ABSTRACT
Strawberry runners being very delicate in nature require utmost care at the time of planting. Runners should be protected from any type of mechanical damage while they are separated from the mother plants, as well as at the time of processing for planting. Planting of strawberry in a systematic plan is very much essential for the success of strawberry culture. The planting plan should include different essential aspects such as selection of site, choice of cultivars, quality planting material, soil/soilless growing medium, bed preparation, planting design, planting density and aftercare. The quality of runners determines planting success irrespective of cultivars. Runners are separated from the mother plants and planted directly on the raised beds. Another method of runner collection is from cold storage. Performance of strawberry culture mainly depends on genotypic and environment interaction in different agro-climatic zones worldwide. The planting plan depends on type of climate (Das et al., 2012), such as tropical, subtropical, semi-arid, cold- or hot-arid, coastal, foothills, mid- and high-temperate hills, Mediterranean region, and prevailing weather conditions, namely autumn, severity of winter and summer temperature, winter and spring snow and frost, hailstorm, rainfall and availability of irrigation water. The growing environment, particularly whether it is open field or a type of protected structure, also determines the planting plans. More recently, various structures have been designed for soilless horizontal or vertical strawberry cultures.
