Plant Architecture in Different Cultivation Systems.

The architecture of the strawberry plant reflects the high plasticity of this species due to its sensitivity to temperature and photoperiod, and also to several agronomic and nutritional factors that affect its reproductive and vegetative behaviour. Different cultivation systems can provide yields in different seasons and areas, allowing an overall year-round production, but they require the use of plants that fit into the appropriate growing cycle and have the expected productivity. The choice of appropriate plant is related primarily to genotypic sensitivity (remontant and non-remontant types) and then to the type of nursery production system, which affects the ability of the plant to establish after transplanting, the quality of the plant itself, its crop potential and timing of harvest, and finally the plant architecture. Knowledge about the response of flowers, shoots and runners to environmental and abiotic factors allows plant manipulation during propagation in the nursery and during cultivation in the field or in protected systems. The optimal control of plant behaviour is possible only by monitoring the different vegetative and reproductive structures (plant architectural analysis) over space and time. The growth and development of the plants can be monitored throughout the season to estimate the time of optimal sensitivity to external factors, to enable transition of the plants to reproductive behaviour to obtain optimal crop potential, and to predict the best level of production of the crop (time and quantity). Furthermore, growth can be adjusted and controlled to alter the development of the plant. In the nursery, the plants can be programmed by modifying environmental conditions or modulating abiotic factors, including controlled stress conditions, and the architecture can be appropriately adapted for each farming system in different areas, modifying the time of fruit production in the field after transplanting.