Kirk Larson can describe the scene perfectly: it’s nearly
5 p.m. and the workers have gone home.
The sun is setting on a long day of labor in the strawberry
fields of Irvine and in the distance, Larson can make out his two
teenage sons traversing the horizon on horseback.
Larson, a pomologist specializing in strawberry production for
UC Davis, spends his days hunched over in the fields picking and
eating thousands of strawberries and talking one-on-one with those
who grow the agriculture industry’s second most lucrative
crop.
As a key member of the University of California’s
strawberry licensing program ““ responsible for developing
over half of the strawberry varieties eaten worldwide and 80
percent in North America ““ Larson is responsible for seeking
out the tastiest, shapeliest and most tenacious berry varieties he
can get his hands on.
He says that sometimes the calm of the field overtakes him.
“You can sink,” said Larson, whose resume spans 34
years in the fruit fields of Latin America, Florida and California.
“The phone’s not ringing. The e-mail’s not
telling you got to do this and that.”
Though the UC is not necessarily known outside of agricultural
circles for having a major role in the strawberry industry, the
impact of the UC strawberry-licensing program has been vast ““
touching and often transforming agricultural communities
worldwide.
Nearly 30 years ago, strawberry varieties developed by the UC
reached rural communities, known for their poverty, in the south of
Spain. Before a group of California researchers remodeled their way
of life, the locals mostly got by with their fishing poles.
“Now it’s the second most important strawberry
production region in the world and you wouldn’t believe it
but the people are driving very nice cars,” Larson said.
“You know, people don’t fish that much anymore. They
grow strawberries.”
Economic boosts in third-world areas as a result of UC
strawberries are not uncommon, Larson said. The results of better
strawberries, however, are also felt at home, as over 80 percent of
the strawberries grown in California are UC-developed, providing
the state’s economy with a considerable contribution every
year.
“The UC’s breeding program has probably taken the
value of the California strawberry industry from maybe one or two
hundred million dollars a year to about a billion dollars a
year,” said William Tucker, the interim executive director at
the UC Office of Technology Transfer.
Given the strict environmental regulations on California
agriculture, growers based in the Golden State are especially
dependent on the development of strawberry cultivars, or varieties,
that can thrive on limited resources.
“If you’ve got a healthy agricultural economy,
we’ll farm more efficiently, we’ll use less water and
pesticides, and we’ll have better fruit,” Larson
said.
Progress in the strawberry fields is slow, however, and a
commercially viable cultivar can take researchers up to a decade to
tweak into berry perfection.
Larson often spends six days a week and more than 10 hours a day
out in the fields, taste-testing berries off of thousands of
plants. Through the course of any given berry season, Larson will
narrow pools of thousands of strawberry variations to a few hundred
in the hopes of discovering the industry’s next big
thing.
“You walk the same fields and see the same things every
day, but it’s so exciting because in the future, maybe one of
those seedlings is going to keep a grower in business,”
Larson said.
The road to the perfect strawberry can often be a tricky one, as
researchers must balance several preferred berry qualities.
“Berries have to be commercially viable, they’ve got
to be able to be shipped to the east coast and a lot of times, when
you breed the shipability in, you breed the sweetness out,”
said Stephen Albaugh of Crown Nursery, which is licensed by the
UC.
Larson believes that the best way he can develop better berries
is constant contact with the growers, listening to their problems
and sharing his expertise.
“If I don’t interact with the growers, there’s
going to be a day when I’m not going to be on target with the
work I’m doing,” said Larson hoarsely, still suffering
from jet lag after a recent trip to China to give talks to the
nation’s growers. “I have to understand their
reality.”
Larson depends on the growers for more than honing his berry
savvy. Because the UC does not provide Larson with grants, the
researcher depends on growers to fund his work, which can total
about $130,000 every year.
“The growers are rather critical and sometimes they expect
a little too much but it keeps us on our toes,” Larson
said.
The grower-researcher relationship is key in the development
process, as new varieties developed by the UC are given their first
exposure to real growing conditions on designated plots of grower
property.
If the berry varieties can survive the first round of
eliminations, they are licensed to nurseries that are responsible
for selling the most commercially viable berry varieties to
growers.
A cut of every sale is funneled back to the UC.
As for the strawberries on Larson’s plots, not all are
used strictly for research.
“I take strawberries home everyday. For me and my family,
we like to eat them straight out of the box,” Larson
said.