WATSONVILLE, September 22 — Driscoll’s, the family-owned berry company headquartered here, is the largest berry supplier in the United States and a dominant global marketer of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. Founded in 1872 by Joseph Reiter and still run by fourth-generation members of the Reiter family, it built its business on proprietary plant genetics developed through a network of independent breeders, then licensed those varieties to contract growers around the world under strict agreements barring them from propagating, sharing or selling the plants outside the Driscoll’s system.
That model travelled with the company when it expanded into China in the 2010s.
What was transferred
Driscoll’s partnered with local growers and investors to produce berries for the fast-growing Chinese market, establishing operations in Yunnan province and other regions suited to blueberry cultivation. It brought its proprietary blueberry varieties into the country — varieties developed over decades of breeding for flavour, size and shelf life. Chinese partners gained access to the plants, the growing protocols, and the post-harvest handling techniques Driscoll’s had refined.
Over time, according to reporting on the company’s experience, those partners and other growers began propagating the Driscoll’s varieties themselves and selling the resulting fruit, in some cases under competing brands, without paying royalties or honouring the licence terms.
Why the licences proved hard to enforce
The practice has been difficult to police in China, where enforcement of plant-variety rights has historically been weak and where the legal system offers limited remedies for foreign holders of proprietary germplasm. Driscoll’s has continued to operate in China while tightening its internal controls and pursuing legal avenues where available. The episode fits a broader pattern in which foreign companies entering China to access its market have seen their technology, designs or trade secrets replicated by local firms, often with the encouragement or tacit acceptance of local authorities.
For all the noise about market access, the salient point for Driscoll’s is narrower: how much proprietary know-how can a company safely hand over when it expands abroad. The China experience has become a case study in the risks of globalisation for agricultural and food companies.
The story, reported in early 2025, underscores the tension between market access and intellectual-property protection that defines much of the US-China commercial relationship. It also highlights the growing importance of plant genetics as a competitive asset in global agriculture, where a single proprietary variety can be worth millions of dollars in annual sales. What to watch next is whether Driscoll’s tightens the terms on which it transfers genetics to partners in China and elsewhere — and whether plant-variety enforcement in China changes enough to make those terms mean anything.
