MSU researchers are trying to fill fields and grocery stores with strawberries - even when the red fruit is out of season.
Researchers are investigating the possibility of cross-breeding wild strawberries with conventional short-day breeds to produce a new variety of strawberry that can produce fruit throughout the growing season.
Instead of the usual short growing season consisting solely of the beginning of summer, these strawberries would produce fruit from spring through fall.
The primary trait researchers are hoping to adapt into the strawberries is a resistance to a particular fungus that causes a condition called black root rot. Most affected plants die before harvesting, or produce a stunted crop of small berries.
For the last 10 years, MSU horticulture professor Jim Hancock worked on the project with Cornell University and the Agricultural Research Service of the Department of Agriculture.
“We’re making positive progress on developing a really good, ever-bearing strawberry from Michigan,” Hancock said.
Genetics graduate student Cholani Weebadde said she is excited to be involved with the research.
“It’s kind of challenging,” she said. “It’s a great thing if you can really find things.”
Researchers are looking for further plant breeding techniques during their study to aid others in future projects as well.
“It’s going to be really useful for the future,” Weebadde said.
The bolstered strawberries stand to save growers a substantial amount of money in spraying costs. Some growers spend more than $1,000 per acre to protect their crops from soil pathogens and the fungus that cause black root rot.
David Daisy, owner of Daisy Farms in Dowagiac, is one such grower who hopes to see the tougher breed of strawberry available to grow.
“I don’t know if it’d decrease my cost, but it’d sure help my customers out some,” Daisy said.
For Daisy, spraying costs about $400 an acre. His four-year rotation between strawberries and other crops helps to keep the cost down.
His family-owned farm eventually stopped growing and selling strawberries for 10 years before trying it again in different soil, which worked better, he said.
“We used to raise strawberry plants on my dad’s farm and it didn’t matter what we did,” Daisy said.
These new strawberries could help to bring down the cost of the fruit for consumers as well.
Aaron Danville, a produce department representative for the People’s Food Co-op in Ann Arbor, sells only organic food.
The strawberries in the research project would create a whole new supply of strawberries for the co-op and other stores like it, Danville said.
“We could sell more strawberries because they’d be in season longer,” he said.
“We don’t get a lot of strawberries. We usually get them from California. The organic farmers that are local usually don’t grow strawberries. They settle for what they can make money on.
“They can’t make money on strawberries.”
Staff writer Megan Frye contributed to this report.
