Compatibility studies in strawberry

The present investigation on compatibility studies in strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) was carried out in the Department of Fruit Science, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, during 2015–16. Seven cultivars namely Confectura, Gorella, Sweet Charlie, Chandler, Selva, Addie and Ofra were taken under different pollination treatments viz., selfing by bagging, hand pollination, open pollination and cross pollination in field conditions. The design used for experimentation was Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with five replications. The results revealed that selfing by bagging reduced fruit set percentage (45.27 to 51.86%), fruit weight (5.02 to 7.27 g) and total number of achenes (146.50 to 167.70) in strawberry compared to other pollination methods. Whereas, cross pollination among various strawberry cultivars had increased fruit set (81.91 to 95.75%), fruit weight (7.60 to 16.34 g) and total number of achenes (182.14 to 327.51). All the cultivars appeared to be compatible with one another as more than 80% fruit set was obtained under all cross combinations of parent cultivars taken for study. Assessment of self-incompatibility in strawberry becomes complex phenomenon due to presence of multiple carpels. The self-incompatibility index of different strawberry cultivars ranged from 0.47 to 0.71.