A Fruitful Partnership
Research Joins Industry to Lead Washington to Top of U.S. Fruit Industry
Organic orchadist Ray Fuller had a problem. Sunburn was damaging his apple crop, leaving much of it unpickable and much of what was picked unpackable.
 Ray Fuller, in his organic orchard overlooking Lake Chelan, holds the apple-like temperature sensor developed by WSU researcher Larry Schrader. |
“In some of the more sensitive varieties, I could pick just half of the crop and then only about half of that could be packed,” he remembered.
Larry Schrader, a scientist at the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee, had a solution. He developed an apple-like sensor to measure the fruit’s surface temperature to let orchardists know when a cooling spray of water over the orchard canopy would be most effective in preventing sunburn. (See related story: The Sunburn Doctor.)
“I used that sensor in one block,” Fuller said. “The first year, I used a third of the water for cooling I’d used in the past and ended up with four times the amount of sellable fruit.
“Now that is answering a problem for industry,” he continued. “I can put dollars and cents to it. And that’s just one example.” Continue reading »
Visit the Connections archive for all our great back issues.
Welcome to Connections, the magazine for alumni and friends of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences and WSU Extension.
Don't miss an issue or an event! Sign up to receive emails a couple times a year with information about upcoming alumni events, special online-only issues of Connections, and other special features.
Contents
CAHNRS Kernels - Videos: Cougars and rabbits and bears, oh my! Plus: fashion show photos, 4-H kids, Logger Sports, and bioplastics from bacteria.
Special feature: Tree fruit research at WSU
- The Sunburn Doctor
- Pioneers of IPM
- New Orchard is Big Lab
- Searching the Genetic Landscape
- Organic Tree Fruit
- Food Safety
- A Rotten Problem
Web exclusive video
- TRFEC Director Jay Brunner on the new research orchard and the future of tree fruit research
- Larry Schrader on apple sunburn
- IPM pioneer Stan Hoyt on his career as a WSU entomologist
Web exclusive: in the depths of the Holland Library archives we discovered two lost manuscripts written in the early 1950s by WSU tree fruit research pioneer Fred Overly: "From Whence Came: The Varieties of Fruit We Are Now Growing" and "History and Development of Apple Production in Washington."
A Trace of History: LA Students to Design, Build Display Garden.
Visit the Connections archives for all our great back issues.