Effect of Gibberellic Acid Concentrations and Runners' Removal Rates on Yield and Quality of Frigo Strawberry Plantations

Abstract

to study the effect of runners' removal rates beside mothers full removal "no runners", five runners left, ten runners left and Without runners' removal and foliar spray of gibberellic acid 0 ppm, 25 ppm and 50 ppm and their interactions on vegetative growth, chemical properties, physiological traits, yield and quality of strawberry "Fortuna cv." planted under mixed planting system which fixed many runners beside mother plant with different density. Gibberellic acid (GA 3 ) was sprayed three time in 30 days intervals. The experimental design was a split plot in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The result indicated that foliar application of 25 ppm of gibberellic acid (GA 3 ) with removing all runners caused an increase in plant height, size, weight and shape index of the fruits. gibberellic acid (GA 3 ) at 25 ppm gave also the highest number of early fruits and early yield during both seasons, GA 3 also gave the highest value of TSS, vitamin C, number of leaves, number of fruits and the yield too. The study shows that it's better to use gibberellic acid (GA 3 ) with 25 ppm to spray the strawberry fruits with removing all the runners that exist beside the mother plant and that's to increase the vegetative growth and to improve the yield qualities.