ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1655320
This article is part of the Research TopicGenomic and Metabolomic Diversity in Fruit Plants: Impacts of Breeding TechniquesView all articles
Screening of Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa Duch.) Cultivars for Drought Tolerance Based on Physiological and Biochemical Responses under PEG-Induced Stress
Provisionally accepted
Şule Hilal Attar1Duygu Ayvaz Sonmez2
Azam Akbari3*Dogan Ergun1
Ömer Faruk Bilgin4Betül Yeşil2Merve Onur Bozkurt5
Hayriye Yildiz Dasgan1
Boran Ikiz1
Salih KAFKAS1
Bruno Mezzetti6
Nesibe Ebru Kafkas1- 1Cukurova Universitesi, Adana, Türkiye
- 2Yaltır Agricultural Products Sarıhuğlar, Adana, Turkey, Adana, Türkiye
- 3Faculty of Kozan Business Administration, Cukurova University, Adana, Türkiye
- 4Siirt Universitesi, Siirt, Türkiye
- 5Istanbul Universitesi-Cerrahpasa Orman Fakultesi, Istanbul, Türkiye
- 6Universita Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
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Water scarcity is a critical limitation to strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa L.) production, especially under climate change. This study evaluated physiological and biochemical responses of 16 strawberry cultivars, including two Turkish local varieties, under PEG-induced drought stress over two growing seasons. Key traits such as chlorophyll content, relative water content (RWC), photosynthetic quantum yield (Fv/Fm), sugar composition, antioxidant activity, and leaf dry matter content (LDMC) were assessed. Drought stress significantly reduced RWC (by 13.1% in Year 1 and 7.5% in Year 2), chlorophyll content (-4.8% and -6.6%, respectively), and Fv/Fm (-7.9% and -12.2%), while increasing LDMC by ~16% in both years. Carbohydrate accumulation was strongly marked in Year 1, with total sugar content in 'Sweet Charlie' rising from 3.48% to 28.42%, and in 'Monterey' from 2.69% to 22.90%. In contrast, Year 2 showed more moderate sugar increases (e.g., 'San Andreas': 6.29% to 6.79%), but stronger correlations between sugar content and RWC (e.g., glucose: r = 0.93), suggesting improved osmotic adjustment. Antioxidant activity and radical scavenging increased across all genotypes; 'Festival' and 'Sabrina' reached over 90% antioxidant activity under stress. PCA and clustering analyses separated tolerant from sensitive genotypes. 'Brilliance' exhibited high Fv/Fm (0.75), RWC (89.2%), and sugar retention under drought, while 'Calderon' and 'Plared' showed steep declines in vegetative traits. These findings identify cultivarspecific drought tolerance mechanisms and provide quantitative benchmarks for breeding programs. Traits such as sugar accumulation, chlorophyll stability, and antioxidant response offer robust markers for selecting drought-resilient strawberry cultivars.
Keywords: strawberry, Water stress, Physiological traits, biochemical markers, Cultivar-specific response
Received: 27 Jun 2025; Accepted: 21 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Attar, Ayvaz Sonmez, Akbari, Ergun, Bilgin, Yeşil, Bozkurt, Yildiz Dasgan, Ikiz, KAFKAS, Mezzetti and Kafkas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Azam Akbari, Faculty of Kozan Business Administration, Cukurova University, Adana, Türkiye
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