Plant City, FL-based Wish Farms, an international grower and year-round marketer of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and pineberries, is proud to announce the hiring of Carlos Fear as director of berry genetics.

PanAmerican Seed® is pleased to continue its charitable give-back to less widely known causes through annual donations on behalf of Beacon® Impatiens. The disease-resistant Beacon series has brought light – and happiness – back to shade gardens worldwide.

Over the past seven years, Joe Bernardi, president of Bernardi & Associates Inc., and his family have raised more than half a million dollars for charities through the Kayla Bernardi BEE Positive Foundation.

“It really is more than monetary,” said Cathie Bernardi.  “It is about how many lives we can touch, and how far we can spread Kayla’s BEE Positive message.”

Watermelon is a unique fruit with compounds that may have health effects throughout the body, supporting normal cardiovascular and metabolic health. According to a new comprehensive review of the scientific literature on watermelon, eating watermelon regularly may help promote health. This research paper, authored by Britt Burton-Freeman and colleagues from Illinois Institute of Technology was recently published in the journal Current Atherosclerosis Reports.

Harps Food Stores Inc. has appointed J. Max Van Hoose to president.

Van Hoose is a northwest Arkansas native and graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1991 with a degree in industrial engineering. In 1997 after earning his MBA at the University of Kansas, Van Hoose returned to Arkansas to join Harps Food Stores as director of construction and equipment.  In 2002 he was named vice president of store planning and then later to executive vice president.

Freska Produce International has completed the construction of three ripening rooms capable of ripening three loads simultaneously at its Oxnard, CA, facility for use with mangos and avocados.

“These Ripening rooms are state-of-the-art and will benefit our end users,” said Jesus (Chuy) Loza of Freska Produce.

The rooms completed in January 2022 use Thermal Tech Ripening technology capable of ripening the company's mangos and avocados.