2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Strawberry (Fragaria ananassa ) is a high value crop in the US. Fresh strawberries are one of the most popular items at local markets. However, strawberry production in Mississippi is relatively small, and the high demand of strawberries in Mississippi are mainly supplied from other states. The objective of this study is to evaluate plant growth and berry yield of five June bearing cultivars (‘Chandler’, ‘Allstar’, ‘Earlyglow’, ‘Jewel’, and ‘Rutgers scarlet’) and two day neutral cultivars (‘Evie 2’ and ‘Seascape’). Bare root liners of strawberry were transplanted into 2-gal containers in Feb. 2017 using pine bark: peat most: perlite in a volume ratio of 4:3:1 as growing substrate. Strawberry liners were fertilized with a slow release fertilizer Osmocote plus (15-9-12) at a rate of 20 g per container or with an organic fertilizer (5-3-4) at a rate of 60 g per container. All strawberry plants were grown outdoors on a nursery pad at Mississippi State University and irrigated as needed through drip irrigation. As for vegetative growth, there was no significant difference among strawberry cultivars in shoot or total plant dry weight. ‘Earlyglow’ produced the highest number of runner per plant (10.1 runners per plant), comparable to ‘Allstar’ (7.2 runners per plant), ‘Chandler’ (8.1 runners per plant), ‘Jewel’ (7.2 runners per plant), or ‘Seascape’ (6.0 runners per plant), higher than ‘Evie 2’ (4.4 runners per plant). As for reproductive growth, the two day neutral cultivars ‘Evie 2’ and ‘Seascape’ produced higher yield per plant than any tested June bearing cultivar, 165.7 g and 121.1 g berry per plant, respectively. ‘Chandler’ and ‘Evie 2’ produced the largest strawberry in terms of single berry weight, averaged 12.46 g and 13.16 g per berry, respectively, with ‘Earlyglow’ producing the smallest berry averaged 4.9 g per berry. The slow-release fertilizer Osmocote resulted in higher dry weights (root, shoot and total plant), SPAD reading, number of runner per plant, yield per plant, and single berry weight than organic fertilizer. This may have resulted from the slow nutrient releasing rate of the organic fertilizer, which did not satisfy fast growing habit of strawberries.