The Tango mandarins, broadly sold as Cuties or Wonderful Halos, were developed by UC Riverside as an easy, on-the-go snack. (Credit: Elena Zhukova/UC)

Imagine your grocery store without a produce section. No nuts, no wine, no fresh salad greens.

If California’s farming industry didn’t exist, we might not be able to dig into these foods — after all, the Golden State provides a third of the nation’s vegetables, and 75% of its fruits and nuts. At the very least, they would be much more expensive.

But all that abundance on your plate didn’t happen by accident — it’s the result of federal support for science and work by the University of California that goes back to the university’s earliest beginnings.

Learn how science turned California into the country’s top farming state and how UC researchers are developing American prosperity for the future:

Read the story from the UC Newsroom