01/20/05 One hundred years at the Hort

The interactive presentation, 100 Years of the Washington State Horticultural Association, showed views of a past, a present, and a potential future for the major components of the tree fruit industry. Take for example, the importance of water to the industry. That means the significant irrigation projects over the last century, as well as the potential of the proposed Black Rock reservoir in the Yakima Basin. PRODUCER: This is significant because it will allow us to have sufficient water supply in dry years for many generations to come, while at the same time, significantly improve the habitat in the Yakima. Then there were the trends of pest management, trending away from chemical application to integrated pest management using organic techniques. It was part of the bigger issue of technological advances in the fruit industry. Who would have thought the wooden apple bin developed in the late 1950's is considered as a revolutionary concept in the industry? But Hort President Barclay Crane says that has been among a long line of advancements from controlled atmosphere storage to the current research into mechanical harvesting. CRANE/PRODUCER: It's the start of something incomprehensible to us. The industry will operate off robotics. It will be automated. The look into 100 years of the Washington State Horticultural Association continues in our next program.