How Driscoll’s Is Hacking the Strawberry of the Future

For example an unmanned, refrigerated, follow-me cart with a soft hopper could be a multiplier on picking productivity without all the hassles of actual mobile manipulation and perception.

Unfortunately, I absolutely loathe Driscoll's raspberries. I will buy anybody else's raspberries first, and I will simply not use raspberries if I have to buy Driscoll's.

They're big and red, but they're too firm and fleshy. They have very little juice, and, even if you get lucky and they're sweet, they don't have a robust raspberry flavor. I used to fight with the yellowjackets to pick raspberries in the Northeast US. I can't even imagine anything in nature wanting these raspberries.

I'm not terribly fond of their strawberries and blackberries either, but they're no different from the rest of the industry on those. Again, the fruits are too big, too fleshy, and not juicy enough. Consequently, they are far less flavorful.

This is standard across the industry. Water content == bruising and lost sales. So, anything with water content gets bred until the water goes away. Tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, etc. have all gotten this treatment.

It's just like roses, we've bred them to last long when cut, but that breeds out the fact that it smells like a rose.

At some point, we have to accept that getting that last "9" of efficiency on a biological organism isn't actually worth it.

Here's how I extract DNA with fun kitchen science.

  1. Freeze.
  2. Add dish detergent and NaCl.
  3. Puree in blender.
  4. Thaw.  Stir *very gently* from this point forward.
  5. Add meat tenderizer and/or contact lens solution.
  6. Filter the mess to get mostly clear fluid.
  7. Layer rubbing alcohol over the solution.
  (If you use ethanol, make sure it's high-proof.)
  8. Draw DNA and RNA up from aqueous layer through alcohol layer with a kebab skewer.