Good Fruit Grower

September 2013

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Good Job growing with growers since 1946 Industry Managing Editor Casey Corr people Editor in the casey.corr@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3512 Geraldine Warner news. gwarner@goodfruit.com  •  509-665-3330 Associate Editors Bill Shibley Melissa Hansen mhansen@goodfruit.com  •  509-968-3922 Richard Lehnert lehnert@goodfruit.com  •  616-984-6001 Advertising Manager Doug Button dbutton@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3514 Advertising Sales Rick Larsen rick@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3517 Theresa Currell theresa@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3516 Production Manager Nancy Jo Born nancyb@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3513 Digital Producer T.J. Mullinax tj@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3519 Production Design Aurora Lee aurora@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3518 Stephanie Meier Bradley Walker Simon Siegl Mark Wheeler Five join wine foundation board F ive new members have joined the board of directors of the Washington Wine Industry Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides scholarships, education, outreach, and research on behalf of the grape and wine industry. They are: Bill Shibley, regional vice president of Northwest Farm Credit Services in the Columbia Basin, serving southeast Washington and northeast Oregon. He is a member of the Washington State University College of Agriculture, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences and WSU Extension National Campaign Council. Stephanie Meier, an attorney at Stoel Rives LLP, Seattle, specializing in food and beverage law. She advises clients in the alcoholic beverage industry on state and federal licensing and permitting, regulatory compliance, marketing promotions, labeling and packaging regulations, tax issues, contracts, and distribution issues. Bradley Walker, principal at Walker and Associates, Seattle, which provides consulting services to airlines, hotels, and online travel companies. With his wife, Marisa, he created a wine/travel-themed auction (VINE) 11 years ago to support the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County. To date, the auction has raised more than a million dollars. Simon Siegl, principal at CoEfficient Consulting, Seattle, which provides strategic, business, marketing, and exit planning for the wine industry and related businesses. He previously was executive director of the Washington Wine Institute, focusing on government relations initiatives to protect and enhance the business environment for Washington wineries. He has also served as executive director of the Washington Wine Commission and president of WineAmerica. Mark Wheeler, partner at Saddle Mountain Vineyards, Mattawa. Wheeler began his career as a surgeon for the U.S. Public Health Service, then became vice president of development and later senior vice president of technical research for Phamis, Inc., a Seattle-based health-care information-systems company. He established Saddle Mountain Vineyards in 2000 in partnership with Tedd Wildman and recently started a small winery to produce wine for mainland China. Also serving on the board are: Roger Gamache (chair), Carol Munro (vice chair), Rob Sullivan (treasurer), Greg Lill, Paul Champoux, Tom Waliser, and Jamie Peha. Circulation Steve Call steve@goodfruit.com  •  509-853-3515 Advisory Board Lindsay Hainstock, Denny Hayden, Steve Hoying, Jim Kelley, Desmond Layne, Jim McFerson, Ian Merwin, Don Olmstead, Mercy Olmstead, Marvin Owings, Mark Roy, Vicky Scharlau, Mark Tudor, Chris Van Well, Mike Wittenbach U.S. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $35.00 per year, 3 years $75.00. CANADIAN SUBSCRIPTIONS: $55.00 per year (U.S. funds, Canadian G.S.T. included: G.S.T. Registration #135100949). SUBSCRIPTIONS OUTSIDE U.S.A. & Canada: $100.00 per year (payment by credit card only). WASHINGTON STATE GROWER SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $2.00 per year to deciduous tree fruit growers in the state of Washington who pay assessments on commercially shipped fruit, either to the Washington State Fruit Commission or to the Washington Apple Commission. Back issues are not available. Single copies of current issues are $5.00. To s ubscribe, call 1-800-487-9946. Good Fruit Grower (ISSN 0046-6174) is published semi-monthly January through May, and monthly June through December, by the Washington State Fruit Commission, 105 South 18th Street, Suite 205, Yakima, WA 98901-2149. eriodical postage paid at P Yakima, WA, and additional offices. Publications Mail Agreement No. 1795279. The publication of any advertisement is not to be construed as an endorsement by the Washington State Fruit Commission or Good Fruit Grower magazine of the product or service offered, unless it is specifically stated in the advertisement that there is such approval or endorsement. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Good Fruit Grower, 105 South 18th Street, Suite 217, Yakima, WA 98901-2177. © 2013 by Good Fruit Grower Printed in U.S.A. 105 S. 18th St., #217, Yakima, WA 98901 509⁄ 853-3520, 1-800-487-9946, Fax 509⁄853-3521 E-mail: growing@goodfruit.com www.goodfruit.com 6 California pomologist Scott Johnson retires after 31-year career S cott Johnson, a University of California extension specialist at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, California, has retired after 31 years. Johnson began working in the early 1980s with a new giant underground weighing lysimeter, an instrument that would become the signature tool of his career. He conducted experiments with peach trees growing in the lysimeter, which allowed him to calculate precisely how much water evaporates from the soil and transpires from the tree hour by hour. Results helped growers properly manage their irrigation strategies to improve fruit quality and yield. Using the lysimeter, Johnson discovered that Scott Johnson some common fruit tree irrirecords water loss gation strategies being used information from in the San Joaquin Valley the underground were significantly impacting weighing lysimeter. fruit quality and yield. "We found that growers should not cut back on water after harvest, if they can help it," Johnson said. "Any time we cut back on water applications, we developed some sort of problem—diseases, sunburn, mites, and fruit disorders in the subsequent crops, like doubling and deep sutures." Johnson had perhaps his greatest impact on growers' practices with his research on nitrogen fertilization. Many growers, he said, were overfertilizing their stone fruit orchards. "We did a survey and found the average rate of nitrogen fertilization was 150 pounds per acre," Johnson said. "I started working on this right at the beginning and harped on this same thing my whole career. Today, farmers are using about a half or a third of the fertilizer they did decades ago." Much of the nitrogen stimulated vegetative growth, shading the fruit and preventing reddening and requiring more pruning labor in the winter. Johnson worked closely with Ted DeJong, extension specialist in the department of plant sciences at UC Davis, and Kevin Day, extension farm advisor in Tulare County, on these and many other orchard research topics, including rootstocks, pruning, training systems, thinning, girdling, irrigation, and fertilization. In 2011, Johnson took sabbatical leave to organize and aggregate all the research findings on a comprehensive Web site called The Fruit Report. "Everything is there on the Web site for growers establishing and managing fresh market peach, plum, and nectarine orchards," he said. Northern has Unitec cherry line N orthern Fruit Company, a tree-fruit packing company based in East Wenatchee, Washington, has installed new electronic cherry sorting and packing equipment supplied by the Italian company Unitec. The company installed six new sorting lanes in 2012 and another 12 in 2013, so that its entire 2013 cherry crop was handled on the Unitec system. The new technology provides better color separation, allowing more consistent packs, even from variable lots, according to a press release from Unitec. The equipment also features electronic defect sorting and softness detection. Unitec has sold a total of more than 700 lanes in 23 countries worldwide, including 157 in the United States. SEPTEMBER 2013 Good Fruit Growerwww.goodfruit.com

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