Evaluation of strawberry fruit quality for new selections and cultivars

The fruit characteristics of new strawberry genotypes reflect their value for the present and future breeding programs. Beyond the agronomic characteristics, the evaluation of biometric, colorimetric and biochemical characteristics of fresh fruits complete the description of strawberry genotypes. Starting from these ideas, the aim of present study was to evaluate the biometric, colorimetric and biochemical characteristics of seven strawberry cultivars and selections. In this respect, a study was carried out in the experimental field of the Small Fruit and Strawberry Department belongings to Research Institute for Fruit Growing Pitesti, Romania, during years 2016 and 2017. The analysed quality characteristics of the strawberry fruits were the following: biometric characteristics (plant yield, weight, diameter, length and firmness of the fruits), colorimetric characteristics (lightness, hue angle, Chroma index, chromaticity) and biochemical characteristics (pH, total soluble solids, total acidity, soluble solids/total acidity ratio, total sugars, vitamin C, total polyphenols). The evaluation of the quality characteristics of the seven studied strawberry genotypes highlighted the differences among them. The results of this study highlights that selection 08-10-5 has the potential to become a new and valuable variety considering some of the most important fruit quality characteristics (colour parameters analysed, pH, total soluble solids, soluble solids/total acidity ratio and also by the content of vitamin C and total polyphenols).