Abstract
This study was conducted to find out an efficient and non-destructive method to select strawberry plants with highanthocyanin content in breeding programs. The total anthocyanin content in both fruit skin and whole fruit of fully ripe fruitswas analyzed by HPLC in 19 strawberry cultivars, which were selected among germplasm as potential breeding materials basedon their good horticultural traits. The anthocyanin content varied greatly among cultivars, ranging from 22.04 to 87.16 mg·100g-1FW in fruit skin and from 1.98 to 30.16 mg·100g-1FW in whole fruit. For the anthocyanin content of whole fruit, it was highin the order of ‘Sachinoka’, ‘Tamar’, ‘Amaou’ and ‘Summerberry’. A correlation coefficient of anthocyanin content between fruitskin and whole fruit was significantly high as 0.867 and, therefore, the anthocyanin content of whole fruit can be estimated bythat of fruit skin. Besides, the anthocyanin content of whole fruit was strongly negatively correlated with L* (lightness, -0.791)and b* (yellowness, -0.772) values measured by portable colorimeter. Therefore, the portable colorimeter can be a rapid andnondestructive method to estimate anthocyanin content of strawberry fruits when selecting anthocyanin-enriched strawberry linesin strawberry breeding programs.
