Fruits & Vegetables A SPECIAL GROWERS’ REPORT OF AG ALERT ® CALIFORNIA
Hot temps, new varieties boost strawberry volumes By Rob McCarthy Strawberries grow in a Santa Barbara County field. Unseasonably warm temperatures in February and March ripened Central Coast berries weeks earlier, with the region harvesting at the same time as the Oxnard growing district in Southern California. By the first week of April, Watsonville-Salinas growers picked 10 times more berries than the same period two years ago.
hit 2.9 million crates, compared to 230,000 in 2024. The northern district is the state’s largest strawberry producer, with a two-year average of 106.4 million trays per season. Meanwhile, Oxnard district growers were 3.5 million crates ahead of last year’s output, and Santa Maria farms were running 7.1 million trays ahead of their 2025 production for this early in the season, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The heat also contributed to record levels of insect and mite pressure in Monterey Coun- ty strawberries, Bolda said. The coastal region experienced consecutive days of 80-degree heat April 4-5, followed by two days of rain starting April 21. “That’ll wipe out the Watsonville-Salinas crop for about a week,” he said. The strawberry commission’s Chris Christian credited the back-to-back warm, dry months in February and March and the planting of newer strawberry cultivars bred to deliver early fruit for the bullish year so far. “We’re seeing some shifts,” she said. “There’s more publicly available varieties now from the university programs and from breeding companies that are making their varieties more available to the industry at large.” California grows 90% of the nation’s strawberries, with 43,726 total acres this year, the commission projected. Fall-planted acreage for winter, spring and summer production was 32,412 . Another 11,314 acres of fall-production berries are expected to be planted in
The introduction of new commercial strawberry varieties has raised expectations for an industry turnaround after years of declining production linked to soil health and a spike in plant disease. Heading into 2026, the California Strawberry Commission projected earlier spring pro- duction and marketable fruit volume in April, citing the availability of new commercially available varieties of strawberries from the University of California and private companies. There has been significant increase in acreage in recent years of day-neutral strawberry varieties that can produce fruit from spring into the fall and can be harvested sooner than the short-day varieties that are summer bearing. Strawberries ripened weeks earlier this year not because they were day-neutral but due to record-setting heat in February. In Monterey County, usually the last of the state’s four main strawberry-growing regions to start harvest, temperatures reached into the 80s, Mark Bolda, University of California Cooperative Extension strawberry adviser, noted. That means the Watsonville/Salinas district was picking berries at the same time as Oxnard in Southern California. “It’s been all about unseasonably warm temperatures early on. It bumped the season up by two or three weeks,” Bolda said. Watsonville-Salinas growers harvested 10 times more strawberries by April 4 than the same period two years ago, according to industry figures. Monterey County’s berry volume
See STRAWBERRIES, Page 7
6 Ag Alert May 6, 2026
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