CALIFORNIA - Our latest Behind the Greens video dives into the wonderful world of California strawberries and a strategic partnership set to drive advancement for the sector. Check out the most recent video exclusive with California Strawberry Commission's Rick Tomlinson and Nagata Bros Farms' Neil Nagata above.

Rick Tomlinson, President, California Strawberry Commission

Partnering with a place like Cal Poly is really important to the development of the new folks that are coming out of college and looking for jobs and to recruit them into agriculture, and so giving them real experiences and research projects, real farm trials, and letting them find what's their pathway into the agriculture world is just a very valuable step. Valuable to them, valuable to us as they share their novel ideas and what they see for the future.

Beyond the obvious research that happens here. It's the people and ideas. It's getting all that creative energy of the people, the students, the faculty really engaged on the issues that we face in California strawberry farming.

Neil Nagata, President, Nagata Bros Farms

The research projects here at Cal Poly have been very useful as far as determining what varieties that we would select for disease resistance, and just trying to find the innovations that could help us in the field. So certain pesticides that we can use that are most efficient and effective, trying to reduce the amount we use, and so we want to make sure that we're using the right material at the right time. And the Innovation Center has really been helpful in helping us determine what those chemistries are and the timing for those specific things.

I'm most excited about seeing just all the energy surrounding strawberry production, and how we can advance to be more sustainable in the future. So using things like the Bug-Vac utilizing UV light potentially to kill a certain pest, and so we're reducing the amount of inputs that we're putting in and still having control over pests that infect our strawberries. And so with the innovation that's created here at Cal Poly, we're able to move forward in a sustainable manner. Strawberry farming really is a California product.

We produce about 90 percent of all strawberries throughout the United States. The whole strawberry growing system was developed in California. California varieties and the technology have been created here, and so if we're going to create this across the United States, we really are going to do it right here in California.

These types of partnerships with research institutions are critical to our future. It helps us find new innovations and pathways to sustainability.

More exclusive features like this are on the way, so stay tuned!