- Early season
- Produces a 60 day yield over an extended season
- Beautifully shaped, uniform conic berries
Bred and selected by East Malling Research, Vibrant is a high yielding, high quality early variety that has rapidly become established as the premier early selection and has advanced the English strawberry season by ten days.
Vibrant produces beautifully shaped, uniform, conic berries which are medium to large in size and with virtually no Class II fruit. The berries are glossy, brilliant red in colour and are carried on strongly erect, long, flowering peduncles. Vibrant was bred to give a high 60-day yield by producing a large number of flowering trusses in succession thus cropping over an extended period.
A genuinely early variety with a 50% pick date at least seven days ahead of Elsanta. The plants are moderately vigorous with good resistance to Powdery Mildew and Crown Rot but are susceptible to Verticillium Wilt. A second crop can occur if the crop has been forced and up to 400gms of good quality fruit can be produced from July onwards.
Each truss carries only 4 to 5 flowers thus maintaining a larger fruit size (72% of the Vibrant crop exceeded 35mm compared to 56% for Elsanta in the Hoogstraten trial). Maincrop yields have been consistently good and have normally exceeded 1kg per plant. Picking speeds are exceptional due to the good presentation of the berries and the fruit is easily handled and packed being firmer than both Clery and Elsanta. Flavour is excellent and Vibrant was the top rated selection for flavour in the HDC Substrate Trial in 2011.
