Nutraceutical value of the new strawberry cultivars.

Regarding an increasing interest of consumers towards berry fruit, as they have been proved to have potential health benefits, the nutraceutical fruit value of seven strawberry culti-vars: ‘Felina’, ‘Feltar’, ‘Hulta’, ‘Jota’, ‘Pastel’, ‘Plena’ and ‘Teresa’ selected at the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Plant Genetics and Breeding Department was evaluated in this study. In fruits harvested at maturity, the level of phytochemical compounds such as sugars, vitamin C, and polyphenols including quercetin and gallic acid as well as antiradical activity was estimated. Among all genotypes tested, the cultivar ‘Jota’ showed the highest content of glucose and fruc-tose as well a high content of sucrose, therefore the total sugar content exceeded 12 g per 100 g of fresh weight (FW). Similar parameters in terms of content of total sugars and the individual fractions have cultivar ‘Pastel’. Cultivars with low sucrose content were ‘Feltar’ and ‘Teresa’, but as regards monosaccharide’s cvs. ‘Plena’ and ‘Felina’. The content of vitamin C in fruits of the cultivars tested showed significant differences. It ranged from 64.5 mg·100 g-1 FW in cv. ‘Jo-ta’ to 104.33 mg·100 g-1 FW in cv. ‘Plena’. The highest level of antiradical activity occurred in cultivars ‘Jota’, ‘Teresa’ and ‘Feltar’ (90.1%, 87.1% and 86.3% DPPH; respectively). The re-sults obtained indicated that the differentiation of the chemical composition of strawberry fruit is clearly dependent upon the genetic diversity of cultivars tested, what we argue that all of them grown under the same climatic and soil conditions using the same agricultural technology.