Transcript
ALEXA: When I turned a year old, my parents threw me a big birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. They invited lots of people and ordered pizza obviously cake.
AMY: Hey, did you know that Chuck-E-Cheese was co-founded by the guy who created the Atari gaming system, like Pong?
ALEXA: I- [laughs] I did not. But that actually makes a lot of sense since Chuck-E-Cheese is an animatronic. But anyways, we're getting off topic- all I wanted to do that day was eat strawberries. In photos from that day, I鈥檓 covered in strawberries. And a few years later, I requested a strawberry pinata for another birthday party. I鈥檝e always been super obsessed with strawberries. It鈥檚 almost like your obsession with carrots, Amy.
AMY: Baby-CUT carrots. There's a difference!
ALEXA: Anyways, most of the thousands of strawberries I鈥檝e eaten throughout my life probably came from 嘿嘿视频. Our strawberry breeding program has been researching and innovating my favorite fruit for nearly 70 years now.
AMY: And the U.S. is the world鈥檚 largest producer of strawberries. Almost 90 percent of those
strawberries are grown here in California and 60 percent of the state鈥檚 strawberries are
varieties developed here at 嘿嘿视频. And these are just facts that I happened to have memorized.
ALEXA: Of course you do! Not only is 嘿嘿视频 continuing to create better strawberries, like the five varieties released over the summer, but the university is also now working on flavor breeding.
AMY: Flavor Breeding. Hmm, bet it鈥檚 time for a Bonus Bite?
[BONUS BITE MUSIC]
ALEXA: You know it. I鈥檓 Alexa Renee.
AMY: And I鈥檓 Amy Quinton.
ALEXA: And in this episode, we鈥檙e going to talk about flavor breeding and what that could mean for my favorite fruit.
AMY: Ok Alexa, let鈥檚 start with the basics. What is flavor breeding?
ALEXA: It鈥檚 exactly what it sounds like. Plant breeders take a crop- in this case the strawberry,
and identify the traits that make it taste good. They鈥檒l cross the plant through generations, over and over again, each time emphasizing the characteristics they want to stand out. Eventually, the result is a more delicious fruit.
AMY: So it鈥檚 really similar or the same to breeding for pest and disease resistance or for longer shelf-life or higher yields.
ALEXA: Yes. But the problem is, because scientists have been so focused on breeding for the
traits you just named off, along the way flavor was kind of neglected. And Steve Knapp- the
director of the 嘿嘿视频 strawberry breeding program- realized this.
STEVE: I'm asked about flavor almost everywhere I go. It was one of the striking things
when i was trying to just absorb what had been done and what we need to do in the future and whether it was a consumer at home, growers, shippers, colleagues, everybody would ask me what happened to strawberry flavor?
AMY: Steve explains that really, nothing has happened to strawberry flavor.
ALEXA: Those strawberries you grow in your home garden or those that you might find from a small producer-they鈥檙e packed with flavor.
AMY: But not those you find in the grocery store that dominate the marketplace.
ALEXA: That鈥檚 because commercial strawberries are mainly bred to produce high yields with a longer shelf-life.
STEVE: It's a tricky process because you can't get something for nothing, right? The reason they store and ship is that they鈥檙e extremely firm, and they don鈥檛 ripen the same as the home garden strawberry.
ALEXA: So Steve is hoping to find the sweet spot. He鈥檚 put together a team of experts across
disciplines to collaborate on achieving a strawberry that鈥檚 both delicious and marketable.
AMY: The team includes geneticists, sensory scientists, post-harvest researchers and growers.
ALEXA: And consumers?
STEVE: That is the really underlying driver behind the flavor initiative is that, we can already mass produce the fruit well- all that system in place. The consumer and retail side is increasing in their sophistication and demands. And so we鈥檙e going to try to find some balance between the mass production traits- you know the high yield and flavor. And that's really the crux of the project.
ALEXA: To give consumers what they want, scientists have to take a close look at flavor itself. Which is where Florence Zakharov can be very helpful. She鈥檚 a flavor expert in the
Department of Plant Sciences. Her team focuses on melons but their overall work in
understanding the flavor trait on a molecular level is important to flavor breeders of any crop.
FLORENCE: Flavor is a really complicated trait in plants鈥
AMY: Because it involves so many different aspects like texture, color, taste and aroma.
FLORENCE: We're studying how flavor gets produced in plants with a special emphasis on volatile compounds. These are very small molecules that are present say, in your perfumes or any smell that you experience is made up of these small molecules called volatile compounds. And they can be made by plants. And we study how plants make these things so we look at genes that are involved in the process of making these compounds- when they make them and perhaps why they make them.
ALEXA: Machines measure these volatile compounds. But because taste can be so subjective,
researchers also turn to sensory experts or consumer focus groups.
FLORENCE: This cross-referencing of the instrument measurement and the sensory human perception of flavor- those two things come together in this relatively new science called chemometrics. Chemometrics looks at objective ways of measuring flavor. How can we relate those objective flavor measurements to a rather subjective perception of flavor from a human standpoint?
AMY: Ok, so we know what flavor breeding is and how it鈥檚 done.
ALEXA: Yeah.
AMY: We know how flavor components are identified.
ALEXA: Mmm hmm.
AMY: And we know how flavor is measured.
ALEXA: Yes.
AMY: And we know we鈥檙e working on flavor breeding with the strawberry. So when are we
going to see these better tasting berries in stores?
ALEXA: Well, the challenges of this project go beyond plant breeding. Steve says it鈥檚 difficult to produce more flavorful strawberries because most commercial nurseries are set up to grow strawberry varieties for the industry- where the demand is huge.
STEVE: The specific problem that we've been challenged with is finding a nursery grower that can deal with small volumes.
AMY: Steve said most strawberry nurseries in the state simply don鈥檛 have their equipment set
up for small production.
STEVE: We just need somebody that is working on a smaller scale that wants to farm on a smaller scale that has greenhouse facilities and land and wants to jump into this. So we're looking right now. We're trying to find partners and we're talking to folks that work in a more local agricultural way. And hopefully we'll find somebody that is innovative on nursery site to help drive that.
ALEXA: And even them on a smaller, local level will take the right economic incentive.
STEVE: It's really a matter of pairing the producers with the direct consumers- whether the restaurants or Farmers Markets- and those folks often need to have a premium for their product because they're not mass produced. To me it's partly an economic question. You know, who can afford that more expensive fruit? It's just a question of their input costs and pricing.
ALEXA: Breeding for flavor is still a relatively new concept. Florence called it the "last frontier" in plant breeding.
AMY: Yeah, there are other plant breeders across the country working on developing better
tasting crops.
ALEXA: But the 鈥渟eed-to-fork鈥 movement is still in its beginning stages. Products are still limited to specialty restaurants or small tastings.
AMY: But hopefully with 嘿嘿视频鈥 help, a more flavorful strawberry will find its way to
consumers soon.
ALEXA: Thanks for listening.
[BONUS BITE MUSIC]