Choosing strawberry varieties

Growers will soon be getting their plants from the propagators, and there are always new varieties to consider.

The variety decision is complicated because each grower has to define “best” for themselves. Is early yield the most important? Is fruit size king? Or is the sales value of the fruit sold from each plant over the duration of your season (however many months that is), the bottom line? Maybe flavour is paramount. Or learning to manage a new variety is too scary, so the old familiars are best.

We recognize that there are pitfalls in comparing data from year to year, The weather is different, for one. The pricing is also different, especially this past season when the December wholesale price remained decent. Plant health is different too, both in planting material and in fruiting season disease pressure.

However, decisions must still be made.

Below are the most recent two years of trial data from Auckland. Note that 2022 harvest only went through Dec, while 2023 included 4 additional weeks. Remember that 2022 was a really tough rainy year. The varieties have been ranked for various important characteristics.

Interestingly, yield and value in sales (which is influenced by the wholesale price on the week of harvest) give very similar rankings. Fruit size, and therefore harvesting efficiency, clearly stacks up differently than yield. Remember that picking costs roughly double when berry size halves.

Older varieties like Ventana and Camarosa have comparatively small fruit, especially as summer progresses.

You can also see that the weather conditions on the year throw variability into the works. For some reason, the first year we had Royal Royce, it did not perform at all, but last season it was near the top. One of the reasons growers plant multiple varieties is to hedge their bets on winter chill or weather favoring one or another variety.

In 2022 the four top yielders in the short Auckland season were short-day varieties, because the trial went only until Christmas. In 2023, three of the top four yielders were day neutrals–a longer season favours those.

There are a myriad ways to slice and dice the data, and we haven’t even talked about taste!

For those of you who prefer “long format responses,” Geoff has written summaries:

Having a hands-on involvement with harvesting and grading allows me to speculate about what varieties I would grow commercially.  I would certainly want several varieties and would be constantly working out better management systems for each variety. –Geoff Langford

Short day types

Camarosa
Still widely planted and performed well in the Auckland trial this past season.  A hardy resilient plant but comparatively small average fruit size is the main limitation.

Ventana
Nothing has yet been found to replace Ventana for early production capability and therefore $ returns and cash flow value.  The major weakness is the small berry size especially from December.

Fronteras
Performed well in the past season with good production and fruit size.  Worth considering as an alternative to Camarosa.

Victor
Has performed well in each of the last two seasons with good productivity and fruit size.

Warrior
Better earlier production than Victor but has not performed quite as well as Victor over the whole season.

Day Neutral types

Monterey
Becoming the main variety grown across NZ.  Reliable variety that performs well in most situations.

Albion
Excellent flavoured variety but lacks productive ability.  Worth growing if you can achieve a price premium for flavour.

San Andreas
Performs well late season but losing popularity compared to newer releases

Cabrillo
Small plant that crops well with excellent good looking fruit of good size.  Flavour can be a negative

Royal Royce
The big improver in the past season.  After a moderate first year, performed well in the past season with good yields and fruit size.

Moxie
Continues to be an excellent performer with excellent production and fruit size.  The big issue is runner production and it is unlikely to be grown by the field runner growers.  It is likely to be an expensive plant to buy because of the poor runnering characteristic.  It does however mean that removing runners in cropping situations will not be much of an issue and overall economics could be good.

Valiant
A big plant producing very well with excellent fruit size.  Only a moderate runner producer.  Management of the plant size is going to be the big challenge with this variety.

Top picks from Geoff Langford:

The new varieties offer potential to increase profitability and are definitely worth trialing.  Talk to your plant grower and register your interest.

Favourites for in-ground field production:  Fronteras, Victor

Top picks for Table tops: Ventana, Valiant, Moxie, Royal Royce

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