Quality, Nutritional Quality and Nutraceutical Value as a New Task for Strawberry Breeding

In the last few years, the nutritional value of fruit has been widely studied by scientist and requested by the consumers, because it can protect against cardiovascular diseases, cancers and other diseases as well as for the general health benefits it can provide. These benefits can be ascribed mainly to the Total Antioxidant Capacity (TAC) of fruit which is determined by many bioactive compounds. These are generally related to specific characteristics of a genotype and its interaction with the environment. In this work, 80 strawberry offspring, originated from 8 Fragaria spp. inter- and intra-specific crosses, were screened for their Total Antioxidant Capacity (TAC), Anthocyanin Content (ACY), Total Phenolic Content (TPH). This allowed us to identify and select new genetic material with an improved combination of these components of fruit nutritional quality. Here, progenies from strawberry crosses with F. virginiana glauca as a common parent showed a significant increase in their fruit quality and nutritional quality, which confirms the interest of the wild genotypes to improve several characters of cultivated strawberry.