Spatio-temporal interpretation of floral architecture of strawberry segregation popolation

Strawberry productivity has now become a determining and discriminated factor in the profitability of plants, as long as this achievement does not significantly affect the quality of the cultivated genotype. The quantitative-qualitative distribution of fruit ripening on the harvesting curve is a fundamental factor in achieving this goal and it depends from the floral architecture ensued during the morphogenesis phase. However, this phenomenon, influenced by exogenous factors such as environment, nutrition or stress-forming agents, is predetermined by genetic traits. The evaluation of the inflorescence’s morphology, of their number, of the typology, and of the temporal evolution can be an important predictive index of these requirements, which can also be used in breeding programs. A strawberry population of around 100 accessions, planted according an experimental design of six randomized plants, was tested in protected soilless culture for three years (2017-2019). The quantitative-qualitative morphological data were collected three times a week, while the phenological data were collected at specific development phases. Growing locally produced plants in soilless culture, protected by a plastic tunnel, allowed us to avoid, as much as possible, the effects of climate on both nursery and growing phases and to reduce most of fungal and bacterial infections. In addition, the parameters investigated in the population accessions are related to specific maturity indices (GDH), that allow their assessment regardless of the seasonal climatic trend. Most of morphological and phenological traits assessed in this study, such as number of inflorescences, total number of flowers, or the initiation and length of the flowering period, are normal distributed among the accessions of this population. The production cycle evolution, that characterizes each strawberry accession, should become an important selective trait for both pre- and post-breeding genotype selection.