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Background: The South Gujarat hilly part is considered to be a non-traditional area of strawberry cultivation in India. The poor farmers of this region are cultivating strawberries under open field condition. Both, the yield and quality of strawberry fruits of this region are not up-to-the-mark as there in other parts of the country. Hence, a low-cost improved production technology is required to maximize yield as well as improve the quality of strawberry fruits. Method: Uniform runners of strawberry cv. Winter Dawn were grown in open field under paddy straw as bedding material. Foliar spraying of plant growth regulators viz. NAA (50, 75, 100 and 125 mg l-1) and GA3 (50, 75, 100 and 125 mg l-1) were done at 30 and 60 days after planting. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with control plants receiving no spray treatments and replicated thrice. Result: The plant growth parameters like plant spread, number of leaves, number of crowns, leaf area, length of petiole, number of runners were recorded maximum with the application of 100 mg l-1 GA3. This treatment was also found to be the best in respect of number of flowers, number of fruits, fruit weight, marketable and total fruit yield of strawberry. Strawberry fruits with the highest total soluble solid, ascorbic acid, reducing sugar, non-reducing sugar and total sugar content were recorded in the plants which received 125 mg l-1 NAA. However, the plant growth regulator treatments failed to influence any significant effect on days taken to 50.0% flowering, fruit firmness and acidity content of strawberry fruits.

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Polyploid breeding is an effective tool to induce variability in the existing population, specifically in the crops having very narrow genetic base such as acid lime. Hence, an experiment was conducted to induce polyploidy in acid lime through colchicine treatment. Higher frequency of triploids were obtained in 250 μM colchicine treatment (27.27%), whereas combination of 3× (21.42%), 4× (13.33%) and aneuploid (6.67%) were induced at 500 μM colchicine treatment. Measurement of stomatal density and guard cell size of colchiploids revealed that the former one has negative relation with ploidy level and a positive relation was observed between guard cell size and ploidy level. Further, area and size of nuclei also had a positive relation with ploidy level. Hence, stomatal density, guard cell and nuclei size can be used effectively as morphological marker for preliminary polyploid screening. From the experiment, it can be concluded that 500 μM colchicine treatment of in vitro derived shoot tip explants of acid lime is optimum for creating maximum possible variability through polyploidization in the existing acid lime population.