- Author: Diane Nelson
- Contact: Mary E. Reed
- Contact: Elizabeth Jeanne Mitcham
It takes a lot of knowledge and training to successfully handle produce from farm to plate. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a mechanism that helped produce industry employers recognize qualified applicants and helped applicants validate their postharvest qualifications?
Now there is, thanks to the UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center’s new Produce Professional Certificate Program, the first of its kind in the world. Led by a cadre of the most respected experts in postharvest technology, the certificate program covers everything from safety, new technologies, physiology, harvesting, cooling, transportation, ripening, marketing fresh produce and more.
Participants view a lettuce field-packing...
- Editor: Mary E. Reed
- Author: Mary Lu Arpaia
When you were going to school, was there any single course, or professor, who helped you more clearly define, or even played a role in changing, your goals for the future?
Two events greatly influenced where I am today.
First, after graduating from UC Berkeley (UCB) with a Botany degree I went to Sierra Leone, West Africa to visit my then boyfriend (later husband for 23 years), and ended up teaching secondary school there. I was thinking about going to graduate school in ecology. While in Sierra Leone, a professor from Rutgers (B. L. Pollack) came to give training to the agricultural Peace Corp volunteers, which I attended even though I was not a volunteer. I spoke to him about my...
- Author: Pam Devine
Postharvest technology. Hmmm. What does that even mean to you? Like most people, you’ve probably never thought about it, but it actually affects you every day. At least whenever you eat fruits and vegetables, and let’s face it, we all need to be eating more fruits and vegetables.
Working at the Postharvest Technology Center, I often think about how to spread our mission of how to reduce postharvest losses and improve the quality, safety and marketability of fresh horticultural products. Part of doing this is educating consumers about making good choices so they have a better experience eating fruits and vegetables. And, if consumers have a better experience with fruits and vegetables, we eat more of them....
- Author: Mary E. Reed
On June 25, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, presented an award for Excellent Contribution to Global Postharvest Horticulture to University of California, Davis Professor Emeritus Dr. Adel Kader. The award was presented at the 7th International Postharvest Symposium at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur. This was a very well-attended event, with more than 600 people in attendance who responded to the award with rousing approval.
Recently, the Malaysian government has targeted a 40 percent increase in agricultural productivity by 2020, and one of the key components of this goal is to significantly decrease their current 30-40 percent rate of...
- Author: Mary Lu Arpaia
- Contributor: Adel A Kader
- Contributor: James F Thompson
- Contributor: Mary E. Reed
By Mary Lu Arpaia
My association with Gordon goes back nearly 35 years to some of the very earliest days as a new graduate student here in Davis. Sometimes the best things that happen to you are unplanned. That is how I first met Gordon. I had been accepted into graduate school in the Pomology Department but did not have the grades to be offered an assistantship; instead I was offered work study. I went to the work study office and found a job posting in the Pomology Department to work in postharvest. Now, I had planned to do something in the field, but needed a job to pay the bills. And I wanted a job in the department that I had been accepted to as a graduate student. That job was working for Gordon and that was...