For centuries, indigenous peoples harvested strawberries in fields and woods. Today, the strawberry is one of the world's most popular fruits. Quest for the Perfect Strawberry is a comprehensive chronology of the breeding and technology used in the search for the ultimate taste, texture, and color of the perfect strawberry. Author Herbert Baum takes you on a journey that leads to the current era of California dominance and excellence of an industry that has soared during the last fifty years. Strawberry growers are achieving global supremacy and revolutionizing agriculture with evolutionary marketing programs, but such programs have become cost prohibitive. Baum hopes that his framework for measuring marketing and agricultural-research-program effectiveness will help marketing boards become more accountable to participating growers. As an eyewitness to an agricultural revolution within the industry, Baum describes in detail what intelligence and the human spirit can create with cooperation between academia and industry.