Strawberry breeding and evaluation for mechanical harvesting
Lawrence, F. J. (Francis J.); Martin, Lloyd W.; Varseveld, G. W. (George Wallace)
Strawberry seedlings and clones were evaluated in the held for crop
concentration, harvest ease, and ease of capping. Laboratory post-harvest
studies were made of quality retention in these seedlings and clones.
Progress has been made in all these categories toward machine harvest.
Inheritance patterns for crop concentration show that early-season
parents, such as 'Sunrise', provided seed1ing populations with crop concentration,
Semi-erect fruiting habits could be obtained from parents
of the erect habit, such as 'Hood', 'OR-US 2785', and 'OR-US 2993'. A
lack of fruit firmness appeared to be related to ease of capping, but a
reflexed calyx did not.
Many clones had total yields greater than 'Northwest,' the standard
commercial cultivar, and crop concentration measured by the total amount
of fruit ripe at any one harvest also was greater than that of 'Northwest.'
Performance of OR-US clones varied widely on a fruit destemming
machine called the "OSU stemmer." When fruit was obtained from a
once-over harvest, five OR-US selections had distinctly greater amounts
of usable fruit after capping than did the commercial cultivars Hood and
Northwest. Frozen s1iced samples ol mechanically harvested ripe fruit of
six OR-US selections rated "good" were comparable to hand-harvested 'Northwest' and superior to machit ,e-harvested 'hood'.
Penetrometer measurements taken on the fresh fruit may be useful
for predicting textural breakdown in frozen strawberries.
Key words: strawberry, Fragaria, mechanization, harvest, postharvest,
breeding, yield, crop concentration, berry, quality, processing,
texture, genetics, capping, calyx.
Published May 1975. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
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