This document discusses the breeding of cherry and strawberry plants. It provides information on the ploidy levels, breeding objectives, systems, and techniques used for both crops. For cherry, the key points are that sweet cherries are mostly self-incompatible while sour cherries are self-fruitful. Breeding objectives include increasing disease resistance, fruit quality, and yield. Methods discussed include inbreeding, interspecific hybridization, and mutation breeding. For strawberry, objectives are to improve yield, fruit quality, and disease/pest resistance. Their octoploid nature allows for interspecific hybridization to transfer genes between species. Micropropagation, thermotherapy, and recombinant DNA techniques have also been utilized.

2. Breeding
of
cherry & strawberry
2
Submitted to
Dr. K.V.Patel
Assist. Professor
College of AIT,AAU, Anand.
Submitted by
Pawan Kumar Nagar
M.Sc. (Fruit science)
BACA,AAU, Anand.

3. Cherry fruits

4. 4

5. 5
1. Diploid (2n=2x=16) (Sweet cherry)
2. Triploid (2n=3x= 24)
3. Tetraploid (2n=4x=32) (Sour Cherry, Duke cherry)
P. puddum
P. fruiticosa
Prunus avium
P. mahaleb
P. cerasus
P. gudoni
P. cerasoides
PLOIDY LEVEL OF CHERRY

6. • Diploids (2n=2x=16)
1. P. avium L.
2. P . pumila L.
3. P . mahaleb L.
4. P . besseyi Baily
• Tetraploid (2n=4x=32)
• Prunus cerasus L.
• Prunus fruticosa L.
PLOIDY LEVEL OF CHERRY

7. CHERRIES
SWEET CHERRY
• Most sweet cherries are self-unfruitful (self-incompatible, SI) and
require cross pollination with another variety as the pollen source.
• Some varieties, e.g. Bing, Lambert, Royal Ann/Napoleon, are also
cross-unfruitful and cannot be depended upon to provide pollen for each
other. Index, Lapins, Skeena, Sweetheart, White Gold, Sonata,
Stella, Symphony, Sunburst, and Black Gold are self-fruitful (SF)
sweet cherries that can serve as “universal” pollen sources for many
self-unfruitful sweet cherry varieties (Stella does not work for Bing in
some areas).
7

8. • Stella, Lapins and Starkrimson are self-fruitful. Most other varieties
of sweet cherries require cross-pollination. Several varieties are inter
sterile and cannot fertilize each other. For example, Bing, Lambert
and Royal Ann (Napoleon) will not pollinate each other.
• In commercial plantings, beehives should be placed in the orchard on
the first day of bloom.
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CHERRY FLOWERSFruit set in Cavalier Sweet cherry

9. 9
SOUR CHERRY
• All sour cherries are self-fruitful, such as
Montmorency, North Star, Balaton,
Meteor, English Morello, Early
Richmond, Hansen Bush Cherry and
Nanking.
• Unlike sweet cherries, flowering seasons of
most varieties do not overlap sufficiently.
• Any sour cherry variety can serve as
pollinizer.
CHERRIES

10. 10

11. FLORAL BIOLOGY
 Cherry flowers usually are white- petaled, single, perfect blossom with
glabrous pedicel up to 3 cm long.
 They arise in group two to seven from cluster buds and form shortened
corymbs.
 Double, rose like, white blossom also occur.
 Each blossom usually contains 30 to36 stamen, attached along with the
petals and sepal to the rim of the calyx cup.
 The glabrous pistil, usually single, is attached to the bas of the calyx cup
and often is shorter than the stamen.
 The stigma is positioned below or even with the
 anthers at full bloom.

12. FLOWER MORPHOLOGY

13. • BREEDING FOR PLANT CHARACTERS
• Self fertility
• Precocity quantitatively controlled
• High productivity
• Reduced tree size by irradiation
• BREEDING FOR FRUIT CHARACTERS
• Fruit size
• Fruit shape
• Season of maturity
• Stem length and thickness

14. •Brown rot
•Cherry leaf spot
•Bacterial canker
•Rootstock
•Powdery mildew
BREEDING FOR DISEASE RESISTANCE

15. •Resistance to fruit cracking
•Improved fruit quality
•Flesh firmness
•Attractiveness
•Precocity and productivity
•Tree size
•Resistance to surface pitting
•Mechanical harvesting
•Flower, bud and wood hardiness
•Self-compatibility
•Pest resistance
•Resistance to fruit doubling
•Extension of the season and market
BREEDING OBJECTIVES

16. 1. Inbreeding
2. Interspecific hybridization
3. Mutation breeding
4. Parental selection
BREEDING SYSTEM

17. 1. INBREEDING
The self- fertility gene in sweet cherry also makes it possible to use backcrossing as a
breeding system in all cherry species.
Successive backcrossing and selection for the desired character are used until the
recombination is completed.
2. INTERSPECIFIC HYBRIDIZATION
Doubling the chromosome number of sweet cherry and other species for hybridization
with sweet cherry makes crosses possible that are not possible with P . avium alone.
Colchicine is use in this program for produce unreduced pollen grain in sweet cherry
for crossing with sour cherry.
Kosmomolskaya and severyaka have high cold hardiness and yield, they are cross of
(P .fruiticossa x P . pensylvania ).
 KAMDESA = (Peach x Sour cherry)

18. 3.MUTATIONAL BREEDING
In this process using irradiation of pollen mother cells to damaged
the incompability gene,10% of the progeny from the incompatible
pollination with irradiation pollen were fully self fertile because of
permanent loss of pollen or stylar activity.
4.PARENTAL SELECTION
Selection of parents to transmit specific characters did not receive
much attention in early breeding programs.
As interest increased in the of inheritance of specific characters,
selections were studied for their ability to transmit desired character.

19. BIOTECHNOLOGICAL INVENTION
1. In vitro culture
2. Micropropagation
3. Meristem culture
4. Embryo culture
5. Anther culture
6. Organogenesis
7. Protoplast culture
8. Transformation with Agrobacterium

20. Micropropagation
Organogenesis

21. Anther culture

22. Meristem culture
In vitro culture

23. • For the future, one of the greatest challenges will be to breed for resistance to
cherry leaf spot, brown rot and tolerance to other disease and insects must remain
a high priority.
• The prospect for more detailed genetic characterization and continuing the
success with protoplast fusion, transformation and regeneration systems are
excellent.
• Sour cherry = P. avium x P. fruiticosa
ACHIVEMENT AND PROSPECT

25. STRAWBERRY
Botanical Name :Fragaria ananasa
Family :Rosaceae
Origin :South Africa
chromosome number : 2n=56
F. ananasa , the common cultivated strawberry,
It is a hybrid of F. virginiana x F. chilionsis.

26. PLOIDY LEVEL OF STRAWBERRY
1.Diploids (2n = 2x = 14)
2. Tetraploids (2n = 4x = 28)
3. Hexaploid, 2n = 6x = 42
4. Octoploids (2n =8x= 56)

27. 2.Tetraploids (2n = 4x = 28)
I. F. orientalis
II. F. moupinensis
III. F. Corymbosa
3.Hexaploid (2n=6x=42)
I.F. moschata

28. 4.Octoploids (2n =8x= 56)
I. F. iturupensis
II. F. chiloensis (beach strawberry)
III. F. virginiana
IV. F. ananassa notomorph cuneifolia
V. F. bringhurstii

30. Breeding objectives
Plant characters commonly included:
• Yield
• Vigor
• Plant architecture
• Infloresence length
• Fruiting habit (short-day, day-neutral)
• Time of ripening
• Winter hardiness
• Blossom frost hardiness
• High temperature tolerance
• Length of rest period
• Concentration of ripening

31. Plant characters
• Disease resistance
-Root diseases
-Foliar diseases
-Crown diseases
-Virus tolerance
• Pest resistance
-Aphids
-Weevils
-Mites

32. • Plant characters
• Yield, Vigor and Fruiting Habit are of
primary importance in all breeding
programs.
• The other characters may or may not be
given high priority, depending on local
significance.

33. Fruit characters commonly included:
• Fruit size
• Shape
• Symmetry
• Skin toughness
• Flesh firmness
• Skin color
• Skin glossiness
• Flesh color
• Flavor

34. Fruit characters
• Ease of capping
• Resistance to fruit rots
• Soluble solids content
• Acidity
• Vitamin content
• Post harvest shelf-life
• Neutraceutical content

35. Fruit characters
• Fruit size, fruit firmness and flavour
are always important.
• The other fruit characters are of
variable priority, depending on the
goals of the programme.

36. 1. Three flower types exist among
octoploid species: pistillate, which
is devoid of anthers (female);
2. staminate, with nonfunctional
pistils (male);
3. hermaphrodite
Floral biology

38. Virus eliminations Strawberries were one of the first horticultural crops to
be routinely purified of virus using thermotherapy. Originally developed the
technique of hot air therapy to eliminate viruses, and Belkengren and Miller
(1962) began the practice of excising heat-treated meristems for placement on
tissue culture media.
Micropropagation. Strawberries have been successfully proliferated from
both single meristems and meristematic callus .
BIOTECHNOLOGY

39. Organogenesis and protoplast culture Recombinant DNA technology

40. BREEDING SYSTEMS
Outbreeding and Inbreeding
The outcross method of breeding has been used most often for the
improvement of strawberries . The goal is then to select the seedlings that have
a combination of very desirable characters, with the expectation that the plants
with the new combination of characters will be superior to those of one or both
of the parents.
Inbreeding has been used occasionally as a method for origination of new cultivars.
The 'Albritton' cultivar was originated from a cross of two S1 selections (NC 1065
from 'Southland' selfed x NC 1053 . Inbred seedlings are much weaker than
seedlings obtained from out crosses, and inbred selections frequently are difficult
to keep alive. They also may susceptable Quickly to virus infection because of their
inherent weakness .

41. Inter-specific Hybridization
All of the octoploid Fragaria species are interspecific Fragaria
chiloensis and F. virginiana have been used extensively in the
improvement of the cultivated starwberry.
Hybridization is successful between some of the diploid species,
Chromosome numbers in the lower diploids are easily doubled
using colchicine, and unreduced gametes are reasonably
common .
This makes it possible to artificially move genes across ploidy
levels and methods exist for the transfer of genes from most
species to the octoploids .
For example, Evans (1982a, b) has released two octoploid
breeding lines containing hexaploid F. moschata and diploid F.
nubicola by doubling and redoubling lower ploidy levels.

42. Fragaria and Potentilla have been hybridized, but most of the hybrids die at an early
age or are sterile .
crossed four species of Fragaria with six species of Potentilla.
Seedlings were obtained from 7 of the 16 intergeneric crosses.
Some seedlings in four progenies survived to maturity:
1. F. x ananassa x P. fruticosa L. hybrids were pentaploid and sterile;
2. F. ananassa x P. palustris (L.) Scop. Anth. were heptaploid, slightly female-fertile
but male-sterile, and very vigorous;
3. 10 X hybrid Fragaria X P. fruticosa were triploid and sterile;
4. 4x F. vesca X P. fruti-cosa were triploid and sterile.
5. When chromosomes of a heptaploid seedling from F. X ananassa X P. palustris
were doubled with colchicine, fertility was improved as compared with the
heptaploid.
Intergeneric Hybridization

43. BREEDING FOR SPECIFIC PLANT CHARACTERS
1. Yield
2. Disease Resistance
3. Pest Resistance
4. Fruiting Habit
5. Winter Hardiness
6. Bllosom Hardiness at Low Temperatures
7. High-Temperature Tolerance
8. Time of flowering and time of ripening
9. Short Rest Period
10.Adaptability to Mechanical Harvesting

44. BREEDING FOR SPECIFIC FRUIT CHARACTERS
1. Fruit Size
2. Flesh Firmness and Skin Toughness
3. Frozen-Pack Processing Characters
4. Vitamin C Content
5. Soluble Solids and Acidity

45. ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROSPECTS
For the future, one of the greatest challenges will be to
breed for resistance to ten diseases and pests as red stele,
verticillium wilt, leaf spot, leaf scorch, mildew, anthracnose,
virus infections, botrytis fruit rot, mites, and nematodes.
Additional sources of resistance will have to be obtained
through interspecific hybridization and molecular
technologies.