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Developments in Raspberry Production, Cultivar Releases, and Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Study of British Columbia and Washington State

The Pacific Northwest (PNW) raspberry industry has undergone substantial structural changes over the last two decades driven by shifts in production and trade and strengthened intellectual property rights to protect cultivars. Since the mid-1980's, Washington raspberry production has increased substantively while British Columbia (BC) production has exhibited a downward decline. Plant breeding in the PNW has been affected by the increased globalization of the raspberry trade and the increased emphasis on plant patents and plant breeder's rights to protect cultivars. The increased emphasis on intellectual property rights to protect cultivars is likely to affect the accessibility of germplasm and the transaction costs of procuring planting material from European breeding programs. Raspberry research in BC has concentrated its efforts in developing improved cultivars with little research on the effects of management practices on fruit yields. The development of improved cultivars in the PNW has relied on conventional or classical breeding approaches. With reduced public support for raspberry breeding research in the PNW, breeding programs rely more heavily on support from industry associations. Future prosperity of the PNW raspberry industry would require developing competitive cultivars and promoting intellectual property protection to stimulate market development and the world-wide dissemination of improved cultivars.