Great summary by Gary Pullano in Vegetable Growers News of a presentation by Lee Stivers of Penn State University Extension concerning keeping berries at maximum quality for your customers:
Key takeaways and things I have harped on for years:
1. Number one mistake growers make is not cooling berries quickly enough. As Lee clearly says about the berries "They can't wait around, or it just shortens the shelf life of the berries". In other words, leaving the truck out in the field for two hours in the sun because it isn't full yet is not a strategy for high quality berries.
2. Lee admits that "even though we know that consumers should be washing the berries before consuming them, we also know that doesn't always happen" (guilty as charged!). "That makes farm food safety procedures to minimize the risk of spreading food-borne pathogens especially critical." Clean hands, clean containers and healthy workers are essential.
Last point of interest, especially for direct marketers:
1. If one is willing to reduce shelf life by a few days, research out of Cornell found that if strawberries are picked at white tip and cooled to 50 degrees F rather than the traditional 32 -34 degrees, the fruit still held up and ripened somewhat. Doing this addresses the problem of surface condensation on the fruit and consequent dulling of the color from those cooler temperatures.