COMPARISON OF AROMA COMPOUNDS OF 3 NEWLY-RELEASED STRAWBERRY CULTIVARS AND THEIR PARENTS

Aroma, an important sensory attribute of the strawberry fruits, has become one of the breeding goals in recent years, due to the requirement of consumers. But it is difficult to build up the criteria for it. The SPME (Head Space-solid Phase Micro-extraction) and GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) were applied to compare the aroma patterns of the 3 newly-released strawberry cultivars (‘Tian-xiang’, ‘Yan-xiang’ and ‘Shu-xiang’) with their parental cultivars. ‘Tian-xiang’ was a short-day cultivar with good flavor derived from ‘Darselect’ × ‘Camarosa’. Both ‘Yan-xiang’ and ‘Shu-xiang’ were derived from ‘Nyoho’ × ‘Darselect’. Interestingly, similar relative content of aroma compounds to the female parent were detected in the three cultivars. The relative contents of nerolidol, 1-octanol, octyl 3-methylbutanoate and octyl hexanoate were similar in ‘Tian-xiang’ and its female parent ‘Darselect’; the relative contents of nerolidol, linalool and ethyl hexanoate in ‘Yan-xiang’ and ‘Shu-xiang’ were similar to that in ‘Nyoho’.