ABSTRACT
Strawberries are one of the most widely grown fruit crops in the world. They can flourish from tropical highlands to subarctic regions. Strawberry is one of the most popular soft fruits, and is cultivated in plains as well as in hills up to an elevation of 3000 m above mean sea level in humid or dry regions, widely grown in protected and open conditions in temperate and subtropical countries. Among all the different types of berries, strawberry gives the quickest return in a shortest possible period. Its heart-shaped fruit of love was mentioned by the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid in the 1st centuries BC and AD, and in England, gardeners have had been cultivating strawberries since the 16th century (Boriss et al., 2006).
