Location: Genetic Improvement for Fruits & Vegetables Laboratory
2023 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. ‘USDA Lumina’ strawberry cultivar was released. Strawberries that fruit early in the strawberry season are highly desirable to capture higher prices and to attract customers to U-pick farms early each year. Several early-season cultivars are available, but each is lacking in one or more key traits. ARS researchers at Beltsville, Maryland, released ‘USDA Lumina’, an early-season strawberry that combines all these key traits: winter-hardiness; high yield; resistance to anthracnose fruit rot, low botrytis fruit rot; and large, sweet, beautiful fruits that do not split open in the field or turn dark in refrigerated storage. Plants of ‘USDA Lumina’ were sent to three U.S. and one Canadian nurseries for propagation. A U.S. plant patent application is in process. ‘USDA Lumina’ is expected to have greatest value to growers in the Mid-Atlantic and other hot growing conditions where other cultivars fail to perform.
Review Publications
Islam, N., Krishnan, H.B., Slovin, J.P., Natarajan, S.S. 2023. Metabolic profiling of a fast neutron soybean mutant reveals increased abundance of isoflavones. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 71(26):9994-10003. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.3c01493.
Upadhyay, R.K., Motyka, V., Pokorna, E., Dobrev, P.I., Lacek, J., Shao, J.Y., Lewers, K.S., Mattoo, A.K. 2023. Comprehensive profiling of endogenous phytohormones and expression analysis of 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid synthase gene family during fruit development and ripening in octoploid strawberry (Fragaria× ananassa). Plant Physiology and Biochemistry. 196:186-196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphy.2023.01.031.
