β Scribed by James Maclachlan; Ronan Gormley
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Twenty strawberry cultivars/selections were screened to determine the most satisfactory ones for commercial production in Ireland and also to find suitable parents for crossing in a breeding programme. Factors evaluated were yield, fruit size, earliness and shelf life. Fruit was tested for acidity, soluble solids, colour, firmness and suitability for freezing. Canned fruit was tested for colour and jam samples for flavour, colour and quantity of whole fruit.
The cultivar Cambridge Favourite was ranked best for the fresh market on the basis of high yield, long shelf life and a high solubleβsolids content. Fruits of Cambridge Vigour, 68/5, IVT 6032 and Templar were also suitable for the fresh market on a similar basis. These high yielding cultivars/selections had a poor flesh colour and were therefore not ideally suited for processing. In particular, the lack of redness was noticeable in jams and in the canned product. In addition, freezing performance, based on drip loss, was generally unsatisfactory.
In contrast, the cultivars Africa, Kristina and Domanil had a good flesh colour but the yield was uneconomically low.
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