New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science abstracts
Value of morphological characters for cultivar identification in strawberry
(Fragaria x ananassa)
J. A. NIELSEN
P. H. LOVELL+
Plant Science Research Group
School of Biological Sciences
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92 019
Auckland, New Zealand
email: p.lovell@auckland.ac.nz
Abstract Strawberry (
Fragaria x
ananassa
Duch.), like many other crops, has large numbers of cultivars both in
breeding programmes and in commercial production. Problems with the accurate
identification of cultivars have arisen. These difficulties are exacerbated by
the need for unequivocal identification by vegetative characters alone when
plants are clonally propagated from elite stocks before transplanting for fruit
production. Thus, accurate identification at all stages of plant growth is
essential if costly errors are to be avoided. In New Zealand, the varieties are
characterised solely by morphological characters. An analysis of 17 strawberry
cultivars in Auckland showed that there is substantial intra-cultivar
variability for many of the characters. This, when coupled with poor
discrimination between cultivars for many of the characters, leads to
difficulty in their use for identification purposes. Additionally, it was often
found that our profile for a cultivar differed from that in the New Zealand
Plant Variety Rights (PVR) description. Furthermore, there were often
differences in the rating of the morphological characters between the New
Zealand PVR description and the United States Patent for the same cultivar.
However, a cluster of 14 vegetative, flower, and fruit characters could be used
to identify the 17 cultivars used in this study. A significant problem of
identification still remains for the plant breeder/propagator who deals almost
exclusively with vegetative plants because vegetative characters alone are not
sufficient for accurate identification.
Keywords clonal propagation; cultivar identification;
morphological characters; intra- and inter-cultivar variability; strawberry;
Fragaria x ananassa
+Corresponding author.
H98058
Received 3 December
1998; accepted 28 January 2000
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