Strange quark production in an effective statistical model

Strangeness production in both high energy elementary and heavy ion collisions is described within the framework of an equilibrium statistical model with constituent quarks as fundamental degrees of freedom. The basic idea is that full local statistical equilibrium is achieved at the level of quark degrees of freedom. Besides the effect of different initial light flavour content and density, the smaller relative strangeness production in elementary with respect to heavy ion collisions is supposed to be related to the smaller sytem size and to colour confinement over small distances. Within an effective NJL model, fairly good agreement with the fitted Wroblewski factors lambda(S) is found in high energy heavy ion and e(+)e(-) collisions, whilst a significant discrepancy shows up in pp collisions.