Breeding of strawberries

semperflorens, which is unusual, because it is ever-bearing, meaning that it constantly flowers and bears fruit until autumn frosts arrive.

In 1714 Fragaria chiloensis, a plant that produces large fruit that is particularly good for eating, was taken from South America to France by a French spy.

[1] After its arrival in France, this variety was bred with Fragaria virginiana, a hearty plant from North America.

[1] Antoine Nicolas Duchesne is important in the development of strawberries in both France, and the rest of the world.

[1] The resulting large fruit put Duchesne in King Louis XV's favor and allowed him to continue to study and create his categorization of the ten "races" of strawberry.

[1] The reason for this was that F. chiloensis has a large berry size and a pleasant flavor but poor tolerance to the climate of England.

The English breeding of early F. virginiana x F. chiloensis crosses can be examined by looking at two of the most successful breeders of England: Andrew Knight and Michael Keens.

While he developed many successful varieties in his 1817 breeding experiment, he was mistaken in his belief that all inter-fertile large fruited strawberries were the same species.

He did develop an extremely popular variety that was praised for its large size and excellent flavor up until the 20th century.

Its aim is to produce plant varieties that will be able to supply the world's demand for fruit by overcoming adverse conditions and disease.

[1] Unlike Great Britain and the United States, France allowed strawberry breeding to remain a largely private study for the early 20th century.

Broad spectrum resistance can be quickly achieved in strawberry by the addition of a transgene, the Arabidopsis defense master regulator gene NPR1.

It lives in water where other fish would freeze to death but, with a special gene that allows it to produce a sort of anti-freeze, it can survive.

[4] This gene is put into bacteria that are sprayed on the strawberry during the freezing temperatures, allowing it to also be resistant to cold.