Evaluation of Strawberry Cultivars Based on Growth-Related Attributes

Abstract

Plant growth in strawberry is very important for high yield and quality, and for maintaining yield and quality throughout the season. For this reason, the growth behaviors of the cultivars are crucial parameters taken into account in breeding and adaptation studies. Thus, short-day and day-neutral strawberry cultivars were evaluated for growth-related characteristics such as leaf stalk length, number of leaves per plant, leaf area, total leaf area per plant, number of crowns per plant, chlorophyll content, plant canopy area, plant length, root length, total plant fresh weight, and total plant dry weight. In addition, the growth habits of the examined strawberry cultivars were categorized as vigorous, medium, and weak according to root fresh weight, root dry weight, leaf fresh weight, leaf dry weight, and crown number by a modified weighted ranked method. In addition, the relationships among the growth parameters taken into consideration were also examined. For this purpose, the frigo plants of 31 strawberry cultivars were transplanted to 2 L pots having a soil mixture of garden soil, peat moss, and perlite (3:1:1). As a result of this study, 12 cultivars, namely 'Kabarla', 'Alba', 'Amiga', 'Asia', 'Favette', 'Fortuna', 'Fronteras', 'Hood', 'Jive', 'Roxana', 'Sabrina', and 'Splendor', were found in the vigorous, 16 cultivars in the medium, and three cultivars ('Albion', 'Merced', and 'Tillamook') in the weak growing group. In addition, the analysis of data revealed significant variation among cultivars for most of the growth-related attributes of strawberry. This information will be very important, especially for strawberry cultivar breeding.