[ggillas]

Selective plant breeding and robotics pickers are the way forward here. University of Arkansas is the holder of multiple plant patents for better blackberries. New varieties are bred for many, many traits (sweetness, transport, shelf quality, ripening window, etc.)

Prof John Clark likely has invented the berries you've ate: https://news.uark.edu/articles/63163/arkansas-fruit-breeder-...

Harvest costs for fruit are an incredibly important consideration for farms and out of the thousands of potential fruits you could eat, the commercial winners have to be profitable.

There are some awesome opportunities for robotics, computer vision, and ML in agriculture. And if you can reduce harvest costs by 75% like this approach for blueberries, farmers have more market options to select better flavor qualities because the harvest quality goes up: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/impact/innovative-harvest-...