Tree Fruit Year In Review
Tree Fruit Year In Review. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.
As we begin the countdown to 2016 it's time to take a quick look back at some of the news stories that a we saw this year. It was a year that saw a lot of concern for food safety. Diane Wetherington, CEO for iFoodDecisionSciences in Seattle discussed research on the safety of apples from the orchard to the consumer.
WETHERINGTON: Things like limiting the evaporative cooling volume that's being applied, looking at controlling microbial levels for cooling water, increasing the time interval between the cooling at the harvest and making sure that when you are washing the fruit that you are washing it with adequate detergent levels.
A new AVA or American Viticulture Area was announced in NE Oregon called The Rocks. Michelle Kaufmann, communications manager for the Oregon Wine Board.
KAUFMANN: It's one of at least four distinct areas in the greater Walla Walla Valley that shows promise as far as terroir and having something unique about it. It is solely within Oregon but also inside the Walla Walla Valley as a whole and then Walla Walla Valley sits within the Columbia Valley as well.
There was also a lot of talk about bees and WSU entomologist, David Crowder talked about other native pollinators like bumble bees.
CROWDER: A lot of these pollinators are present in these farming systems even if people don't know very much about them and so our project is really to try to: number one just figure out what bees are out there providing these important pollination services on these farms.
That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.
