The below info is pulled DIRECTLY from KJUN Snakehaven's website's cornsnake page concerning the Strawberry Corns. KJ is a very close friend and extremely knowledgeable in genetics and I fully stand behind what he says:
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Strawberry cornsnakes (which are very different from some pink snows that are sometimes called "Strawberry Snows" in Europe) are still somewhat of a mystery. There is no doubt that the line we have is some form of hypomelanism, is inheritable (almost definitely as a recessive mutation), and looks uniquely different from all of the other lines of hypomelanism currently available. That's where the "known facts" stop. It seems like this line has been shown unique by some breeders, but some others have found it to be allelic with various other lines of hypomelanism. New or not, the strawberry line definitely has some other lines of hypomelanism mixed into it somewhere resulting in some "false" results in various breeding trials. For example, we have conclusively proven that strawberry corns are not Lava or ultra. If not new, strawberry is just a very unique form of hypomelanism. We have confirmed that some strawberries are hypomelanistic Type A snakes, but some others produce only normals when bred to standard hypomelanistic cornsnakes. Even when breeding two strawberries together, some normals are produced; however, this line doesn't seem to behave like a dominant trait, either. Currently, the dominant/codominant hypothesis is being tested here in greater detail.
We truly believe that strawberry is a new gene (not allelic with any other forms of hypomelanism), but confusion has arisen since hypomelanism is mixed into the founding colony (i.e., Jim Stepflug) of strawberries. This means that some strawberries (but not all of them) are carrying the hypo gene while some hypos have inadvertently been misrepresented as strawberries. After two years of working intensively with a rather large group of strawberry cornsnakes, we have finally reached a point where we were able to produce - and isolate - what we believe is the strawberry gene. Unlike some people, we started with a large colony of strawberries - not just one or two to toy around with. Over the next 2 years, we expect to use these supposed strawberries (produced here) to finally give conclusive evidence: is strawberry allelic to hypomelanism type A or is it a new gene all together? If a new gene all together, is it definitely a simple recessive trait?
Strawberry corns - regardless of the actual mode of inheritance - are unique looking cornsnakes with clean to whitish backgrounds and deep red blotches. Especially as subadults, they tend towards having a strawberry-red and strawberry-orange overall color scheme. Even if this morph does turn out to be a new look to an old mutation, the look is so distinctive that it certainly deserves its own name, description, and personal spotlight!
