Strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa) are increasingly being grown in hydroponic systems, where effective nutrient management is critical for optimizing crop production and yield. Among essential mineral nutrients, potassium is a key nutrient that affect fruit quality in many fruiting crops. This study investigated how potassium to nitrogen (K:N) ratios regulate strawberry growth and development in a deep-water culture hydroponic system. We hypothesized that increasing the K:N ratios would enhance vegetative growth, fruit yield, and fruit quality. Bare-root plants of strawberry ‘Monterey’ and ‘San Andreas’ were grown indoor under a 23 °C air temperature and an 18-h photoperiod with an extended photosynthetic photon flux density of 350 µmol∙m–2∙s–1. The N level was kept constant at 77 ppm, while the study tested K:N ratios ranging from 1.5:1 to 4:5:1. Three weeks after nutrient treatments, strawberry plants showed similar crown number, crown diameter, leaf number, leaf area, and shoot dry mass regardless of K:N ratios in both cultivars. Increasing K:N from 1.5:1 to 4.5:1 linearly increased the root dry mass of Monterey’ but not in ‘San Andreas’. During the fruit production, K:N ratios did not affect the total number of fruits or total fresh mass of fruits. However, there was a linear decrease in the diameter, length, and fresh mass of individual fruits with increasing K:N ratio from 1.5:1 to 4.5:1 in both 'Monterey' and 'San Andreas'. Additionally, increasing K:N ratio from 1.5:1 to 4.5:1 slightly increased total soluble solids in ‘San Andreas’, but led to a greater increase in titratable acidity compared to the increase in total soluble solids in both ‘Monterey’ and ‘San Andreas’. These results suggest that increasing K:N ratios from 1.5:1 to 4.5:1 has little beneficial effect on overall plant growth, fruit yield and fruit quality for hydroponic strawberry production in deep-water culture systems.
