How NCInnovation Is Helping an NC State Researcher Turn Strawberry Science Into a Scalable Business
By Michelle Fiscus, Senior VP & Chief Communications Officer
Most researchers celebrate when their work is published.
For Ricardo Hernández, that's when the real work begins.
Hernández is a University Faculty Scholar, director of the NC State University Controlled Environment Agriculture Coalition, and an associate professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at NC State University, where he specializes in plant physiology and controlled-environment agriculture.
But unlike many researchers, Hernández has never viewed publication as the finish line.
"I figured that most of our discoveries ended up in a very prestigious paper," Hernández said. "But that's the end. A lot of my colleagues are content with that. The type of research I do is very applied. To me, the paper is just the required step. The question is: what's next? How do we take this and actually create value from it?"
That question sits at the heart of an NCInnovation-funded project that could strengthen North Carolina agriculture and create a new AgTech opportunity for the state.
NCInnovation is helping Hernández navigate one of the most difficult stages of innovation: moving a proven university technology from successful research to commercial proof.
The goal isn't simply to grow better strawberries.
It's to build an entirely new way of producing strawberry plants that could reduce disease risk, shorten supply chains, and create a reliable source of clean planting material for growers across North Carolina and the Southeast.
Hernández says his entrepreneurial mindset comes, in part, from his father.
"He always told me, 'You have to work for yourself. You have to find a way,'" Hernández said.
Although his career led him deep into academia, he never lost sight of that advice.
"When I got into science initially, I wanted to create science to create value," Hernández said. "I got stuck on the science creation for a while. This is a way to finally put it out there."
That philosophy eventually led him to one of agriculture's most overlooked opportunities: the strawberry starter plant.
"The starter plant is the foundation of the entire strawberry production system," Hernández said. "To put this into perspective, it is like raising a child through high school: what happens during this early stage strongly influences future performance."
Today, growers rely on a fragmented propagation system that can take years and span multiple regions before plants ever produce fruit. Along the way, plants are repeatedly grown, replanted, and moved through a supply chain that can introduce disease pressure long before they reach a grower's field.
Recent outbreaks, including Neopestalotiopsis, have underscored how vulnerable that system can be.
Growers often discover the problem too late, absorbing the economic consequences downstream.
Many producers rely on fumigation to manage disease risk, but Hernández saw an opportunity to solve the problem much earlier in the process.
"The issue isn't the chemical," Hernández said. "The issue is the way we propagate the plant."
That realization led Hernández and his team to develop Precision Strawberry Propagation, or PSP, a controlled-environment system that combines patented technology with proprietary environmental recipes that precisely manage temperature, light, humidity, airflow, irrigation, carbon dioxide and nutrition throughout a plant's development.
The results have been significant.
Today, Hernández's team can produce up to 34 times more strawberry plants per unit area than traditional field propagation methods.
"We're not doing twice as much," Hernández said. "We're doing 34 times more. Now the economics make sense."
But proving the science is no longer the challenge.
Now he has to prove it can become a business.
"The gap is commercial proof," Hernández said. "The science shows that PSP can greatly increase propagation yield, but customers need to see consistent pilot-scale production, cost per plant, disease-free status, plant survival, field performance, and a reliable delivery model."
That transition from scientific proof to commercial proof is exactly where NCInnovation is helping accelerate progress.
Over the next two years, Hernández and his team will focus on answering questions that traditional research funding rarely supports.
Can the technology work consistently at larger scales?
Will the economics hold up outside the lab?
Can growers see measurable value in their fields?
And ultimately, will customers pay for it?
"We have two main objectives," Hernández said. "One objective is validation of existing science. Not only at the science and plant level, but at the economic level and at the final adoption level."
His team will test whether the system can consistently produce 34 times more plants using multiple strawberry varieties while simultaneously validating the business model behind the technology.
"Can we make money from this?" Hernández said. "Are these plants actually creating value in the marketplace?"
At the same time, the team will continue developing AI-powered automation systems that could reduce labor costs by as much as 20 percent, creating additional value for growers while helping future operations scale more efficiently.
Without NCInnovation funding, Hernández says much of this work would be delayed.
The opportunity to anchor the technology in North Carolina could also slow or potentially move elsewhere.
At the same time, Hernández is already building the foundation for commercialization.
His startup, Rooted In Tech, currently uses earlier propagation technologies developed at NC State to produce tomato and cucumber plants.
Strawberries, however, represent a much larger opportunity.
"Strawberry plants are a monster market," Hernández said.
If successful, Hernández envisions a two-part commercialization pathway.
First, the company would produce and sell clean, high-vigor strawberry plants directly to growers, allowing customers to experience the benefits without changing their existing operations.
Then, once the technology is validated at scale, the propagation system and its AI-powered automation tools could be licensed to established nursery propagators and greenhouse operators.
"The company would sell clean, high-vigor strawberry plants produced using PSP," Hernández said. "Selling plants first is more direct than selling the technology because it lets growers experience the value without having to adopt a new production system themselves."
The implications extend far beyond a single company.
North Carolina could become a regional source of clean strawberry plants for the Southeast while anchoring new economic activity in controlled-environment agriculture, robotics, automation, logistics and technical sales.
It could also strengthen one of the state's signature industries by addressing a persistent challenge: giving growers access to reliable, high-quality planting material closer to home.
For Hernández, however, success won't be measured by another publication.
It will be measured by seeing people use something he created.
"I love starting something from nothing," Hernández said. "Entrepreneurship is a perfect example where we can exercise that."
And in many ways, the journey has come full circle.
"Those things that you liked as a young person, you still like them as an adult," Hernández said. "We just forget about them. It's coming back full circle."