Good Fruit Grower

February 15, 2017

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www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER FEBRUARY 15, 2017 21 Culture change TJ MULLINAX/GOOD FRUIT GROWER Yongjian Chang, president of North American Plants, Inc., shows the company's tissue culture process during a tour with Good Fruit Grower in McMinnville, Oregon, in September. North American has begun to sell plants derived from tissue culture directly to growers to speed the wait time for new rootstocks. TJ MULLINAX/GOOD FRUIT GROWER FACING PAGE: Yongjian Chang pulls a Geneva 890 apple rootstock from several thousand G.890 rootstocks propagated through North American's tissue culture process. Oregon tissue culture company begins selling plants directly to growers to reduce the wait time for key rootstocks. by Shannon Dininny W hen Yongjian Chang built North American Plants in 1998, the company had 800 square feet of lab space to propagate plants through a process known as tissue culture — essentially cloning them to meet nursery demand for ornamental trees and shrubs. It's come a long way in the years since, with five expan- sions bringing lab space to some 23,000 square feet and a switch in 2006 to focus on berries and rootstocks for tree fruit and nuts. Today, North American Plants produces 3 million blueberry, blackberry and raspberry plants and 10 million rootstocks for tree fruit and nuts annually. Increasing demand for disease-resistant rootstocks, particularly in the apple industry, has the company poised for another change: selling directly to growers who want to reduce the wait time and get trees in the ground sooner. For the first time, North American set up shop during December's Washington State Tree Fruit Association's Northwest Hort Expo in Wenatchee, Washington, to explain the process to growers and to take orders. Chang views the move as an opportunity to expand his market, sure, but also to help speed the process of getting trees into the hands of growers, namely those establishing nurseries on their own farms. "In the begin- ning, I really thought I would just be selling to stool bed nurseries, but the demand is so much quicker than they SHANNON DININNY/GOOD FRUIT GROWER A worker carefully places tissue culture cuttings in a jar containing the appropriate nutrients and hormones to promote root growth.

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