Abstract
BackgroundSale of organic foods is one of the fastest growing market segments within the global food industry. People often buy organic food because they believe organic farms produce more nutritious and better tasting food from healthier soils. Here we tested if there are significant differences in fruit and soil quality from 13 pairs of commercial organic and conventional strawberry agroecosystems in California.Methodology/Principal FindingsAt multiple sampling times for two years, we evaluated three varieties of strawberries for mineral elements, shelf life, phytochemical composition, and organoleptic properties. We also analyzed traditional soil properties and soil DNA using microarray technology. We found that the organic farms had strawberries with longer shelf life, greater dry matter, and higher antioxidant activity and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds, but lower concentrations of phosphorus and potassium. In one variety, sensory panels judged organic strawberries to be sweeter and have better flavor, overall acceptance, and appearance than their conventional counterparts. We also found the organically farmed soils to have more total carbon and nitrogen, greater microbial biomass and activity, and higher concentrations of micronutrients. Organically farmed soils also exhibited greater numbers of endemic genes and greater functional gene abundance and diversity for several biogeochemical processes, such as nitrogen fixation and pesticide degradation.Conclusions/SignificanceOur findings show that the organic strawberry farms produced higher quality fruit and that their higher quality soils may have greater microbial functional capability and resilience to stress. These findings justify additional investigations aimed at detecting and quantifying such effects and their interactions.
Highlights
Global demand for organic products remains robust, consumer demand for these products is concentrated in North America and Europe [1]
While there are no published recommendations for optimum levels of foliar concentrations of mineral nutrients for strawberries grown in California, all farm fields were fertilized according to local industry standards, as recommended by professional horticulturists
When strawberries were exposed to a two-day shelf-life interval, the percent loss in fresh weight was significantly less for the organic berries than for the conventional berries (Table 2)
Summary
Global demand for organic products remains robust, consumer demand for these products is concentrated in North America and Europe [1]. To determine if differences in food and soil quality exist, we sampled repeatedly harvested strawberry varieties (‘Diamante’, ‘San Juan’, and ‘Lanai’) and soils at multiple sampling times in 2004 and 2005 from 13 pairs of adjacent organic and conventional fields from commercial farms.
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