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A. Patented Varieties
Plant Sciences, Inc. (see our Links page for link to Plant Sciences) has become world reknown in the area of strawberry
plant breeding and research. Since its inception in 1985, PSI has toiled to
breed superior strawberry varieties that produce greater yields of nicely
shaped, tasty fruit. Only patented strawberry plant varieties from the PSI program are raised at Manzanita Berry Farms.
The dream of biotech engineering has not made inroads
in the strawberry industry, yet. The breeding, therefore, relies on the classic
tedious, time consuming traditional breeding method of crossing parent
plants in search of seedlings that exhibit superior qualities.
The University of California has one of the most extensive strawberry
breeding programs in the world. Many of the best-known strawberries were
developed in the UC program - "Chandler, Douglas, Selva and Camarosa" for
example. Plant Sciences, Inc. (PSI), a private organization, breeds
strawberries exclusively for Well-Pict's growers and has a program that
rivals that of the University of California.
At present, Manzanita Berry Farms raises only PSI variety No.592 (at right). It is a
large, well shaped, tasty fruit, somewhat salmon-pink in color when ripe, that begins
producing ripe fruit around mid-March in Santa Maria, some 3 weeks later that
the Camarosa variety that dominates the berry landscape in California.
B. Variety Testing
 Before we can plant one of the new varieties into our commercial fields, the
plants must be thoroughly tested. Each new promising seedling undergoes
3-5 years of examination in test plots under field conditions to gain
knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses. Once it has been proven viable
for commercial planting, the plants must be reproduced in massive
quantities, 30,000 plants per acre, in order to fill the commercial fields.
C. Nursery Production
Commercial strawberry plants are reproduced asexually. That is, each plant
of any variety is essentially a clone, a vegetative cutting, of another plant of
the same variety. Cuttings are made by burying the vegetative shoots, called
runners, while they are still attached to the mother plant during the spring.
Later in the year, the runners produce roots of their own beneath the surface
(becoming a "daughter" plant) and are cut free from the mother plant.
Therefore, every plant of one variety, Camarosa for example, is a vegetative
derivative of that one original seedling that was selected for advancement in
the breeding program years before.
The continual growing and cutting of plants from previous ones is the job of
the commercial strawberry nursery. Each year, daughter plants are dug from
the ground in the fall, cleaned of soil and debris, trimmed by hand and
packed into boxes for cooling and shipping to the commercial planting
fields. At that time, a certain number of daughters must be held over to
replant the nursery for next year's commercial plant harvest.
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