The Sweet and the Not-so-Sweet of the U.S. Strawberry Industry - A Discussion with Dr. Gerald Holmes - Plants, People, Science

Episode Transcript
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Lara Brindisi (00:10):
Welcome to Plants , People, Science, a podcast by
the American Society forHorticultural Science where we
talk about all thingshorticulture.
In today's episode we learnabout the challenges and future
of large-scale strawberryproduction in California.
But first, Sam, how's it going?

Sam Humphreys (00:27):
Hey, Lara, it's good to see you.
It's going a little bit rough.
So I actually am excited forthis strawberry episode because
I do strawberry research.
Right now I am between Rep 1and Rep 2 of my Big Masters
experiment, and so I have torearrange my treatments.

(00:49):
I have to, like, take down mylight fixtures and put them back
up in a different way toprepare for Rep 2.
And so it's just been a lot oftaking down the work that I did
and redoing it.

But I mean Is that all for randomization?

Yes, it is To make sure within my growth
chambers that there isn't a hugeenvironmental effect on the
plants.
But I'm also very excitedbecause in about a week and a
half I'm going to leave toLaramie, wyoming, because I'm

(01:29):
going to spend five days as anintern at Plenty, which is a
vertical farming company.

Yeah, that's a big one.
Congratulations, that's soexciting.

Thank you.
I'm really excited becausethey're doing strawberry work.
They're trying to see if theycan grow strawberries vertically
.
They've done a lot of tests too.
I'm really looking forward toseeing it behind the scenes.

Yeah, it's smart that a lot of the companies are
starting to expand beyond thespecialty leafy greens and to
other horticultural crops.

Yeah, I wonder where it's going to go.
I mean, you did your PhDresearch, including some African
indigenous vegetables, right?
I wonder what the future holdsfor that.

Yeah, I mean.
So.
Most of my PhD thesis and workwas on basil, but I did some
dabbling in African indigenousvegetables, as you mentioned,
and then some vertically farmedleafy greens.
Actually, I just had a papercome out related to some of the
chemistry on vertically farmedgreens, which is really fun to
see that out there.
Yeah, so it'll be cool to seewhere that world goes, Though

(02:36):
you're much more involved in itthan I am at the moment.

Well, congratulations.
I'm not involved enough.
I didn't see that paper comeout.
I've got to take a look, soyou've got some exciting news to
share as well.
Lara, what's going on?

with you.
Yeah, a few things.
I mean this weekend is, ofcourse, the ASHS conference, and
so I'll be leading fourdifferent sessions.
One is an oral talk for some ofmy work on my thesis, Another
is a poster from the internshipthat I did in Taiwan, and then
two are actually kind of uniquesessions, one being the Fields
of Devotion film we're doing anexclusive screening, and the

(03:15):
other is a session for thispodcast.
So I'm really looking forwardto this event.
I'll be pretty active, andit'll be fun to see people that
I haven't seen in a while too,of course, oh, that's so
exciting For the Fields ofDevotion.

is that something that people can only see at the
conference, or is thatsomething people can see
elsewhere too?

Yeah, so as of yet it's limited to these
exclusive screenings.
In the future it will beavailable on more popular sites,
so it'll be mainly used as aneducational resource, and
there'll be more information onthat to come once I'm allowed to
share it.

That's amazing.
I hope you have a fantastictime at ASHS.
How many years will this havebeen for you attending?

Oh, this is my third conference.
Yeah, and unfortunately I don'tthink I'll be able to go the
next couple of years because I'mgoing to be sadly and happily
switching out of a horticulturalcrop.
I recently accepted a jobposition at Cornell working on
maize or corn, so I will bemoving into the agronomy world.

(04:27):
I don't know for how long,maybe it'll I'll come back to
horticultural crops, but for nowthat's what I'll be doing.

I shouldn't say this because this is a
horticulture podcast, butagronomists are wonderful.
You'll fit right in, I'm sure.

Okay, that's good to hear.
Yeah, I mean, I've met suchreally wonderful people in one
of my trips up there, so I thinkit'll be a really great
position, though I do have tosay, because I'll be accepting
this position, which will bevery time consuming I will have
to step down as a podcast host.

We're going to miss you so much, Lara.
I can't even say just a lot ofthe behind the scenes stuff.
We don't talk on this podcastabout what it takes to make
these episodes and the ideasthat have to go into developing
what these episodes are going tolook like.
But so much of the podcast hasbeen shaped by you and your

(05:27):
perspective and your wonderfulquestions, so truly I can't say
how much will miss you.

Aw, thanks, sam.
That's so sweet of you to say,and this might not be the last.
I could always make anotherguest appearance in the future,
or maybe come back when myschedule opens up, if it ever
opens up, and so this is not thelast of me, oh don't worry,
you'll just see on your Googlecalendar, you'll see that I've
just invited you randomly tocertain meetings and we'll jump

(05:57):
in and I'll just be interviewingyou.

It'll happen someday.

Yeah, perfect, I mean, that'd be great to come
back on this show.
I'm open to an interview.
But yeah, I mean, I guessthat's a bit of our lengthy
introduction for today's episode.
Shall we get into it.

Let's do it so.
In today's episode, weintroduce Dr Gerald Holmes, who
is currently the director of theStrawberry Center at California
Polytechnic State University inSan Luis Obispo.
Before this role, he worked asa product development manager at
Valent USA and served as anassociate professor and
extension vegetable pathologistat North Carolina State

(06:37):
University.
He earned his PhD in plantpathology from the University of
California Riverside and abachelor's in agronomy and crop
science from the CaliforniaState Polytechnic University in
Pomona.
All right, Lara, let's getstarted.
Good afternoon, Dr Holmes.

(07:01):
Before we get into the contentof the episode, could you
explain some of the uniqueaspects of strawberry production
?

Dr. Gerald Holmes (07:08):
Yeah, first and foremost, everybody knows
California grows a lot ofstrawberries, but most of them
don't know that we growsomewhere between 85 and 90% of
all the strawberries that aregrown in this country, and so
that's usually a number thatsurprises people.
And we do it on just about40,000 acres, so on a per acre

(07:32):
basis it has a very high value.
As far as the strawberryproduction itself, it has a very
unique look to it, right, therows are laid out differently,
the beds are laid outdifferently.
If you get on Google Earth, youcan tell a strawberry field

(07:52):
even without seeing any part ofthe plant, just by the way the
fields are laid out.

And most of the production happens in California
right.

Yeah, all of it is.
Well, those 90% of thestrawberries produced in this
country are produced inCalifornia and all of that is
produced along our central coast, real close to the Pacific
Ocean, and the unique thingabout that is that we have
basically a desert climate inCalifornia and you have this

(08:25):
cold Pacific Ocean that isblowing cool air onto the
landmass and that keeps thatfirst mile or so of coastline
very, very moderate in climate.
In the winter it stays warmerand in the summer it stays
cooler, so temperatures arereally ideal for strawberries In

(08:47):
that environment.

Okay, so you have the.
California has the perfectclimate.
I mean, have you always beenable to grow strawberries there
all year round, or is that anewer thing?

It has always been.
To some degree there's anability to do it because it
never freezes or very rarelyfreezes, especially very close
to the coast.
Closer you get to the coast,the less possibility or
potential there is for a freeze.
But really the advent of dayneutrality in strawberries is

(09:22):
what made the season much longer, so that's a relatively recent
advent.
Some of the breeders at UCDavis, roy Springhurst,
introduced the genes for thattrait came from wild
strawberries in the WassatchMountains and he in in progress
those traits into strawberriesand that really revolutionized

(09:46):
the California industry, made ita much, changed it from a
springtime crop to a crop thatwas around virtually all year.
But there's still.
You know, in the winter monthsthere's a lot less production
than there are than there is inthe summer or the spring, but it
never goes to zero.

So California sounds like the best place to go
grow strawberries, but they'rea finicky crop, right.
What sort of challenges do yousee?

Yeah, they.
So they're very susceptible tosoil borne pathogens and we've
we battle those quiteextensively.
Anywhere strawberries are grown, soil borne root pathogens are
really important, and sofumigation has been a keystone

(10:37):
of production for decades.
It was soil borne, I'm sorry,pre-plant soil fumigation
started being practiced in thelate fifties and, and it's still
practiced, but we recentlyphased out methyl bromide in
2016 was the last year that anymethyl bromide was used in fruit

(10:58):
production fields, but we stillare using other soil fumigants
to control soil borne soil bornediseases.
So bromide was very, veryeffective.
So losing that has created somechallenges, and we're seeing a
rebound in some of the soilborne pathogens and new
pathogens, but many other andsome new yeah, some new

(11:20):
pathogens Macrophomena crown androot rot showed up in about
2008, and then fusarium wiltshowed up around that same time,
and then verticillium wilt iskind of rebounded, and
phytophthora has always been aproblem.
So those, those diseases we'regoing to see more of those, I

(11:41):
think, and we'll probably seesome more root, not nematode,
which is something we haven'tseen at all.
Really, it's been a kind of anon problem for us, but we'll
probably see that come back aswell.

Okay, and then just to clarify, when you're
talking about fumigatingstrawberry fields, what does
that actually look like?
Just in case anyone in theaudience doesn't know what that
means.

Yeah, it's a really interesting process that
took a long time to develop.
How do you get something thatvolatilizes under normal
atmospheric pressure underneaththe soil and trap it there so it
stays there?
So they have these specializedrigs that put the material down
about 18 inches below the soilsurface and at the same time

(12:27):
they're injecting the materialinto the soil, they're tarping
it, so they're covering it witha plastic tarp, and it's really
an impressive machinery to watchthat happen.
So then then it stays there fora few weeks and then and then
they remove the plastic and thenplant the crop right after that

(12:52):
.
So many people erroneouslythink that when a crop is
fumigated that they're somehowbeing exposed to the fumigant.
But the fumigation occursbefore the crop is even planted.
So the fumigant is gone by thetime the crop is planted, and
then it's many months after it'splanted that they're actually

(13:14):
harvesting the fruit.
So the fruit are never reallyexposed to a fumigant.

Yeah, oh, okay, yeah, that's.
That's good to know.
I think this type of practiceis really happening for almost
all of strawberry production.

Yes, but not every year, not every field.
So it's expensive, so theydon't do it every year, but it
is done, especially where youhave soil-worn diseases that are
important, and it may be everythree years or every four years.
In some cases it might be everyyear, but that would be less
common.

Yeah, it was so impressive the first time I saw
it.
You drive past imagine you'relike driving past this field and
it looks like a lake of plasticthat's just like reflecting the
sunlight and goes potentiallyfor acres.
It's really impressive to see.
But yeah, you mentioned thecost there.
What are the other main costsof strawberry production?

Yeah, strawberries are really
expensive to grow.
People are always amazed tolearn that it costs about
$100,000 to grow one acre ofstrawberries in California, and
a big part of that is labor.
About 60% of the cost that goesinto a growing strawberries is

(14:34):
spent on labor.
It takes hand labor to plantand then it takes hand labor to
harvest, and every strawberry ispicked by hand and put into a
clam shell.
They're field packed and thatharvest occurs twice a week.
So it's very, very frequent.
Compared to almost any othercrop which is maybe a one-time

(14:57):
harvest, or two or three timesit depends on the crop,
obviously but I thinkstrawberries are really the most
intensive because during theentire harvest season they're
being harvested twice a week.
That's a lot of people goingthrough the field twice a week.
That's a lot of labor.
Every one of those clam shellsthat you see in the grocery

(15:18):
store was hand-picked bysomebody and hand-packed, and
that was only touched once andthen it went onto a pallet and
then shipped somewhere in theworld.
So pretty impressive, but lotsof labor, and labor is expensive
.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty crazy process and
you're saying seasonally, butthis is really all year round,
as you were saying before.
So are there problems that aremore severe now that their
strawberries are grown aroundmost of the season?

Yeah, so the longer something's in the field,
the more time that they have tobe exposed to, say, soil-borne
pathogens, for example.
So that's important.
So the length of the seasonright.
If you have a short-season crop, you basically avoid a lot of

(16:13):
diseases in pests because theyjust don't have enough time to
multiply and so you can get inand get out before things really
get a chance to accumulate.
With strawberries we start inOctober with planting, we'll
start harvesting in, say,february and then that harvest,

(16:33):
depending on where it's plantedin California, it may go all the
way through December, and thatgives soil-borne pathogens a
long time to work on the roots.
So something that if you wereonly going to have five months
or three months, you'd never seethat problem.

(16:55):
But when you've got a cropthat's in there eight, nine
months, you're more likely tosee it.
So you're trying to protectsomething over a long, long
period of time, and this is whatmany people in the agriculture
industry that are in thebusiness of developing products
that are crop protectants theydon't understand that you're

(17:15):
trying to protect somethingespecially for the soil-borne
pathogens.
You're trying to protect a cropfrom a pathogen for almost a
whole year and you're trying todo that in soil and that's very,
very tough.

Especially when, like you described, people are
going out into the fields veryfrequently to harvest right,
that could be moving aroundpathogens and spreading disease
even more right.

Yeah, although most of the pathogens
that we're concerned aboutaren't the kind that are being
spread on by workers.
They're soil-borne pathogens,but those workers will go from
one field to another and theyhave soil on their shoes, so
there's a little bit going onthere.
But there's also equipment thatgoes from field to field and

(18:07):
there's probably a lot more soilbeing carried from one place to
another that way.
Although growers understandthis and they do wash their
equipment between fields and dotheir best to minimize the
spread of soil from one place toanother, above ground pathogens
are being wind-borne, and so Ithink the workers as a method of

(18:33):
means of spreading pathogensaround is probably minimal.

Yeah, does any of this affect the taste of
strawberries?
I mean, there's the age-oldconcept of buying in season,
right, but can you buy them atany time and they always taste
the same in California.

You can buy them at any time.
You can go to the store atleast stores I go to you can
find strawberries at any time ofyear there.
They may not be from California, they may be coming from Mexico
and strawberries are shippedall over the world.
So you can buy them any time ofyear and I think that they're.

(19:14):
They have the potential totaste great any time, but you're
more likely to get greattasting strawberries during the
main season If you're buyingthem from California.
You know strawberries will varyin their flavor a lot just from
week to week.
That's pretty interesting.
If you've ever been in astrawberry field and been able

(19:36):
to sample the fruit over andover again from the same place,
you realize, oh, they really cantaste quite different,
especially after rains.
It seems like the flavor getsdiluted by all the water in the
environment and you get a morewatery, less flavorful
strawberry after rains.
The best conditions that I findis when you have cool nights

(19:59):
and warm days and so the fruitaren't growing super fast and
there's plenty of sunshine forall of that photosynthate to get
in, the sugars to accumulate.
There's enough time for themand they also tend to have a
really great texture whenthey're that temperature, that
cool morning temperature, so.

(20:19):
But I've tasted greatstrawberries any time of year
from our fields and I samplethem a lot, but they do vary a
lot based on weather.
I would say mostly.

Okay, I have a follow-up question, then.
In terms of taste, I know a lotof people complain to me that,
you know, crops don't taste asgood as they used to, and tomato
is the prime example.
Do you get asked this a lotabout strawberries too?
If so, what would be some ofthe potential causes for why it
might not be quote tasting asgood as it used to?

Yeah, that's a great question.
I got that from my mom,actually, and she would complain
that you know what have theydone to strawberries.
But agriculture andstrawberries are part of that
system and the system has thesame characteristics whatever

(21:13):
the crop is.
Things are evolving, things arechanging, new varieties are
being developed, that some tastebetter than others, and so you
know she may have grown uptasting a strawberry that was a
totally different variety.
It's going to have to be atotally different variety than
what we produce now, and when Ishowed her strawberries that I

(21:36):
thought were great, she alsothought they were great, and the
reason they were great isbecause I picked them from a
plant where they ripened all theway until they were ready to
eat, and they did that on theplant.
So that's number.
That's probably the second mostimportant thing to consider.
And the first most importantthing is which variety are we

(21:56):
talking about?
So you get a variety that hasgreat flavor and you're going to
enjoy that.
So if you go to roadside stands, they'll tell you what variety
they're growing, and they'reusually growing something that
is very, very tasty.
And they do that deliberately,obviously, because people going
to a roadside stand expect alittle different strawberry.

(22:19):
So so I think the two mostimportant features that would
determine flavor are variety.
And now now I forgot the otherthing I said.
What was it?
Oh, it's ripened on the plant.
Sorry, it letting it ripen allthe way.

(22:39):
So you have this thing thatyou're trying to do, which is
very difficult, which is ship astrawberry across the country
and you think that some of thestrawberries are really
perishable, and they refrigeratethem and they ship them across
the country, and so they have tohave some durability to them.
And one way they get that is bypicking them just a little bit

(23:01):
on the under ripe side, becauseif you pick them ripe, they're
going to be overripe by the timethey get to market and they're
going to rot, and nobody wantsthe rot.
And so what you're trying to dois ship the most flavorful
berry that's been on the fruitplant as long as possible, but
it doesn't rot quickly.

(23:22):
I mean, they'll all roteventually.
Strawberries, you know, fivedays is a long time to have them
on the shelf, and if you've putthem in your refrigerator,
everybody knows how quickly theygo bad.
So you have to eat them rightaway, and it's amazing that we
can grow them on one side of theUnited States and ship them to

(23:42):
the all the way to the otherside of the United States, and
you can go to a supermarket anyday of the week and find
strawberries that were pickedwithin days.

So that same strawberry that I might be
buying in New Jersey that camefrom California.
If I picked that samestrawberry a few days later on
the actual plant, it would tastea lot better.

Yes, the sugars are accumulating rapidly.
So, and then a variety.
Don't forget the variety piece.
It's super important, and youknow, people are sometimes
making they are always makingtrades.
The growers have to consideryield as part of the package
when they decide what to grow,and the breeders are trying to

(24:32):
produce varieties that yieldreally well but also taste great
and will be shipped across thecountry, and that's a hard thing
to do.
Get all three of those thingsin one package.
And then I'm not evenmentioning disease resistance
and pest resistance, and youknow texture and aroma and so

(24:54):
forth.
There's a lot of things toconsider and so there's no
perfect package, but I think weget better at it over time and
we keep producing better andbetter varieties.
So I think the varieties we'reproducing right now in
California taste great.
Monterey is probably our numberone variety, and it's a great
tasting variety.

Yeah, I'm really excited too about the new
flavors they're trying todevelop, some of these breeders
and how you know, maybe it'llhave more of like a cotton candy
profile or more of a, you know,tark flavor profile too.
Are you seeing a lot of that inCalifornia as well?

Yeah, the flavor profiles differ
dramatically and it's fun totaste them.
We have an experiment thatwe've been doing for the last
six years in a row where weevaluate anywhere from 90 to 50
to 90 different genotypes.
So we get to taste all of thoseand they're amazing and they do

(25:55):
very dramatically in theirflavor and they're very subtle
and you ask people to tell youwhich one they like the best and
they'll all come up with aslightly different answer.
But there are some trends thatyou see.
People really love Albion.
That's one of my favorites andthere's always brand new things
coming.
Some of them taste reallyfruity, almost like a pineapple,

(26:19):
and others have kind of a kiwitype of flavor to them.
Some are just super sugary,sweet, without much acid, and
then others have a lot of acid,a little bit of a tang to them,
and I like that.
I think that's what Albion hasto it.
I like that.
Gives it some depth to theflavor, not just sweet.
If you're going to dipstrawberries in chocolate, you

(26:42):
don't really want to competewith the chocolate, so the tart
is very helpful.
So anyway, it depends on whatyou're doing with the
strawberries and I think mostpeople that I've shared Albion
with are just amazed.
I remember the first year.
So Albion was the number onevariety in California about 15

(27:03):
years ago and it's since fallenout of favor because it doesn't
yield as well as the newervarieties.
But if I share that varietywith anybody they are amazed at
its flavor.
And the first year that westarted our center here at Cal
Poly we grew Albion and we wereable to sell that on campus and

(27:27):
to a local grocery store andmany people thought that we were
the most amazing researchcenter because we had basically
solved the problem, becausethey'd never tasted better
strawberries and I, as much as Iappreciated the compliment, I
had to inform them that it wasall about the variety and that

(27:47):
that variety was actually about15 years old.

At your center.
You also do disease researchright.
You do a lot of differentthings.

Yeah, we have the Strawberry Center.
Let me just tell you a littlebit about that.
We started in 2014.
It's a partnership between theCalifornia Strawberry Commission
and Cal Poly, san Luis Obispo.
The long name is the CaliforniaPolytechnic State University,
but it's affectionately known asCal Poly and the partnership

(28:20):
between.
So the Strawberry Commission isthe organization that
represents all the growers,processors and shippers of
strawberries in California, andthey wanted to partner with Cal
Poly because many of the peoplewho work in the ag world here in
California are graduates of CalPoly.
We have a large college ofagriculture over 4,000 students,

(28:43):
nine departments and so manypeople were very familiar.
And then our location is rightin the middle of Strawberry
Country.
We're about equidistant betweenthe two northern and southern
districts Watsonville, salinas,and then, south of us, oxnard,
and then we're about 30 milesnorth of Santa Maria.
So we're very, very centrallylocated to the industry.

(29:08):
And we started just in pathology.
That was my background as apathologist and there were two
pathologists.
We got started and we weredoing nothing but pathology
research.
We started a diagnostic clinic.
We started doing research onsoil-borne pathogens and we
found that the fields here wereinfested with verticillium.

(29:29):
So we started screeninggenotypes for resistance to
verticillium.
That emphasis on pathologyquickly grew to include
automation.
Because of the importance oflabor in this industry, we
started an automation programand hired Dr John Lin, an

(29:49):
engineer out of Maryland who wasactually working on an
automated decapping machine forthe processing industry.
He joined the StrawberryCommission but works at Cal Poly
on automation projects, andthey have a really thriving
program now, and then, shortlyafter that, we added entomology.

(30:09):
So our three areas of focus arepathology, entomology and
automation, and we have probablyanywhere from six to 10
projects ongoing in each ofthose areas at all times.

On the topic of automation, I've been seeing
some provocative news articlessuggesting that robotic
harvesting is going to solve allof these issues regarding labor
shortage and cost of harvesting, et cetera.
Do you think this type ofautomation is on the horizon?

You know, it's normal for people to be
really optimistic about it,because automation has done a
lot of great things.
We've seen in agriculture justtremendous advances and I've had
a lot of fun watching theautomation improve over the
years that I've been involved instrawberries since 2014.
It's been really impressive.

(31:03):
There's more than a dozencompanies in this space trying
to perfect it.
They're working on an endeffector or a hand that mimics
the human hand that can be verydelicate in finding and picking
the strawberry.
Cameras and artificialintelligence that sees the

(31:25):
strawberries and can identifythe ripe ones, but no camera, no
matter how technologicallyadvanced, can see it when it's
hidden, and no camera can findout what the color of the
strawberry on the underside is.
It's very, very difficult, soit's a very challenging thing to
do.

(31:46):
We have really made a lot ofadvances.
There are strawberry roboticharvesters out there today in
California harvesting fruit,packing it and selling it, but
the caveat is they're not doingit yet at a level that would
justify its commercial,widespread use.

(32:07):
It's not fast enough yet.
It's not finding enough of thefruit.
It's finding too many fruitthat it shouldn't find.
It's not finding enough of thefruit that it should find, and
so it works best on early seasoncrop, when the plants are small
and the fruit are large andthey're more visible.

(32:30):
That may be the place, and evenif we can develop robots for
that portion of the season, it'sstill a tremendous advance, and
so we keep working on it.
We're not there yet, but Idon't know if we'll ever get
there.
I'm not going to predict thefuture on that one and it's
really interesting to see justthese engineers are amazing what

(32:53):
they are coming up with andthings that you wouldn't think
they're capable of doing, likepicking a strawberry, as
delicate as that is, withoutbruising it.
I think how could a robot dothat?
But it's amazing what they'vebeen able to do.

Yeah, something I really have admired about you
is how optimistic you are, andmy research is in strawberry and
so I'm familiar with a lot ofthe challenges and it seems like
there are a lot of reasons tonot be optimistic about the
costs and the challenges ofstrawberry production, but how

(33:27):
excited you are about the futureis very validating.
So what, yeah, what are youexcited about right now In
strawberry research or instrawberry production?

Well, automation is one of those
things and it doesn't have to berobotic harvesting.
It could be some other part ofthe process of farming
strawberries that we're able todo and do better with machines.
Our group just developed a holepunch which punches or burns
holes in the plastic using animplement drawn behind a tractor

(34:02):
, and it's able to do the workof ten people.
That's a really, reallyimpressive.
If we can develop runnercutters, that's going to save
time and energy.
We developed another hole holepunch that just makes the hole
that is already punched with akind of a slicing mechanism.
It makes it a little bit widerso that during stand

(34:24):
establishment more water gets in.
So that's helping.
It's not necessarily it doesreduce some labor, but it's also
helping water ingress and standestablishment.
So that's a tremendous advance.
And I see a lot of excitingthings happening in breeding and
I'm really excited aboutbreeding for disease resistance.

(34:45):
I think we've been able to seethat in places where we thought
there wasn't as much optimismabout controlling soil-borne
pathogens and the diseases theycause through genetics, I think
we're finding that there's a lotmore that we can do than we
thought previously, and sothere's been a lot of advances
made with macrophomena fusariumwilt.

(35:08):
They just identified the genesresponsible for that resistance.
That's really exciting.
So there's a lot of things tobe optimistic about.
I think our industry as a whole.
We have very innovative farmersand they're really cutting-edge
thinkers and they are not slowto adopt to new technologies.

(35:31):
They're always looking for newways of doing things and they're
not waiting for the universityto show them either.
In some ways they need our help, but in other ways they just go
out and do it and then we findout later that they've developed
this really new, interestingpractice that's solving problems
.
For example, in macrophomena.
That's a very opportunisticpathogen, meaning that it gets

(35:55):
in and attacks plants that arecompromised in some way, and the
compromise usually occurs interms of drought, stress and
heat.
And another thing that probablycontributes to it is salt
stress.
So if you have salt stress andyou have drought stress and you

(36:15):
have high temperatures and thosethings tend to go together, you
get a lot more macrophomena.
And we're starting to tease outwhat are the individual
contributors to that and we'refinding that if you relieve the
physiological stresses on theplant, that it'll do much better
against that disease, to thetune of 50 to 70% reduction in

(36:40):
disease, so that's reallyimpressive.
If we got that with a chemical,we'd be really that chemical
would be making millions ofdollars.

Wow, yeah, that's so cool.
I mean, a lot of our topicsbesides, I guess, variety choice
have been also on conventionalagriculture for strawberries.
But what are your thoughts onorganic farming?
Do you think it's actuallybetter, like a lot of people
believe out there?

Hmm, that's another one that I.
It's a conversation that I getfrequently with friends.
Most of my friends are not inthe agricultural world.
They're people that have, likemost of us, we interact with
other people outside ofagriculture and they don't know
anything about how crops aregrown, and they will often ask

(37:29):
me about organics and if it'sbetter or worse or the same or
more.
What I find is that peopledon't really understand what it
is and they falsely attributeflavor or quality that they're
experiencing to a label likeorganic.
So you have to again.
We talked earlier about flavor.

(37:49):
What are the two things thatmake up mostly we can attribute
strawberry flavor to?
One is the variety and two ishow long it was on the plant.
Does any of the either one ofthose things have anything to do
with organic?
No, but oftentimes an organicstrawberry may be sold at a
roadside stand, and so theperson will attribute the flavor

(38:14):
they're getting to the factthat they're organic rather than
the fact that they got pickedthat day or that they're growing
a variety with superior flavor.
So that's what I see as a kindof problem with false
attribution.
So I don't.
We grow about.
Let's see, california has about12 to 13% of our acreage is
grown organically.
The same strawberry farmers thatdo conventional farming also do

(38:36):
organic farming.
They have certain fields,certain locations that they
think are better for theirorganic production.
They have to do it in a verydifferent way.
Sometimes one of the biggestchallenges with organic farming
in strawberries is gettingenough nitrogen to the plants.
So conventional farming can usehighly concentrated nitrogen

(39:01):
fertilizers.
Organic production has to usenatural fertilizers that have
very much lower concentration ofnitrogen, so it's harder to
give the plants all the naturalfertilizers that they have.
So you give the plants all thenitrogen for maximum production,

(39:22):
so yields go down.
That's one of the reasons whyorganic costs more is because
you don't produce as much fruitfrom an acre of strawberries
with organic production, and oneof the reasons why is because
of nitrogen fertilization, andso sometimes when you stress the
plants for nitrogen, you get amore flavorful strawberry.

(39:44):
That is also one of the thingsthat might contribute to it.
So it's kind of an interactivefact, right, but I wouldn't say
that overall you get a differentflavor of strawberry from
organic farms versusconventional farms.
So I try to, without saying youshouldn't do that, or you should

(40:07):
do that.
That's the way to go, or youdon't want to poison your
children, don't buy yourconventional.
You know it's a choice.
People have their preferences.
I just want them to be rationalabout and realize too.
Something that people don'trealize is that organic any
organically grown crop issprayed with pesticides.

(40:31):
They're just not the samepesticides that can be used in
conventional farms.
Sometimes the same products areused in both conventional and
organic strawberry production.
Sulfur, for example, issomething that gets a lot of use
, and that's okay inconventional and organic

(40:52):
strawberries.
Probably about 60% of thepractices that are used for
strawberry production inconventional fields are also
used in organic fields.
So people don't realize that.
They think that it's likeanother world.
You went into the forest whereno human has ever been and you
picked these berries in apristine form.

(41:13):
This isn't what happens.
They're farming strawberries ina very modern way and they're
just having to use differentproducts to protect their
investment.
Farming is very risky business,so you want to protect that
investment and organic farmerswant to protect it, just like
conventional farmers.
They are the same people, sothey're going to use whatever

(41:38):
they can that they feel iseffective from protecting it
from pests and diseases.

Maybe the discussion isn't so much about
organic but large-scale orsmall-scale producers and what
they can manage and what typesof practices and how long it's
sitting on the plant.

But I guess it's hard to label for all of
those little things when they'regoing to get shipped and, if
they're going to get shipped,who their customer is.
All those things play into it,yeah.

Yeah, there's so much complexity.
That's really been.
One of the things that struckme about this conversation is
the nitrogen, like you mentioned, and the disease resistance and
the post-harvest quality andhow long it takes to get to the
store and then to get to thedinner table.
So, in the view of all of thiscomplexity and this huge

(42:28):
industry, what would you say arethe big takeaways about
strawberry production?

I would say, when I look at the big picture,
I'm just so impressed with, likeyou say, the complexity of it
and that we make it happen yearafter year after year, with few
hiccups, relatively few.
This year we had the torrentialrains, we had more rain than
we've had in 25, 30 years and welost about 1200 acres of

(43:04):
strawberries just to flooding,damage, rivers that overflowed
their banks and rain thatdestroyed the crop.
And we still are managing topull off a pretty successful
year.
And actually the thing thatthat most people don't know at
all is that More of a setbackfor us this year was the

(43:27):
temperature, not the rain.
We've had a very cool year andit remains cool to this day.
We're here and already we'refirst second week of June and
we're still having weather thatfeels very early springish, and
so this has delayed yieldspretty dramatically in the state
.
So volume is way down than ithas normally and we're still

(43:51):
managing.
It will have its impact, but Igo into the supermarket and I
see this cornucopia of producefrom all over the world and I
think it's a modern miracle andwe've been doing it for a very
long time.
It's just so impressive that wecan have these things at our
disposal any day of the week,walk into a store and see that I

(44:13):
find that so impressive.
And then, when you see whatactually goes into it, when you
see the fields and you seepeople working and packing these
things and forklifts loadingthem onto trucks and trucks
driving to coolers and thencoolers cooling the product and
the product getting on anothertransportation device a truck or

(44:33):
a plane or a rail car andthey're getting shipped all over
the world, and somehow we walkinto the grocery store and
everything is there and thispristine, colorful, for the most
part amazing array of varietyand we have access to it at
really inexpensive prices, atlow I would say amazingly low

(44:54):
prices.
And I look at that and I justthink, wow, how did we do that?
That's really, and I know and Ireally if I look at every one
of those, there's things abouteach one of those commodities I
don't know.
I've worked on quite a fewcommodities in my career and so
I know enough about enough ofthe commodities to know what a
miracle it is that it occurs.

(45:15):
And then, working with farmers,I just really these are great
people.
Sometimes farmers and farmingget a bad rap.
There's like these are thepeople that are destroying the
planet or abusing workers.
This is not what's happening.
These are people who care abouttheir workers, who care about

(45:37):
the planet and the environmentand are very, very grounded in
reality, because they understandthe law of the harvest, and
that is that you reap what yousow and so you don't get.
They got a really good BS meterfarmers.
You don't trick them veryeasily about things.
You know there's no shortcutsin farming.

(45:58):
You can't plant your crop amonth later than normal and
expect to harvest at the sametime.
So you're going to pay theprice If you're late on your
planting, if you're late on yourpest control, if you didn't
prepare the field properly,you're probably going to pay the
price for doing that.
So there are consequences foryour actions.
That's an important thing tolive by, and I find that that's

(46:22):
maybe something I really enjoyabout working with farmers is
those kind of people.

Yeah, I totally agree, farmers are the biggest
skeptics, and reasonably so,with what they have to deal with
.
But before we conclude theepisode, I do want to ask a bit
of a personal question.
I know in your backgroundyou've hopped around between
industry and academia, and Iknow there's this idea out there
that it can be really hard todo so I mean, did you have any

(46:50):
challenges between enteringindustry when being in academia
previously, or vice versa?

Yeah, great question One I've thought a lot
about, and I think the fact thatI have worked in industry and
in academia is really whatprepared me for what I'm doing
now, which is really interestingblend of both of those things,
because I have to be steeped inresearch, I have to be steeped

(47:18):
in cooperative extension and Ihave to be steeped in industry.
Those three things are thingsthat I've done.
Not too many people do that.
They go back and forth.
I had a really nice position atNorth Carolina State University.
I was pretty close to being afull professor when I had an

(47:42):
offer from private industry andI decided to leave because I
felt like I had done the thingsthat I wanted to do in academia
and I felt like the rest of mycareer was.
Although there wasn't anythingvery negative about it, I felt
like I needed a new challengeand so I went into private

(48:05):
industry.
I had worked with privateindustry for all of my career
but I had never been in privateindustry.
I thought that that looked likean interesting place to be and
a place that I could excel in,and I spent six years doing
product development forfungicides and I decided that I
didn't want to do that the restof my career.

(48:27):
I started looking for otheropportunities and I found this
one and I thought that its jobdescription fit my background
very nicely.
It's been a really great thingto do.
I've been here nine years now,almost as long as I was a
professor at NC State, and I'llprobably finish my career here.

(48:51):
It's been really fun to buildsomething.
It's different, right, youbuild a program in an academic
institution and this is anacademic institution.
However, I'm building this newconcept and it's been fun to
build it.
It's been fun to work a lotmore with undergraduate students
and to work really closely withindustry.

(49:13):
I'd always worked with industry, like I said, and also, in
cooperative extension, workedwith a lot of commodity boards,
but I'm working with thiscommodity board much closer than
I ever had before.
It's brought new insights.
I enjoy that mixture and Ithink the things I've done have

(49:33):
prepared me for it.
When you look back, you think,oh, it looks very, very normal
course of progression, butbelieve me, every fork in the
road was a very, very laboriousdecision and heart-wrenching.
It's not easy to navigate lifeand your career, but so far it's

(49:56):
worked out well for me.

Well, I don't know about Lara, but that's very
reassuring for me.
Thank you, Dr Holmes, and thankyou for this interview.
This has been fantastic Tolearn more about the Strawberry
Center at Cal Poly.
Please visitstrawberrycalpolyedu or visit

(50:22):
the Strawberry Center onFacebook.
To learn more about thestrawberry industry, you should
check out the related papertitled the Status and Future of
the Strawberry Industry in theUnited States, which is
published by Hort Technology,which is one of the open-source
peer-reviewed journals publishedby the American Society for
Horticultural Science.
Links to these articles will beprovided in the show notes.

If you'd like more information about the
American Society forHorticultural Science in general
, you can go to ashsorg Sam.
If people want to follow yourwork, what's the best way?

They can find me on LinkedIn at Samson Humphrey
Lara.
What about you?

You can follow me on Instagram, at theplantphd,
or on LinkedIn with the tagLaraBrendisi, and I just want to
say it's been a blast being aco-host for this podcast.
Thank you so much for being awonderful audience and hopefully
you'll hear from me again soon.
Ashs podcasts are made possibleby member-dos and volunteerism.

(51:24):
Please go to ashsorg to learnmore.
If you are not already a memberof ASHS, we invite you to join
us.
Ashs is a not-for-profit andyour donations are tax
deductible.
This episode was hosted by SamHumphrey and Lara Berdisi,
thanks to our audio engineer,alex Fraser, our research team,
lena Wilson and Andrew Pumax,our ASHS support team, sarah

(51:48):
Powell and Sally Murphy, and ourmusician, john Clark.

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The Sweet and the Not-so-Sweet of the U.S. Strawberry Industry - A Discussion with Dr. Gerald Holmes

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Sweet and the Not-so-Sweet of the U.S. Strawberry Industry - A Discussion with Dr. Gerald Holmes