Abstract: China has the largest strawberry planting area and production in the world, but the strawberry yield per unit area is only slightly higher than the global average. The shortage of high-quality transplants has been the biggest bottleneck, restricting the efficient production and sustainable development of strawberries in China. To obtain virus-free transplants for fruit production, the strawberry transplants should be propagated in a three-grade propagation system, which consists of nuclear transplant, basic transplant, and transplant. The basic transplant is the key link in the three-grade propagation system, and its propagation efficiency and quality are essential to propagate high-quality strawberry transplants. However, the propagation efficiency of high-quality basic transplants is low due to the widely different growth time of runners, strong light and high temperature in summer, diseases and insect pests, and other factors. It is recommended to propagate strawberry basic transplants in environment-controlled facilities, such as intelligent greenhouses or plant factories, since optimized environmental conditions are conducive to improving propagation efficiency and controlling diseases and pests. In this paper, a new process for industrial cutting propagation of basic transplants was established based on the way of multiplication, aiming to improve the propagation efficiency and uniformity of basic transplants. Several strawberry nuclear transplants were hydroponically grown as initial mother plants for the propagation of unrooted runner plants. The unrooted runner plants with three leaves were harvested, a part of which were hydroponically grown as regenerated mother plants for the propagation of more runner plants, and others were grown in a substrate to produce the basic transplants. The strawberry mother plants at a certain age were eliminated, and the total number of mother plants propagating the runner plants was always kept constant for the balance of elimination and replenishment of mother plants. A mathematical model was constructed to describe the propagation process of basic transplants, and the annual yield of basic transplants propagated in a controlled environment was simulated based on it. The simulated number of mother plants and basic transplants can be helpful to provide basis data for management decision-making during the industrial propagation of strawberry basic transplants. When the annual cutting propagation of basic strawberries was conducted under LED lighting, 12 697 strawberry basic transplants with 10 mm stem diameters could be produced by one initial mother plant within 20 m2 culture area. What’s more, the yield of transplants per unit culture area was 635 plants/m2, which was 10 times higher than the field propagation. If using elevated culture beds of 4-5 layers, the yield of basic transplants per unit ground area was 7-13 times that of the existing elevated propagation method. The annual productivity of strawberry basic transplants can be increased by 5.7% and 6.9%, respectively, when the mother plant produces more than one runner or the interval time of runner sprouting is reduced by one day. The number of nuclear transplants, runner number of mother plants, interval time of runner sprouting, and growth time of runner plants have significant effects on the yield of basic transplants, which should be optimized in the industrial propagation of strawberry basic transplants.