2007 Volume 6 Issue 3 Pages 431-434
The effects of temperature and amount of fertilizer applied after transplanting on the development of axillary buds on primary crowns were studied in three leading strawberry cultivars used for forcing, i.e., ‘Tochiotome’, ‘Nyoho’ and ‘Toyonoka’. The nodes were numbered basipetally; the nodes just below the primary inflorescence were designated as node 1. Plants were grown with different amounts of fertilizer (210 and 420 mg N/pot) under two temperature conditions (32/27 and 22/17°C). The axillary buds remained dormant, or developed into secondary crowns or runners. The developmental pattern of axillary buds at nodes 1 to 4 was checked 52 days after planting, for 15 plants per treatment. All axillary buds at node 1 developed into secondary crowns regardless of cultivars and treatments. In these cultivars, most axillary buds at nodes 3 and 4 remained dormant under 22/17°C, while they developed into runners under 32/27°C. In ‘Tochiotome’ and ‘Nyoho’, an increase in the amount of applied fertilizer decreased the number of plants with dormant buds at nodes 3 and 4, but there was little effect of fertilizer application rate on the fate of axillary buds in ‘Toyonoka’. There were few plants with dormant buds at node 2 in these three cultivars under 22/17°C, but the number of plants that formed runners at node 2 increased as temperature increased from 22/17°C to 32/27°C. An increase in the fertilizer application rate increased the number of plants that formed secondary crowns at node 2 in ‘Tochiotome’, but not in ‘Nyoho’ and ‘Toyonoka’. These findings suggest that temperature and the amount of applied fertilizer should be adapted to the cultivar to control the number of secondary crowns at node 2 according to the preference.
