UFO's Are Coming!

UFO’s Are Coming! I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

I love old science fiction movies and the ones with the rubber aliens are my favorite. They always show the newspaper headlines of “Aliens Attack” or “UFO’s Invade Earth.” Well at a small patch of ground outside Prosser, Washington a whole slew of UFO’s are being tended to by human scientists. Northwest Ag reporter Lacy Gray has the story.

GRAY: The UFO’s in this case are actually “upright fruiting offshoots” and we are talking about a new way of developing cherry trees. Planted at an angle, young trees are trained to grow UFOs on a two-dimensional plane, putting more of their effort into developing a fruiting wall instead of the nonproductive wood typical of a traditional, three-dimensional canopy. This helps in mechanized harvesting. The project is being funded by a USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative (SCRI) grant to develop a sustainable, stem-free cherry production, processing, and marketing system. The UFO tree architecture is taking off around the world.

Improving sweet cherry production, processing, and marketing is more important than ever closer to home, in the Pacific Northwest. Washington, California, and Oregon ranked No. 1, 2, and 3 for U.S. sweet cherry production in 2010. At the same time, sweet cherry harvest requires the most investment of time and labor among all tree fruit operations. We’ll keep our eyes on these UFO’s as they continue to invade the tree fruit industry.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.