- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The sub-tropical fruit lychee could be a new crop for farmers along California's coast, according to Mark Gaskell, the UC Cooperative Extension advisor to small-scale farmers in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
A ping-pong-ball-sized tree fruit with white, jelly-like flesh, the red-skinned lychee is popular among Asian consumers. They appear to be adapted to roughly the same conditions as avocados, Gaskell said. Since the fruit is well accepted in areas where it is available, the potential market acceptability of lychees is high. And, demand for fresh lychees already exists in Asian markets that carry whole, frozen, unshelled...
- Author: Pamela M. Geisel
Blackberries and boysenberries are amazing fruits. The fleeting fruit bearing nature of these productive plants are to be truly appreciated by pie and jam connoisseurs alike. Berries are a very low glycemic index foods (low in sugar) and a great treat for nutritionally conscious eaters.
Every gardener can enjoy and/or hate a productive berry plant. The fruit production is confined to a very short season but the plant can take on enormous proportions if left unchecked. One must be ever diligent to keep the berry plants confined to the planting row and kept trellised to avoid the “overgrown” berry heap in the backyard. Nonetheless, if a person has a place in the sun for a four-foot-wide row of berries, the rewards are...
- Author: John Stumbos
Healthy eating has gotten complicated. Fresh fruits and vegetables pack the produce aisle as never before. And new food products with added health benefits are being introduced all the time. Yet the food supply, and the agricultural system that supports it, has become increasingly criticized for its impact on the waistlines of millions of people in the United States.
“Agriculture and conventional food systems have provided the basis for long and healthy lives, and much of that improvement can be traced to healthier diets,” says UC Davis plant sciences professor Alan Bennett. “At the same time, we are faced with a growing critique that conventional food...
- Author: Jim Coats
A wise man once said that God made weather so farmers would have something to complain about. Or maybe he was just a wise-acre.
One very wet spring a few years ago I was talking with another wise man, the late UC plant pathologist Joe Ogawa. I told him that the fruit trees must be enjoying the rainy weather. Joe's response: "Oh, the trees are probably enjoying it—but the fungi are so excited they're jumping up and down!"
I was working that spring with Joe and his colleague Harley English on their book, Diseases of Temperate Zone Tree Fruit and Nut Crops. Sure enough, our meetings were often interrupted by phone calls from farm...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A report released by the Centers for Disease Control in September 2009 confirms what most moms already know - high school students don't eat anywhere close to enough fruit and vegetables. According to the report, only a third get two servings of fruit a day, and only 13 percent say they get three servings of vegetables.
Adults don't have much higher marks. The CDC said only 33 percent of adults get two servings of fruit, and 27 percent three servings of vegetables.
Compare that to the recommendation in the federal dietary guidelines presented on the My Pyramid Web site. The guidelines say, for...