More than half of U.S. kids pick
strawberries as their favorite fruit. No wonder. The fruit is pretty to our
eyes, sweet to our taste, and juicy in our mouths.
Wild strawberries grow on every continent except Africa and Australia/New Zealand. But you wouldn't want to eat some of them. Often, they are really small and tasteless. Some aren't even red.
So how did the strawberries you buy at the store or from roadside stands get to be SOOOOO delicious?
The great-great-great-great grandparents of today's strawberry come from two different continents—North America and South America. And they accidentally met and started producing a new type of strawberry on a third continent—Europe. This happened about 250 years ago, probably in a botanical garden in France.
Wild strawberries grow on every continent except Africa and Australia/New Zealand. But you wouldn't want to eat some of them. Often, they are really small and tasteless. Some aren't even red.
So how did the strawberries you buy at the store or from roadside stands get to be SOOOOO delicious?
The great-great-great-great grandparents of today's strawberry come from two different continents—North America and South America. And they accidentally met and started producing a new type of strawberry on a third continent—Europe. This happened about 250 years ago, probably in a botanical garden in France.
In the 1500s, explorers brought one
of the grandparents back to France from Virginia. This Virginia genotype got
their attention because it had larger fruit and a deeper red color than the
European strawberries of that time. And it produced more berries.
But it had to wait nearly 200 years for the other grandparent to arrive from South America.
In the early 1700s, a French spy spotted this strawberry genotype in Chile while he was making maps of Spanish forts. Plants of this genotype produced really big berries—larger than the spy had ever seen—so he brought a bunch of them back to France.
Trouble is, they didn't reproduce in France. Not until scientists called horticulturists (hor-ti-CUL-chur-ists) planted them next to the Virginia genotype. BINGO, they started producing baby plants. You see, all the plants from Chile were female and needed pollen from other strawberry plants to produce fertile seeds.
It wasn't long before a new strawberry was born. The horticulturists named it Fragaria x ananassa.
But it had to wait nearly 200 years for the other grandparent to arrive from South America.
In the early 1700s, a French spy spotted this strawberry genotype in Chile while he was making maps of Spanish forts. Plants of this genotype produced really big berries—larger than the spy had ever seen—so he brought a bunch of them back to France.
Trouble is, they didn't reproduce in France. Not until scientists called horticulturists (hor-ti-CUL-chur-ists) planted them next to the Virginia genotype. BINGO, they started producing baby plants. You see, all the plants from Chile were female and needed pollen from other strawberry plants to produce fertile seeds.
It wasn't long before a new strawberry was born. The horticulturists named it Fragaria x ananassa.
The baby berry was such a success
that its great-great-great-great grandchildren are grown around the world
today, mostly in the northern hemisphere. The United States is the leading
producer and supplies about 20 percent of the world's strawberries. Next are
Spain, Japan, Poland, Italy, the Korean Republic and China.
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