Two workshops – one for blueberry growers and another for apples – on “GAP for Food Safety: Preparedness for Third Party Audits for Blueberry Production” will be held at the Trevor Nichols Research Complex in Fennville, Michigan this winter.

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The “Intensive Blueberry IPM Scout Training Program” will be held on March 15-16 at the Fillmore Conference room in West Olive, MI. This is the classroom portion of the two segment training program. Hands-on training sessions will be May 27 and June 17.

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Randy Beaudry and Carolina Contreras...Despite the fact that the Honeycrisp apple fruit has been grown commercially in the United States for nearly 20 years (Honeycrisp was first planted in 1962 as seed produced from a 1960 cross of Macoun and Honeygold, as part of the University of Minnesota apple breeding program and released in 1991), its production has only recently been significant enough to warrant the development of storage strategies to hold it beyond three to four months of refrigerated air storage.

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Bill Shane...Peach growers are always looking for ways to improve their profitability. The 2010 Spring Peach Update is a day long meeting with educational sessions and discussions on growing, packing and marketing high quality peaches.

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Beth Bishop...With the start of the new year, Enviro-weather has a new look.
Last year, in response to user comments and requests, Enviro-weather staff began a redesign of the existing website. We evaluated several designs, and solicited feedback from users and work groups before selecting the final version.

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The 53rd IFTA annual conference will be held February 27 through March 6 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, MI.

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Your crops are vulnerable! Hail, wind, drought, flood and more can threaten your crops and your livelihood. Learn how crop insurance and other programs provide protection for crop loss. This workshop is free for growers.

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This is the final set of articles for the 2009 season of the Fruit CAT Alert newsletter. Here for an index of articles on topics covered this year. Educators and specialists have worked hard to inform readers about current issues and crop production throughout the last few months.

We will continue to publish timely articles to the Fruit CAT Alert web site. Not signed up for our email notification? Send an email to catalert@msu.edu with your full name and note that you wish to subscribe to the landscape edition. You can also sign up to received RSS feeds when new articles are posted. Look for the bright orange RSS feed logo on the right side of this page.

We love to hear feedback from our readers. Do you have a comment or suggestion? Please send it to catalert@msu.edu. Indicate whether you are referring to our fruit, vegetable, field crop or landscape edition.

Thank you. - Joy Landis, editor and Andrea Buchholz, asst. editor

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