Preliminary modelling of maturation curves of strawberry cv Elsanta and Darselect in soilless programmed conditions

Soilless programmed conditions for strawberry need high efficiency and high capability to forecast the productions. Modelling the maturation curves is of great help to the growers and to the organizations as well. A preliminary set up of the curves related to strawberry cv Elsanta was started in 2007 using different modified mathematical models present in the literature applied to strawberry and also to different fruit trees. The cultivar Elsanta has been tested for several types of programmed plants, for plants from different sources and growing in different environmental conditions. Plants were previously monitored in the nurseries and subsequently evaluated in forced conditions. The work was aimed to build up indicative fruit growth curves of different genotypes that could mirror and define the correlation between growth accumulation factors (GDH, CH, GD, DD) and the harvest time. The most suitable simulation models were tested and the results functional to forecasting both the time of harvest and the quantity are here presented.