ABSTRACT
Strawberries have experienced a series of polyploidizations and natural hybridizations during evolution. Crosspollination has led to the development of hybrids with significant variations in plant and fruit characteristics such as fruit size, firmness, composition, taste, aroma and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, thus used for cultivation and breeding for intended traits (Darrow, 1966; Hancock, 1999; Faedi et al., 2002; Ulrich et al., 2007). Nowadays, a large number of strawberry cultivars are grown worldwide, and new varieties are emerging rapidly (Nielsen and Lovell, 2000). Due to continued introduction of new strawberry cultivars to the market, it is important to prevent their misidentification and protect the breeders’ rights (Garcia et al., 2002), thus requiring the development of reliable methods for identification and assessment of genetic diversity in Fragaria spp. (Degani et al., 2001). Earlier, the identification of cultivars was based on morphological features, however, due to strong influence of environmental factors and age of plants on morphology and close resemblance among cultivars, varietal assessment on the basis of only phenotypic traits does not give reliable information about the genetic makeup of an individual genotype.
