Response of strawberry (Fragaria x anannasa) genotypes under protected condition

Strawberry is mainly a temperate fruit crop but now it is being grown under subtropical and tropical conditions as well due to existence of wide range of genotypes. These genotypes need to be evaluated for their performance under different growing environment preferably under protected conditions. The experiment was carried out at Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab during 2018–19 to determine the role of growing conditions and the genotype ^x growing conditions interaction for commercial cultivation of strawberry under two growing conditions, polytunnel and shade net for twenty-six quantitative traits. The data confirms significant difference among genotypes for plant height and plant spread where better growth was reported under polytunnel at early phase, while in later phase the growth was better under shade net. ‘Winter Dawn’, ‘Hadar’, ‘E1–13#32’, ‘Barak’, ‘San Andreas’, ‘Sweet Charlie’ and ‘Camarosa’ failed to produce runners while in other genotypes, the runner production was reported to be significantly better under shade net than polytunnel. The chlorophyll index, leaf area index, average fruit yield per plant and all the quality attributes were significantly affected by genotypes, growing conditions and their interaction. The genotypes grown under polytunnel outperformed that of shade net with highest mean yield per plant in ‘Winter Dawn’ followed by ‘Hadar’ and ‘Camarosa’.