\n<\/p>\n
“The breeding effort is all about taking two good parents and crossing them. That is conventionally done by transferring the pollen of one onto another. Then selecting [the best] from the progeny,” says Ms Regan.<\/p>\n
But, as in much of the agriculture sector, advances in gene science have given producers new ways of improving their produce.<\/p>\n
So Ms Regan, uses genetic markers which can speed up the search for improved varieties.<\/p>\n
Genomic informed breeding, she emphasises, is not gene editing or genetic modification but rather looking at the genetic traits of strawberry varieties in order to pick the best ones from which to breed. <\/p>\n
Such techniques were given a boost four years ago when scientists mapped the cultivated strawberry genome, external<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, breeders are using this knowledge to grow strawberries with new and improved flavours – even a savoury strawberry, external<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n The knowledge might reverse a trend in recent decades where retailers have prized shape, size and uniformity of fruit and vegetables and neglected flavour. <\/p>\n Heather Smyth, an expert in sensory evaluation and flavour chemistry at the University of Queensland, says the food industry has been very good at identifying the smells that attract us. <\/p>\n “In the food industry, we extract those flavours or make synthetic versions of strawberry or raspberry and stick it into sugary tubes and lollies – tricking our brains into believing it’s good for us.”<\/p>\n But the focus has been different for fruit and vegetables.<\/p>\n “Flavour has been ignored over shape, size and uniformity – while junk food is being pumped up with artificial flavours to mimic what we should be loving. It’s wrong.”<\/p>\n Both increased yield, external<\/span><\/a> and the use of fungicides, external<\/span><\/a> have also been linked to a decline in strawberry flavour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n