Breeding
Vegetable breeding: breeding the outdoor tomato Open Sky Happy Black®
Tomatoes are a good example of how breeding vegetable varieties for the garden works. Breeding is actually easy, but it takes a lot of perseverance and above all continuity until you can finally bring a variety onto the market after six to ten years. In the following, I will briefly explain what is involved in our outdoor tomato breeding programme and how we specifically bred the Happy Black® variety.
Read moreBreeding as a pivotal point in the variety merry-go-round
In this short interview by Frederik Vollert, Lubera® breeder Raphael Maier talks about the latest developments, focal points and highlights in breeding, which mainly takes place in Buchs in the Swiss Rhine Valley.
Raphael Maier, what are the craziest breeding projects at Lubera® at the moment?
Well, of course I have the feeling that they are all a bit crazy. Probably the hardy passion fruits are already very extreme! Who would think of trying to establish the epitome of tropical fruit in cold...
Read moreSugarbeauties® – the new ornamental sweet potatoes from Lubera Edibles
When the Lubera® breeding team started breeding sweet potatoes a few years ago, the original and real focus was on improved, sweeter yielding varieties for hobby cultivation in the vegetable garden. During the selection work in the seedlings, however, we quickly noticed that the diversity in leaf colour and shape was quite large. Thus, it became clear relatively quickly that it was also worthwhile to select for these characteristics. This is what we did and we are just about to release the first...
Read moreCurrent breeding projects in Buchs - impressions of a photographer
How can you, I thought. But Markus " Merciless" Kobelt didn't let up: Yes, exactly, to invest 1-2 days with a photo shoot in the hottest August of all times (?) on the current breeding fields in Buchs, that was his latest job to me. Now I do like to take photos. But I prefer slightly overcast skies - of course just so that the photos turn out as good as possible, certainly not because of me... But what did I notice during the photo safari, armed with the camera and with the eyes of...
Read moreBerryfication – how can we produce and sell fruit trees like berries?
The following considerations begin with the observation that berry plants sell much faster on the market than fruit trees. But why is that, what are the reasons for it? And wouldn't there perhaps also be fruit trees that we could promote like berry plants with the right sales arguments and the right production? Can we “berrify” fruit trees? And because it sounds nice, we have invented a new word and concept: the “berryfication” of fruit trees...
Read moreKiwiberry® – the latest generation of hardy kiwi young plants
When you hear the word 'kiwi', you almost inevitably think of the large, green-brown, hairy fruits from the supermarket, which are now available all year round. It doesn't matter whether it's the green- or yellow-fleshed variety. Both look quite similar at first glance.
Our range of hardy kiwi young plants, on the other hand, has a much greater variety of shapes and colours. In the portrait article on hardy kiwis we have already acquainted you to this equally fascinating and easy-to-grow group of...
Read moreFrom rhubarb to Barber® - how a boring plant becomes exciting again
The future of rhubarb - with new variety families from Lubera Edibles
Once upon a time there was a plant that was also called the root of the barbarians because of its former use as a root medicinal plant: Rhubarb, Rheum rhabarbarum. And a rhubarb was a rhubarb, there were varieties but they seemed pretty interchangeable. How many rhubarb do you need in your assortment? One at the most!
Read moreHardy Cooltropics® passion fruit: a new fruit variety and climber for the garden
Newly available from Lubera Edibles are two hardy passion fruits: Cooltropics® Eia Popeia® and Cooltropic® Snowstar®. In the next few years, the Cooltropics® series will be expanded with many new varieties from the Lubera breeding programme. This is reason enough to ask Lubera breeder, Raphael Maier, for a presentation and classification of the new fruit variety for the northern garden. How exactly do hardy passion fruits work, how can they be produced and propagated and when is the ideal time...
Read moreNews from Lubera® breeding - passion flowers, fire beans and co.
Summer is the time to take a well-deserved rest and enjoy your garden. Unfortunately, this is only partly the case for Lubera®. Although we are incredibly happy about everything that grows and thrives, there is a lot of work to do right now. But in the process we have discovered many exciting new things. So come along and catch a glimpse of the exciting breeding news and what you might be lucky enough to grow in your own garden in the next few years.
Read moreBreeding of field-grown melons
An outdoor melon? Another new breeding programme? Yes, this year Lubera has started breeding melons, more precisely honeydew outdoor melons for Central Europe. Lubera has already bred some exotic crops: you can already order peanuts, sweet potatoes or passion fruit in the Lubera Garden Shop, but now outdoor melons? Do they even grow here?
It's not that far-fetched to grow outdoor melons in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. If you look in old variety catalogues, you will be surprised to...
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