Heritability of Sugar Contents in Strawberry Fruit in the F₁ Populations Using a Common Pollen Parent

Abstract

The heritability values of sugar contents in strawberry fruit were estimated from the parent-offspring regression of seven F₁ populations, obtained from a common pollen parent 'Toyonoka'. The estimated heritability values for total sugar, hexose (fructose plus glucose) and sucrose contents were 0.568, 1.153 and 0.004, respectively; high additive genetic effects were found in total sugar and hexose contents. Therefore, an optimum method for breeding strawberry cultivars that contain large amounts of sugar and hexose may be to use parental lines with high total sugar and hexose contents, and to select F₁ individuals with high sugar contents. The low heritability of sucrose content in this experiment may be attributable to the cultural practices and environmental factors because harvesting strawberry fruits took a long time.