A new collaboration with strawberry industry leaders hopes to improve strawberry breeding, according to a news release from Ohalo, a plant breeding genetics company.
The Ohalo Strawberry Consortium seeks to create better-tasting strawberry varieties offered as true seed, which will broaden the availability of the varieties and expand the strawberry market, the company said.
“We are thrilled to partner with these leading strawberry growers, packers and marketers to bring more flavorful, sustainable, and economically valuable strawberry varieties to market as true seed in the years ahead,” Ohalo CEO Dave Friedberg said in the release. “With these partners, we can more quickly realize our vision of transforming the strawberry industry, benefiting farmers, retailers, consumers and the planet.”
While nurseries propagate traditional strawberry plants in nurseries for growers to plant runner shoots, this process can take several years to complete, but Ohalo said its proprietary breeding system eliminates the need for vegetative propagation by producing uniform strawberry seed.
Phil Stewart, known as “Dr. Strawberry,” will lead the breeding for the consortium, joining Ohalo after more than 17 years at Driscoll’s, most recently leading strawberry breeding, the release said.
Ohalo said its proprietary non-GMO hybrid breeding process reliably improves varieties with each generation.
“For years, consumers have been begging for strawberries with more flavor all year long; retailers have been seeking more consistent fruit quality and better shelf life; and farmers have been struggling to maintain higher yields while dealing with disease pressure, mounting production costs, and labor shortages,” Stewart said. “These competing priorities have forced trade-offs, reducing flavor, shelf life or yield to benefit other stakeholders. With our hybrid breeding system, we will quickly deliver radically improved strawberry varieties that offer better outcomes for the entire value chain.”
Ohalo said the consortium expects its first varieties to undergo field trials next year, with commercial availability after that. The strawberry consortium will make its varieties broadly available, the release said.
The company said industry leaders joining as consortium partners include BlazerWilkinsonGee, California Giant Berry Farms, Central West Produce, Crown Nursery, Naturipe Berry Growers, Wish Farms and others, which have committed substantial resources to support this effort.
“Partnering with Ohalo made perfect sense,” said Wish Farms owern Gary Wishnatzki. “As an innovation leader, we were thrilled to join forces with Ohalo and like-minded strawberry businesses to help accelerate change in the industry.”
