If you think you've tasted a strawberry before, think again: scientists at UC-Davis are attempting to identify and modify flavor traits in everyone's favorite fruit to create a succulent sensory experience for the ages (or, if you prefer, a FrankenBerry).

Almost every strawberry sold in grocery stores is the product of crossbreeding between two species: that of Fragaria chiloensis, a coastal strawberry that originated from Chile, and F. virginiana, also known as the Virginian strawberry, which is indigenous to North America (and more or less looks like a small red berry with bulbous spider eyes). The crossbreed between these two is known as Fragaria x ananassa; though easy to transplant, it is highly receptive to disease and pests.

Steve Knapp, the director of UC-Davis' Strawberry Breeding Program, has been working for the past six years on his super-berry project, researching the flavor chemicals and gene traits of separate breeds, then breeding them together for results. The more that is known about both DNA makeup and flavor chemicals, the easier it is to control the type of strawberry that will come out.

Despite the confidence regarding the breed of strawberry that will result in a particular experiment, it is still almost entirely impossible to determine exact flavor, because the science behind breeding isn't advanced enough to be that precise. "Plant breeding really operates on the entire genome. We don't have the luxury of working on a gene at a time," says Knapp.

Photo: Sharon Mollerus | Flickr