Fruits & Vegetables

The Watsonville/Salinas district, with 12,889 acres of strawberries in 2025, remains the state’s top growing region for fall-planted acreage, which produces fruit for winter, spring and summer. The Santa Maria district, however, has the most year-round acreage, with 11,432 fall-planted acres and a projected 7,469 summer-planted acreage, which produces strawberries for the fall. 
Ag Alert file photo

Francisco “Frank” Valle, general manager of Global Mushrooms in Santa Clara County, holds a box of white button mushrooms, which remain the nation’s best-selling mushroom variety.
Photo/Christine Souza

A test plot of established oats at the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems at the California State University, Chico, was planted last fall as part of a study that looks at the feasibility of planting a winter cash crop of fava beans within an established cover to offset expenses while providing soil cover and reducing erosion.

Photo/Courtesy of Hossein Zakeri

Plant pathologist Shunping Ding, left, and graduate student Emily Lock-Paddon inoculate arugula with the downy mildew pathogen in the lab at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Researchers at the university are studying wild arugula varieties that could offer resistance to the disease. 

Photo/Kallol Das