Knowing there may be some risk in looking like a spoilsport, the folks at Pink Lady America are defying tradition by asking those giving not-so-healthy gifts on Valentine’s Day to instead consider more nutritious alternatives.

A package of $20 million in research funding approved by Congress for the benefit of the U.S. citrus industry will largely be used to help find a cure for Huanglongbing — a devastating vector-carried disease now endemic in Florida — and to help develop biological controls to keep the Asian citrus psyllid, which can spread the disease, from ever reaching endemic proportions in California.

Columbia Reach Pack, part of the Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers group of grower-packers, began packing on its newly installed line in mid-January, according to Scott Marboe, marketing director for Wenatchee, WA-based Oneonta.

Columbia Reach, located in Yakima, WA, began marketing through Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers more than a decade ago, and Marboe said apples produced by the operation are sorted and packed by state-of-the-art equipment.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — The 2014 Tropical Plant Exhibition, billed as America's largest tropical plant show, drew about 6,000 visitors to the Broward County Convention Center, here, Jan. 22-24, where 400 exhibitors in 800 booths created an indoor garden of tropical plants covering 200,000 square feet.

Dana Rady credits the Wisconsin potato industry leadership for a long list of recent marketing advances.  

Rady, the director of promotion, communication and consumer education for the Wisconsin Potato & Vegetable Growers Association, based in Antigo, WI, recently reviewed this marketing program with The Produce News.

The Sanfillipo Produce story begins in 1899 in Porto Empedocle, Sicily, a former Greek colony founded two millennia earlier and named for a Greek philosopher.

Today, the scenic, southwestern port city is a tourist destination. In the late 1800s, however, Porto Empedocle was a poor, remote town — one where Salvatore Sanfillipo was struggling to provide for his wife Vincenza and their two sons.