19, but came last year. While the plants were available in nurseries and the berries are in the field from those who chose to purchase and plant them after receiving preliminary approval in 2018, no one knew what they were until the naming convention was allowed.

“At this point, because we’ve been doing research since 2018, we have a lot more data to support what the value of these plants is, and that’s what we’ve communicated to growers,” said Amyotte. “Now they’re finally buying the plants in such numbers that the nurseries have sold out, and we’re now hoping that people who go to U-picks can get those specific varieties,”

She said testing for consistent quality took place in Kentville, at other agricultural and agri-food research centers in Canada, and on trial plots of some growers.

The new varieties “have nice, consistent, high quality fruit in terms of their appearance – they are nice and shiny and shiny – they have a nice shape, and when you eat the fruit, it’s nice and firm, it’s very flavorful, sweet juicy. That’s what will bring consumers back after they’ve had their first berries.”

About 30 active strawberry varieties are grown and distributed across the country, with about half coming from Agriculture Canada. The oldest – Kent – ​​was developed in Kentville and dates back to the 1970s.

The new berries make up 20 varieties grown in Kentville since the research station opened, and about 15 are still in production. There are five more varieties that Amyotte’s team are now working on for possible future introductions that mature in the latter part of the harvest season and have improved disease resistance.

There are times when new varieties cause some others to become less popular and then not be bought or produced by nurseries.

That can be a little sad, said Amyotte.

“I think so. Each variety has its own characteristics and its own personality, and the longer it is on the market, the better growers and our employees get to know them. So it is sad when one goes, but hopefully we also understand that that means something new is coming that we can get excited about.”

However, the old varieties are not lost forever. The center will take one of the plants from the clean stock that it continues to grow and send it to the Canadian gene bank in Ontario where it will be further bred.