Bernadine Strik, a horticulture professor at Oregon State University whose innovative growing strategies shook up the U.S. blueberry industry, died April 14 at a hospital in Corvallis, Oregon. She was 60 years old.
The cause was complications from ovarian cancer, said her husband, Neil Bell.
Modern agriculture is both science and labor, and Dr. Strik, whose Oregon State career began in 1987, brought a skeptical, scientific approach to blueberry farming.
But she’d also grown up with her hands in the dirt—her parents owned a nursery and landscaping business—so she had a strong sense of the practical demands farmers face.
“She was able to connect with the growers,” said Scott Lukas, who took on the endowed professorship of berry farming at Oregon State after Dr. Strik retired in 2021, in a telephone interview. She could look at research “from that sober perspective,” he added, “and be human about it and not get lost in the science.”
Blueberries have been systematically cultivated in the United States since the early 1900s. But demand has grown in recent decades as scientists have proclaimed the fruit’s health benefits and as packaged forms — frozen, pureed, freeze-dried, powdered — have made it more accessible.
According to a report last month from the Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, the United States was the top producer of blueberries until 2021, after which it was surpassed by China.
When dr. Strik began researching blueberry cultivation in Oregon, she found that growers spaced the plants four feet apart in rows because they believed the size of mature bushes required so much space. She also noted that blueberry plants were grown freestanding, without trellises, and that sawdust was often used as mulch because it was cheap and effective at killing weeds.
In a series of studies spanning years, Dr. Strik that changing those practices could improve harvests, according to a 2021 profile on the Oregon Blueberry Commission’s website.
Blueberry plants spaced about three feet apart, they found, produced 50 percent higher yields as they grew, with no decrease in yields once they reached maturity. The use of trellises prevented the loss of an average of 4 to 8 percent of a blueberry crop during machine harvesting. And using weed mats — material, often synthetic, that covers the soil around plants — in addition to sawdust increased yields by up to 10 percent, even when weeds were effectively controlled by the sawdust.
“It was just because of the change the weed mat did to soil temperature,” she said.
Dr. Strik helped organic growers maximize their yields by planting on raised beds instead of flat ground, a technique that also benefited conventional farms. She convinced many berry producers, in Oregon and beyond, to accept her research and adopt her measures.
The Federal Agricultural Research Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, said in a 2022 press release that “The berry growing industries in Oregon and around the world have all benefited from Strik’s research.”
Because of that research, the agency said, “yields have increased dramatically during development years and organic production has increased from less than 2 percent to more than 20 percent of Oregon acreage.”
Bernadine Cornelia Strik was born on April 29, 1962 in The Hague as the son of Gerald and Christine (Alkemade) Strik.
In 1965, the Striks moved to Tantanoola, a small town in South Australia, where her father worked in forestry. But they were tired of the heat, and in 1971 the family moved to Canada and opened a nursery and landscaping business in Qualicum Beach, on Vancouver Island.
After graduating from high school, Dr. Strik received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island in 1983. In 1987 she completed her doctorate in horticulture from the University of Guelph in Ontario. in Corvallis.
One of her students there was Mr. Bell, who came to the state of Oregon in 1990 to study for his master’s degree in horticulture. They got married in 1994.
In addition to her husband, with whom she lived in Monmouth, Oregon, she is survived by her daughters, Shannon and Nicole Bell.
In 2021, the year she retired, Dr. Strik was named a Fellow of the International Society for Horticultural Science and won the North American Blueberry Council’s Duke Galletta Award for Excellence in Horticultural Research.
Her two dozen graduate students were an important part of her legacy, Mr. Lukas said. He noted that Dr. Strik had instilled not only academic rigor, but also the ability to communicate practically and effectively—a skill he called “a science unto itself.”
