The Driscoll’s Difference

    Presented by Driscoll’s

    Driscolls Employees

    PHOTO COURTESY OF DRISCOLL’S

    When the perfect berry is ready to be picked in the wild, it hangs heavy and shines with a deep, dark color. Buying berries at the grocery store can be an act of faith: a perfectly ripe berry does not beckon quite the same under fluorescent light. Driscoll’s goes to great lengths to ensure every clamshell on the shelves is packed with only the most flavorful, deliciously ripe berries.

    However, these nearly perfect berries don’t grow in a vacuum. Growing the best berries is as much of an art as it is a science. The Driscoll’s Joy Makers are the artists behind those berries.

    Fun Facts About Driscoll’s Berries:

    The Life of a Berry

    It takes five to seven years to produce a berry variety that is ready for commercial production. During that time, Driscoll’s berries are taste tested, analyzed, placed in nurseries, stress tested, flavor tasted some more, checked for robustness, and examined in all sorts of ways to ensure that only the top quality berries make it from the farm to the supermarket.

     

    Making a Perfect Match

    Matching berries for natural cross-pollination is a very big process. In any given year, Driscoll’s chooses the best plants and makes about 700 crosses. Each cross results in anywhere from 40 to nearly 300 seedlings. That means that in a single year, Driscoll’s has over 100,000 seedlings that could potentially become a new variety of berry that makes it to your supermarket.

     

    Partnering With Pollinators

    One of the great things about using natural cross-pollination is that Driscoll’s berries are never genetically modified. Everything the Joy Makers do is like traditional plant breeding of crossing one plant with a different plant. The science of genes, however, allows the Joy Makers to more efficiently figure out which plants will produce the best results.

    This post is presented by Driscoll’s