Strawberries have rapidly become an important horticultural crop and consumer favorite fruit since its accidental hybridization. Constant efforts are made to improve disease resistance and fruit quality traits with special emphasis on improving flavor. The limited availability of disease-resistant cultivars requires other methods for pest and disease control. Chemical sprays are commonly used to control a wide array of high-priority pathogens. However, an increase in pathogens developing resistance to fungicides, the presence of pesticide residues on harvested fruit, and the harmful environmental effects of routine chemical applications have made resistance breeding a main objective in strawberry breeding programs. Screening for resistance to the fungal pathogen Mycosphaerella fragariae that causes Common Leaf Spot (CLS) and characterizing fruit quality traits among short-day (SD) and day-neutral (DN) genotypes in the Michigan State University (MSU) strawberry germplasm were the two main objectives in this study. In addition to high yield and large fruit size, there has been a growing interest in breeding for good flavor in strawberries, which is characterized by a balance between total soluble solids (TSS) content and titratable acidity (TA) with a pleasant aroma. Evaluating progeny from breeding crosses with shared parents, Earliglow proved to be the best parent for improving flavor, while Cabot was the best for improving fruit size and tolerance to CLS. Among the germplasm, short-day individuals outperformed day-neutral individuals for CLS tolerance, TSS/TA, fruit size, and TSS. More crosses with shared parents and at least 20-25 progeny per cross would help determine the inheritance of CLS resistance and quantify the general combining ability for determining the best parents to cross to improve MSU’s strawberry germplasm pool further.
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