The Strawberry
Crystal Ball

We are here attending the 8th International Strawberry Symposium 2016 in Quebec City, Canada. For those of you not familiar with this event, the International Society for Horticultural Science holds an international symposium every four years for a whole range of crop types. These symposia are located in different parts of the world, allowing different countries to compete to host the next one and showcase their country. The horticultural science community comes together from the world over representing their country, their institute and their organisations.

It is important for managers of Intellectual Property to be there too. This is to make sure that they are up to speed with industry developments and global opportunities for the breeders and varieties that they represent.

Of course the usual topics of advanced plant breeding, the introduction of wild genetics into breeding programs to enhance flavour traits, updates on pests and pest management, disease and disease control and so much more will all be covered by the world’s movers and shakers.

This is the 8th Strawberry Symposium but I sit here contemplating at which symposium will it be where robotic harvesting of strawberries will be centre

stage? Will it be the 9th, will it be the 12th? One thing we can predict is that it will be somewhere in that mix.

Now not wishing to over confuse things but.. Will the current breeding objects we have be the correct ones for strawberries to be harvested by robots? I mean the market place and consumer will not allow us to have caveats in terms of fruit quality, eating experience. Nor will the grower in terms of yield or disease resistance but you can bet the breeding objects will require better presented fruit, maybe more concentrated ripening, strong trusses and who knows what else? I suspect that somewhere in the big wide world, there will be an international robot symposium talking about strawberry harvest. It will be interesting to see the plant breeding world, growers and robot engineers discussing their vision together.

It may be we talk about it this week but I suspect there will be many more cups of tea drank before we have the complete industry answer. What a wonderful challenge for strawberry breeders. As if they have not got enough requests already.