Yield and Quality Characteristics of Some Strawberry Cultivars in Adana, Turkey

Like other berries, strawberries are also known as one of the best natural sources of antioxidants, chemical substances that are greatly needed in our body's defence against damaging free radicals. Numerous breeding programs aimed at improving strawberry taste were started all over the world. In Turkey, a strawberry breeding program was initiated at the University of Cukurova by our team in 1984. In this paper, we compare five strawberry lines (3, 5, 6, 8 and 12), our local cultivars ('Osmanli', 'Ebru', 'Kaska' and 'Sevgi'), American cultivars ('Camarosa', 'Sweet Charlie' and Gaviota') and European cultivar ('Paros') in terms of their yield, fruit weight, TSS (%) and total titratable acidity (%). It was as a result of this experiment that three strawberry genotypes from our breeding program were approved by the Turkish Agriculture Ministry and named as 'Kaska' (line 13), 'Sevgi' (Line 17) and 'Ebru' (Line 11).