Several years ago, grower Jason Matson started to wonder if the decay problems Matson Fruit was dealing with could be caused by cross-contamination from the recirculating fungicide drencher at his ...

Flooding apple orchards with sterile codling moths can overwhelm the local population and reduce mating success, lowering fruit damage rates. The practice provides the foundation for pest control in ...

The Washington State Tree Fruit Association kicked off Day 2 of its annual meeting with a cherry session and a tour of an Allan Bros. orchard in Naches, Washington, followed by sessions about ...

Winemakers are asking for white grapes. Brokers are scrambling to keep up with white wine demand. Growers are planting or grafting white varieties. Washington’s white wines are having a moment, ...

Chris Gottschalk has found his bearings as the nation’s lone public pear scion breeder, and he’s ready to focus on creating pears that are easy to grow and handle and also have the flavor and texture ...

Every year, apple fruit thinning overlaps with cherry harvest, posing tough labor management decisions. Northwest engineering researchers are working on a bot for that. Students and researchers at ...

For the third time in four years, agricultural employers are adjusting their operations for a new round of H-2A regulatory changes. “The issue is keeping up with it,” said Sean Gilbert, president of ...

Michigan State University researchers recently created an annotated genome for Montmorency, the variety that dominates the U.S. tart cherry industry. The breakthrough will help researchers and ...

Measuring yield variability in a tart cherry orchard block has never been an exact science. For some growers, it consists of sending someone to count the number of bins and roughly gauge the distance ...

Pests seem indestructible in an orchard, where they breed like crazy. Throw those bugs in a lab, and the story changes. They don’t like their diet. They won’t mate. They won’t lay eggs. And if another ...

To embrace an integrated pest management approach to pear psylla management, growers needed to have faith that natural enemies would show up in the orchard at the right time and magnitude to protect ...

Growing organic apples is hard, but reading their market can be just as hard. Overlapping, though not conflicting, messages characterized the first organics session in several years at the Washington ...