(bright music) - Everything about it has this density of flavor.

- Just talking about an Oregon strawberry makes my mouth water.

- If I give a berry to somebody, one of our Oregon berries who's never had one, they're just often, they're just like "oh my God, I had no idea that this is possible".

- [Crystal] What does a strawberry taste like?

That could depend on what variety it is.

Or it might just be where it was grown.

- It's right here in Oregon's Willamette Valley.

- [Crystal] And where it's being perfected .

In Oregon, strawberries are special.

They're part science, part farming technique, and all Pacific Northwest history, add it up, and this isn't your normal strawberry.

(upbeat music) It's an unseasonably wet June in Oregon, but a little rain isn't gonna stop the 113th annual Lebanon Strawberry Festival.

- It's weird that it's raining during festival weekend, but we are Oregonians.

- So we're used to it.

- We're okay.

It's okay.

- [Crystal] In Oregon, we're serious about strawberries.

What started as a celebration of the strawberry harvest season in 1909 has become the second longest-running annual festival in the state.

The event even has its own ambassadors, appropriately named Strawberrians, and at the center of it all is the world's largest strawberry shortcake, a tradition started in 1931.

- I'm the Strawberry Festival shortcake chairman.

Originally the strawberry shortcake was created to celebrate the strawberry harvest.

This whole valley was massive strawberries here.

- [Crystal] That world's largest title was solidified in 1975 with a 5,700 pound shortcake that served more than 16,000 people, double the town's population at the time.

But the history of strawberries in Oregon goes back way further than that.

For thousands of years, wild strawberries grew across the Pacific Northwest, feeding all kinds of creatures big and small for millennia.

But the modern strawberry, well, that's a different story.

Whose path to our table was a byproduct of the European colonization of the Americas.

(bright music) First bred in Brittany, France in the 1750s, fragaria ananassa is the mother of modern strawberry varieties.

It made its way west via the Oregon Trail on Henderson Luelling's traveling nursery in the 1840s.

A labor shortage created by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act led many first-generation Japanese immigrants, known as Ise, to be at the forefront of Oregon's agriculture industry.

By the early 1920s, around 60% of Oregon's Japanese population was involved in agriculture, many growing strawberries.

But in 1932, berry farmers from all backgrounds faced a new threat.

A strawberry crinkle virus swept through Oregon's fields, prompting breeders to start creating their own varieties in hopes to make strawberries more resistant to disease.

Nowadays, there are new strawberry varieties popping up all the time.

Many created right here in the Pacific Northwest and making their debut at Oregon State University's Strawberry Field Day.

(gentle music) - I'm pretty sure it's the only relationship of its kind in the world.

So it's a cooperative berry crop breeding program with the USDA ARS and Oregon State University.

- [Crystal] That's Bernadine Strik.

- I'm a professor emeritus in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University and just recently retired from my dream job.

- [Crystal] A dream job she held for 35 years as the lead horticulturist for the Cooperative Berry Crops Breeding program.

If that title is a little long, you can also call her by her nickname.

- The Dean of the College of Ag Sciences at OSU introduced me as The Berry Goddess and it was the first time I had ever heard that, and I thought, man, if you have a nickname, man, that's a good one.

- [Crystal] For more than 100 years, Oregon State University has worked hand in hand with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in their cooperative berry breeding program.

- And that relationship is really unique because we have a public university that's looking at the horticultural traits while the breeder's making all the crossing decisions, pretty unique.

- [Crystal] And this is where the science comes in.

- I work for the US Department of Agriculture and I'm a biological science technician in the breeding program.

- [Crystal] And for decades, he's been helping to breed the perfect strawberry.

- [Researcher] Let's just say it could take 10, 15 years maybe if you're lucky, maybe seven years to go from cross to the market to actually naming a strawberry.

- [Crystal] And that included putting the flavor of native wild strawberries back in the mix.

- [Researcher] We collected wild plant material and we made crosses.

And so we've had about 30 years of bringing some of those genes along and diversifying the genetic pool within these plants.

- [Crystal] And it's no accident that the only berry breeding cooperative that exists is right here in Oregon.

- [Researcher] Oregon is a great place to grow fruit.

It's a Mediterranean climate.

It's got great soils.

It's dry in the summers then yet there's still enough groundwater to irrigate.

- [Crystal] Oregon's climate during the growing season means the strawberry stays on the plant as long as possible.

- And what that means is that the strawberries ripen slowly, and that allows them to develop their maximum flavor and quality.

And then the cool nights means that in the night, a strawberry will respire.

So that means the fruit retains its sugar that it developed during the day, for example.

And in addition, what's a real benefit of cool nights is that color develops.

- [Crystal] But if you don't get to eat one right off the vine, don't worry.

The bulk of Oregon strawberries, around 90%, are processed and preserved.

- For strawberries, our industry has always been a processing industry, so that makes our strawberry cultivars really unique.

Having traits that are exceptional for processing.

And fresh strawberries for the commercial market are often picked at 75% red color.

And it shouldn't surprise people that that strawberry picked at that stage hasn't had a chance to develop its full character.

- [Crystal] That means instead of picking them a little early so the fresh strawberries can travel out of state, growers can wait until peak strawberry ripeness, because as soon as they're picked, they'll be frozen or turned into ingredients for yogurts, jams, and ice creams.

And if something is being frozen, that means the flavor has to be even more exceptional than normal.

- You have to be able to tell in an ice cream, that's a tasty strawberry.

And then we have to have a high level of both sugar and acid.

- [Crystal] Something Tyler Malek knows all about.

Malek is the co-founder and head ice cream maker at Salt & Straw.

Each year they go through 50,000 pounds of strawberries.

- So we love this idea of this ribbon of strawberry jam just streaking its way through the ice cream.

When we dig into the bucket of jam, you'll notice it's this richness in color that you don't see typically in strawberry jam.

Usually, you expect this bright red, beautiful jam.

This one is almost like blood red and that's because it's so cooked down just until all of the strawberry flavor's condensed into this little spoon.

- [Crystal] And it all goes into one of their signature flavors.

- Strawberry honey balsamic with black pepper.

This flavor has very much put us on the map.

We didn't quite realize when we were making it how important this would be for the future of our company really, it's the perfect flavor in so many ways.

It leans on this Italian old kind of trinity of flavors.

Black pepper, balsamic vinegar, and strawberries are so perfect together because you actually enhance the acidity with the vinegar and then you balance out that kind of berry perfume quality of the strawberry with black pepper.

A really fresh ground black pepper.

- [Crystal] It was the fourth flavor Salt & Straw ever created back in 2011 when Tyler and his cousin Kim were serving ice cream out of a push cart on Northeast Alberta Street in Portland.

It's a flavor that stood the test of time thanks in large part to the strawberries.

- The centerpiece of the flavor is the strawberry.

There's no berries like what's grown here in the Pacific Northwest, honestly, especially Oregon berries, there's so much density and flavor, I think that it packs flavor into these tight little bundles that is like nothing else.

We also realize that exporting some of the abundance of Oregon is also really, really important.

I think Oregon in particular is just this cornucopia of food.

And the microregions within the state are, there's really no other place like this in the world.

- [Crystal] There's nothing quite like an Oregon strawberry.

Intense in color, impossibly sweet, bred to thrive in our climate, picked at the peak of flavor, and processed into delicious, iconic treats.

The Oregon strawberry is no accident.

It's a labor of love, a delicious blend of science and history.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Hey, I'm Crystal Ligori.

You might already know my voice from narrating the "Superabundant" series, but I also produced this episode.

Every week, I keep learning something new about the bounty of the Pacific Northwest, mainly through our newsletter.

Sign up now at opb.org/superabundant.

And all of this is only possible because of OPB'S members.

Thank you.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)