DEVELOPING STANDARD MANAGEMENT GROWING SYSTEM TO MAINTAIN SANITARY STATUS IN EUROPEAN STRAWBERRY COLLECTIONS

Strawberry domestication has resulted in a reduction of both morphological and genetic diversity with modern cultivars. Therefore, it seems to be important keeping all the variability available today in order to limit the decrease of the genetic basis of small berries genetic resources and enriched genetic pool for future breeding. One of the tools for preservation genetic resources is maintaining collections that represent all spectrum of variability. Creation of centralized, well characterized and harmonized European strawberry collection was the aim of European project “Small berries genetic resources” (GENBERRY) co-funded by DG AGRI. However, success of maintaining sufficiently large and representative collection depends on many factors, among other sanitary status of the accessions. Methods preventing the breakage of collections caused by pests and diseases, including management growing system to maintain sanitary status of strawberry collections in open field, greenhouse and in vitro conditions were collected and developed by different partners of GENBERRY project.