A look at the development, future of NW strawberries

By Communications staff, Washington State University
 
 
Photo by Ingrid Barrentine, courtesy of Washington State Magazine
 


Electronic issue debuts
 
Washington State Magazine debuted its electronic Summer 2010 issue on April 30. As part of last year’s budget cuts, one of the magazine’s four annual issues will be online rather than in print.
 

It can be accessed via the magazine website, an online interactive pdf or, for a price, a personal online copy that can be printed, courtesy of Hewlett-Packard’s on-demand MagCloud publishing technology.

The summer issue will include articles about:

• big ideas that have come out of WSU over the years,

• a new class notes for alumni,

• a look behind the camera with Cougs who work on films,

• WSU’s nuclear reactor and the students who learn to operate it

• Bill Moos, WSU’s new athletic director.

The regular print edition will return in August.

For more information, visit
http://wsm.wsu.edu/godigital
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These are not your ordinary grocery store strawberries.

They are nothing like those California berries – bred for size, long truck rides and shelf-life, locked in plastic clamshells under the florescent lights of the produce section.

The berries of Washington are juicy, fragile, flavor-packed fruit. Because Northwest berries are mostly grown for processing, their texture and flavor are paramount, says Patrick Moore, WSU’s strawberry breeder.

And what grows best here are typically berries bred for this environment. Hood, an Oregon variety, is one of the most widely-grown in the region. It has large, dark red fruit and a clean, sweet taste. And like the rich, deep red Shuksan, an older WSU-released variety, it’s ripe and ready for a few short weeks each summer.

How they came to be in Northwest fields is a story as colorful as the berries themselves.

Read that story, which includes a new WSU variety about to be released by Moore, in the Summer 2010 issue of Washington State Magazine.