Florida Festival™ (FL 95 41 cv.)

Florida Festival™
(FL 95 41 cv.)

Registered in the United States as Strawberry Festival.

Attributes

  • High percentage of medium, marketable fruit
  • Excellent shelf life and transportability
  • Uniformly well-shaped and firm
  • Medium red & glossy
  • Highly productive
  • Early fruit onset
  • Good flavor

Fruit & Plant Characteristics

The Florida Festival (FL 95 41) is a short-day strawberry cultivar selected to compete in Florida’s winter and early spring fresh fruit market window. The variety is marketed under the Festival™ brand. It produces medium red, conical fruit.

The variety’s superior disease resistance and excellent pollination under cool, humid conditions result in a high percentage of marketable fruit, especially in the early part of the season.

The open architecture of the Florida Festival™ strawberry plant facilitates both pollination and fruit harvest. Its berries are resistant to rain damage. The variety has demonstrated excellent firmness and shelf life.

The fruit is especially suitable for presentation in 250 g punnets. The berries have great dessert and aromatic quality. Its consistent internal red color makes the Florida Festival™ variety an excellent candidate for the freezer market.

 

Field Production

The Florida Festival™ (FL 95 41) strawberry variety requires significantly less nitrogen and substantially more potassium and calcium than commercial varieties from competing breeding programs. Fruit growers must alter and adapt their plant nutrition programs to accommodate the needs of Florida Festival™ if they are to achieve strong yields of high quality fruit. An over-application of nitrogen will cause the plants to produce soft fruit with shorter shelf life.

 

Disease Resistance

Strawberry cultivars from the University of Florida variety development program generally demonstrate superior levels of disease resistance. Growers should be aware, however, that the Florida Festival™ (FL 95 41) strawberry variety is not as resistant to Colletotrichum acutatum as the earlier release, Sweet Charlie.

 

*Characteristics may vary depending on weather conditions, day length, soil type and location.