Evaluation of fruit firmness among the segregation population strawberries developed from ‘Ottoman’ × ‘Camarosa’

Abstract

Turkish strawberry production has an increasing trend. ‘Ottoman’ is one of the Turkish strawberry genetic resources with unique horticultural attributes such as aroma content. However, fruit firmness of ‘Osmanlı’ is low. In this study, a segregation population having 340 individuals, produced from ‘Ottoman’ × ‘Camarosa’ were characterized for many horticultural traits for two years. The hybrids were grown in an annual hill cultural system with summer planting on an open field conditions and flowering and runnering dates were recorded. Flower and leaf characteristics were determined in December in both experimental years, while pomological traits of fruit width, length and weight, soluble solids, fruit firmness, fruit external and internal colors were determined periodically during the whole experiment. A great deal of diversity was recorded among the hybrids for the most of the traits evaluated. For example, fruit firmness ranged between 0.2 and 1.5 kg cm-2; while the ranges for soluble solids, total fruit number and yield were 4.0-15.0%, 2-192 and 11.9-1220.8 g, respectively. The data from two experimental years were compared using regression analysis. Except petiole length, leaf width and length, all other traits evaluated had statistically significant correlation between their two years (P=0.000-0.017). 78 individuals from this population were genotyped with 33 SSR primer pairs which had previously been proven to be informative for this population. © 2019 International Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.