Source: Amy Rossi, NCSU, 5/3/21


When you buy strawberries in the grocery store, what you taste is the top 1% of the product.

Gina Fernandez tastes the rest.

What is she looking for? “Flavors, sugars, texture — it’s a lot of different traits that make a berry taste good, and I evaluate hundreds of berries each year for those traits,” she said. 

She and her team have started screening breeding material for a couple of genetic markers to make the job easier. For instance, one genetic marker indicates more of a grape flavor, for instance, while another yields a peachier taste. They will be able to eliminate plants that don’t have those flavors before tasting begins.

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