Abstract
It is not known to what degree growth and fruit yield are source-limited in everbearing strawberry plants. The growth and yield performance effect of bi-weekly removal of all runners and/or one or two leaves during the cropping season of tunnel-grown ‘Favori’ everbearing strawberry plants was determined. Plants were grown on a table-top system in an open plastic tunnel under natural light conditions in Norway from May to October. Removal of runners and leaves was bi-weekly from 5 June until 25 September. Fruits were harvested from 5 July to 7 October. Bi-weekly runner removal increased total and marketable yield and number and size of fruits, while increasing leaf thinning had the opposite effects. However, none of the treatments affected the fruit number and yield of the first fruiting flush. The treatments did not affect realization of the yield potential of the plants at planting, whereas the continued floral initiation and fruit growth were enhanced by runner removal. Increasing leaf thinning had the opposite effects. Both floral initiation and fruit growth in heavily flowering and fruiting everbearing strawberry are source-limited owing to the high fruit/leaf ratio of such plants.
Highlights
The accumulated yield was less in plants with leaf removal, with the gap between control plants and plants with reduced leaf canopy increasing progressively over time with increasing leaf removal, while runner removal had the opposite effect and produced a parallel and progressive yield increase over the control
The total yield by termination of the harvest on 7 October was significantly higher in the de-runnered plants than in the control, while it was significantly and progressively lower in plants subjected to increasing leaf removal (Table 1)
The results show that for the everbearing strawberry cultivar ‘Favori’, total and marketable yields as well as number and size of berries increased significantly in plants subjected to bi-weekly runner removal, while bi-weekly removal of two leaves reduced the yields and berry number and size compared to the control (Table 1, Figure 2)
Summary
Plant manipulations to alter this ratio have the potential to be used as a means to modify plant and crop yield
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