 All right. Well, good afternoon, everyone. We are in strawberry season, as you know, and we are just wanted to share with you some of our trials here in over the last five years. And it looks like, am I still connected? Yeah, good. Good. Good. Just had a little bit of a flash there. Okay. So this is, we had five years worth of evaluations here. I just wanted to share with you some of the trials that we've conducted, some of the results that we've gotten from our trials. And so, you know, as many of you know, strawberries are a probably second to peaches, probably one of the most important fruit crops in the state. And let's see, we can, though we've seen a rise in demand, and both nationally and within the state, but they're in Alabama, this has not really translated into a lot of acreage, but more, there has been an increase, there's been an increase in the number of operations that grow strawberries, although the acreage has decreased. But this is a common trend. We're seeing smaller operations, more but smaller operations in the state. But as I said, strawberry consumption is growing, not only is the consumption growing, but the more, not only are more people consuming strawberries, but more households are consuming strawberries. So, and then we're also starting to see more innovations, more production innovations, like we're precision agriculture, protective horticulture, where a lot of these strawberries are coming on the inside, we're putting using greenhouses or high tunnels, some sort of protective culture to ensure the crop. And variety selection is probably the most important decision that a grower will make. It, because selecting the wrong variety can be disastrous. It is just that important, but most in variety selection is the most sustainable means to solve production problems, most practical means to solve production problems, be they insect pests or disease pests, also some weather related issues such as cold or drought or heat. Variety selection is the most important and most sustainable means to begin to address these issues. Variety selection is going to be vital to the success of meeting production goals, be in the North or in South Alabama. There are some varieties that would do well in the North, but maybe quite not in the South. So variety selections or variety trials will help growers to make the best selections possible for their operations. And so the objective of this of these trials has been to select varieties that are the best adapted for Alabama. And first of all, let's start with the different types of strawberries before we go into the strawberry varieties, but we have short day types or spring bearing. These form flowers, not necessarily the flowers, but the flower initials or the makings of flowers are formed in response to the shortening of day link. So as the day link gets shorter, you begin to form, the plant begins to develop these, these initials, flower initials, that when springtime comes, you have warm temperatures and warm sunny days, these flowers then bloom. Next are the long day strawberries or the ever bearing. These are in response to, these form flowers developed in response to longer days. So these are all photo period dependent, both of these. Day neutrals on the other hand are not photo period dependent. And so they're not affected by day link. Now these are, these aren't necessarily that rigid of categories. The current research now is starting to discover that there's a little bit more fluidity between these things. Some of these designations, like some day neutrals or facultative day neutrals, and they can perform similar to short day varieties. So, but these are the ones that we're used to dealing with. And for the most part, short day and also some day neutral flowers, day neutral plants that we deal with. And regardless of the type of berry, flowering will shut down when temperatures get too warm. So we start getting the temperatures upwards of 86 degrees Fahrenheit. You begin to see the flowers and then begin to shut down. And I wanted to point out, before I talk about the different production systems that we use, we have the matted row production system and the annual hill plastic culture system. I wanted to talk about the way, the a little bit of the anatomy of the strawberry plant. And as you can see this long sort of extension here, this is for all of you may not be that familiar with strawberries, but this is these are called runners or stolons. And at the ends of these stolons or runners, we have the daughter plant. So we have right there in the center, we have the mother plant at the base. She sends out these stolons that then produce daughter plants. And that's important for the matted row system. As you can see, the matted row system, what you have initially is you have your mother plants planted. And as time goes on, the plants, the rows will then begin to fill in with the daughter plants. And this is the driving force behind the matted row system. Matted row system now is not really used that much except maybe for homeowners. This is not the commercial not the system of choice for commercial production. This is a semi permanent system. You can get years as long as five to six years out of this planting because strawberries are a perennial plant. But the production of daughter plants will drive this system. So it just keeps renewing the planting with new daughter plants that then go on to produce fruit as well. And that leads us to the annual hill plastic culture system. And just as its name implies, it is an annual system. This typically in the weeks prior to the October, we get the land, the ground prepared and the plastic mulch laid and the plants are planted, hopefully by the 1st of October in central Alabama. And these plants will then go over winter and they will be in harvest in early spring. And then at the end, all of this starts all over again. This whole operation is ripped up and reapplied. So we have the annual hill plastic culture system. This system is actually more productive than the matted row system. And all of the varieties that we have are adapted to the annual hill plastic culture system. So for varieties that we have used, we have started out with about 20 varieties over the five-year period. And I have identified five of them that have been somewhat productive compared to the market standard Camarosa, as you can see here. We have Albion, which is a day-neutral variety, followed by Camarosa, which is the market standard, Camino Rial, Chandler and Ruby June. Those last four varieties are short day varieties. Chandler at one point, I should point out that Chandler was the market standard at one time, but Camarosa outperformed Chandler over the years. So it was replaced by Camarosa. And what we use in our trials and what all of the growers use in our area are is the annual hill plastic culture system. And this is a rows that are covered in polyethylene mulch, black polyethylene mulch. And these are actually beds. These are raised beds for effective drainage of water. And on top of those beds, you can see here a mechanized hole puncher in the plastic mulch. You can also have a system where you have two seats attached right behind this hole puncher. And you can have two riders, two field crew members riding in tandem, planning one crew member planning in one row and the other planning in the other, because we have a double staggered row on top of these planting beds. And we have a within row spacing of 14 inches and between row spacing of 15 inches, which gives us about 1200 plants per acre. We use plug plants. We, there are some operations that use the, the bare root plants. I don't know if you can see my cursor here, the bare root plants. These are a little bit more, a little bit harder to manage, harder to plant, a little more sensitive. The bare root plants are plants that, not bare root, but the plug plants are a little more forgiving. So if you're, especially if you're a novice in your planting needs, this is probably, probably the way to go with plug plants. And some of the things that we'll be looking at are plant size, number of runners or stolons. We'll get into the, some of the important attributes like berry sweetness and acid contents. Also the health promoting qualities such as antioxidants, which is one of the leading cause reasons why consumers are purchasing strawberries and purchasing them, not simply because they taste great, but also because they have these health promoting compounds like antioxidants, these anti-cancer compounds in plants. And we are looking at one in particular, and that will be anthocyanin, one in particular, one antioxidant in particular. And then we'll also look at yield, of course, and cull fruit weight and berry size. So beginning with plant size, we're looking at Camino Real, it actually produces a pretty compact plant along with just a little bit smaller than the Albion plant. With that, then it would allow closer spacing so you can get more plants per acre. But a number of growers like the fact that there is some space between the plants. There's more space between the plants. One for better pesticide coverage, but also because if you have a pick-your-own operation where your clientele goes in and they harvest their own, if you have a big plant like a Camarosa, then you have a better chance of those berries being missed. And those missed berries will rot eventually, and they'll just serve as sort of a source of a knockdown for other diseases. And so it comes a management issue sometimes with these larger plants. So on to runners. Now, runners' management can be an issue because these have to be removed or should be removed when they're being produced in the field because it will stimulate better or more plant production. The runner production is as a signal that the plants are becoming more vegetative and you'll get less flowering. And so in 2020, I have two years where I've measured this. And in 2020, you can see with Ruby June, it had quite significantly lower than the rest. So we essentially have less than one runner per plant with Ruby June. With Chandler, of course, had the highest. We took the readings a little earlier in 2021, so they're all pretty low and they were all less than one plant, one runner per plant. But Ruby June, again, was exceptionally low. So if you have a back to our example of the matted row, if you had a matted row system that is dependent on the daughter plants, then Ruby June may not be the variety that you want because it doesn't really produce a lot of daughter plants. So on to berry sweetness. The way that we measure berry sweetness is through the measure of soluble solids. This is sort of an indirect way to measure the sweetness. And the units are called percent bricks, it's named after a researcher who identified this. And so when you're dealing with bricks, any measure that is 10% and above is really considered sweet. But in strawberries, we see that we tend to be under 10 here. But we still have that great strawberry flavor, typically, with most varieties. We can see that Chandler was higher along with Camarosa. Well, Camarosa was the market standard, but it's still pretty sweet. Ruby June, and also Camino Real. Camino Real was the lowest. I wasn't really surprised by that because Camino Real is known for not being that sweet. But it had to be used this year. Camino Real was used by some growers who don't ordinarily use it, who not ordinarily grow it. And their clientele loved it. They said that the taste, the flavor, the sweetness was perfect. But in the past though, Camino Real has been known to not be not that sweet. And it is recommended that if you're going to grow Camino Real to harvest them when they're dark red, and that seems to be the best stage. Acid content, that's another attribute of flavor. And so sweetness, acid content, and what you want is you want a lower acid content and a higher sugar content. That sugar acid ratio is important in determining maturity and quality. You can see that Camino Real did have the lowest, although there's really basically not a lot of difference in acid content across the varieties. So next we come to the health promoting compounds, like antioxidants. And in this case, as I mentioned, we'll be talking about anthocyanin content. And one of the interesting things that we noticed was that Albion and Ruby June, and I'll just say that these two, the five, had the best flavor. And it's interesting that these two had the lowest in the health promoting compounds. So I'm not sure if there's anything there, but it could be. It could be something, but antioxidants, which are, it didn't be the plant pigments, along with the acids and the sugars, all of those play together to form the characteristic strawberry flavor. So now finally, we're in yield. I've looked at both early and total marketable yield, and I've included them both here on the same slide. The early marketable is in the green, and the scale to follow is on the right, on the right axis. And the gray is the total marketable yield. That's the total yield for the season, and that's, of course, on the left. And we can see the Camerosa. This is a five-year average. You see Camerosa is still the number one in terms of marketable yield, both in the early season and in the total season, followed by Camino Real and Ruby June. Camino Real, I think that it could really be a replacement for Camino Real if you do not have a, if you, for some reason, you cannot get Camerosa. Camino Real could be a good substitute. Ruby June, we'll talk about that a little bit later, but the yields tend to be a little bit lower, but it is a high quality berry. Chandler, again, we can see is the market, was the market standard, but it was quite a bit lower when we compare it to, especially to Camerosa. Next, we move on to the cull. Now cull fruit management can be an issue that's just more fruit that you have to pick out, and that's more fruit that's not being, that's not being sold. And most of the cull fruit, this example here, looks these two fruit, two strawberry fruit afflicted with anthracnose, but most of the fruit that we deal with in our trials for the culls have just really been very small. They just didn't really have the size necessary to be a marketable fruit. And those are fruit that are 12 grams and below. And how do we know if a berry is 12 grams? Well, what we do is we measure, we weigh a berry that's about 12 grams and then, and throughout the trial, we will then eyeball anything that's less than that in size. Then we know that that is not a marketable berry. And Chandler had the highest, Ruby June had among the lowest Camerosa, even though it is, it's among the highest cull producers. It's also one of the higher yielders. And that brings us to individual berry weight. And we haven't really seen a lot of differences, but we do know, we do see that Chandler was quite a bit lower in individual berry weight compared to some of the others. And Albion and Ruby June, though not the top producers, especially Albion, those tended to have the largest berries in the group. Okay. And so this brings us, I'll talk individually on these varieties individually, give you a little bit more information. We've got Camerosa, again, that it was the market standard. And it was the breeder as you see Davis in California. Most of our varieties, seems like the varieties that were the most productive, the most successful have come from Georgia, a California breeding program. As a good flavor and high marketable yields, and again, as a large plant. And as I mentioned, this could be an issue, large plants can be an issue. As opposed to Camino Real, it has smaller plants and maybe for better or easier management. It is another California variety, a short day variety. And I have here the percent commit Camerosa in yield. So the first number is 86% Camerosa yield that's in our trials. The second number is 76% of a Camerosa yield. And that's what we've seen in on farm studies. So what people are actually getting in their farms. So Camino Real is it's somewhat similar to Camerosa. That brings us to Ruby June. This variety when it first came out, people either love it or hated it, but it is really growing in popularity. It's from Lassen Canyon, another California variety, short day, excellent flavor. The only drawback is that it's just not doesn't really yield as much as Camerosa or Camino Real for that matter. It has a 76% of Camerosa yield compared to 75 compared to 76 on farm. So they're pretty much even. What we were finding in our research plots was similar to what people were finding out in the field. And very size was a little bit higher out there in the on farm studies. That brings us to Albion. It's another California variety and it's the only day neutral variety in our in our study. I haven't really been too particularly that impressed with it in terms of yield. It does have a good eating quality though. And wanted to mention Frontaris, it is the variety to watch it. And last year, it did a tremendous job, has 106% of the Camerosa yield. And it produces a very large barrier, 27 grams. But we need more data before we make any type of recommendations for this variety. But so far, it's doing pretty well. So in conclusion, Ruby June, Camino Real, or the two or the top two varieties. Again, I'm not really sure. I really don't think Albion is suited for field production in this region. Possibly it could do pretty well in a protective culture. But in our systems, it hasn't done that well. And Camino Real can serve as a replacement for Camerosa. So some pointers for variety selection. You want to choose a small planting area. You don't want to jump into one variety that you don't really know how it performs. And your selection will depend on your market. Some clientele can tell if you're not growing their particular variety. Also, you want to plant, you want to extend your season as much as you can. So a lot of growers will plant an early variety to get to the market sooner. Also, you want to be sure to select the variety that is suited for your production system. We have some disease packages. Some varieties come with disease packages. And there are some with anthracnose, all the crown rot, anthracnose, and the fruit rot, and anthracnose crown rot, or anthracnose fruit rot. There are some varieties out there that do have some resistance or tolerance to that. Powdery mildew. Now, some of these others are, there are some varying degrees of tolerance or tolerance or resistance to these varieties. There is a new variety out there called Neopastolatiopsis or Pestilotia. It's been a pretty devastating disease so far. It's been found in Florida and in Georgia. And most recently, there is one location in Alabama that has, we've tested positive for this disease. There are no varieties that have resistance or tolerance that we know of right now. So you just have to be very careful of the nurseries where you purchase your varieties. This is a list of available plants. You have them divided up by Alabama producers as well as out-of-state producers. If you're interested, just contact me or someone in Extension and we can provide this list for you if you wish. And just some resources here. We have Weird Alabama is a part of the Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium along with some other states. This is a very good organization. It can provide all sorts of resources, training, availability. And also along with that we have the Farming Basics online course along with the Farming Basics app. So this is the end of my talk. If you have any questions, we can address some of them now. And if you think of anything or if you would like more information about the plant sources, then feel free to contact me at this information right here. Thank you. That's all I have.