Diversity of aroma patterns in wild and cultivated Fragaria accessions

Plant breeders are interested in strawberry species as donors of volatile compounds in breeding programmes because of the diversity and intensity of wild strawberry aroma. Therefore, the topic of this paper is the prospective analysis of four accessions of four wild strawberry accessions in comparison to a standard cultivar of Fragaria · ananassa Duch. by using human sensory, gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) and gas chromatography– olfactometry (GCO). The wild species have higher aroma intensities compared with the cultivated one. The flavour quality differs significantly. Semiquantitative GC analysis revealed that F. · ananassa cv. ‘Elsanta’ has the lowest content of volatile compounds whereas Fragaria moschata L. ‘Cotta’ has the highest. The aroma impressions, measured by GCO, support the findings of GCMS analyses. The nasal impact frequency (NIF)-profiles of the wild types are more manifold and of higher intensities than those of the cultivated F. · ananassa cv. ‘Elsanta’ which corresponds with the overall flavour impression when tasting the fresh fruits.