WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Longtime strawberry farmer Rod Koda says plots treated with steam before planting produced nearly twice as many organic strawberries this year as his other fields, The Associated Press reported.
The work is part of a project to find alternatives to chemical fumigants used to kill soil-borne diseases and weeds. Steam has been used in greenhouses for decades, and California researchers are adapting it for open fields.
Jenny Broome, a University of California, Santa Cruz researcher, said four growers took part in trials last fall. On Koda’s farm, steam-treated plots produced more berries and had less damage from fusarium wilt, a fungal disease.
“We’re going back to the future, where we’re looking back at an older technology but we’re finding more ways to engineer more efficiently and use it,” Broome said. The main challenge is making steam cost-effective and speeding up the machines.
Rick Tomlinson, president of the California Strawberry Commission, said soil disease can wipe out an entire field. “If you don’t have some solution, you’re just rolling the dice,” he said.
Nine of every 10 U.S. strawberries come from California, where the crop covers 35,000 acres, according to the AP.
David Andrews of the Environmental Working Group welcomed the push, noting that farmworkers and their families have been the ones exposed to fumigant chemicals.
Sources: KTAR News/AP. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Alabama Extension / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
