05/26/06 Technology Roadmap pt. 2

Following the Technology Roadmap. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Manager of the Washington State Tree Fruit Research Commission, Jim McFerson seems optimistically scared about the future of the tree fruit industry. MCFERSON: We are competing with other apple producers but more importantly we are competing with Frito Lay and table grape growers and folks that simply don't want to eat fruit. We need to produce and get to the consumer fruit that is of an increasingly higher quality and not just redder fruit, not just sweeter fruit but we feel that without taking technological steps and staying current with technology and staying nimble, then ours is a dying industry and in many places it's a dead industry because we haven't been able to keep up and we've been unwilling to adopt technologies that we need to. McFerson is pleased with the collaboration efforts and its offshoot projects. MCFERSON: We've been successful in many millions of dollars of investment at the federal level in genetics and genomics and breeding. New positions at Washington State University and with the ARS facility in Washington. A national competitive branch program. In the state of Washington a brand new building at Prosser for precision agriculture. An Ag weather net system that will cover the whole state. These are all direct products, not of our individual actions but our group coming together and defining our priorities and working with our research partners at WSU or at the USDA ARS at the state and federal level. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.