Across the industry, growers are doing what they can to  empower themselves leading up to harvest, by seeking out tech solutions that create efficiencies, lighten the load against looming worker shortages, and help get as many good apples to market as possible.

Larger growers are benefitting from more advanced, technical innovations, like wireless sensors, predictive data modeling, automation, and robotics.  While these AgTech breakthroughs are effective for bigger productions, medium and small growers -- who make up 80-90% of orchards in some states -- see these technologies as out-of-reach, or not worth the squeeze, at their scale.

Medium and smaller growers are reporting their technology needs are not rooted in machinery or dashboards, but in flexibility and ease-of-use – allowing them to have more control during times of uncertainty. 

In these cases, proprietary applications of 1-MCP, an industry-known technology with over two decades of proven benefits, are helping growers keep their fruit firmer, and consistently protected, during storage -- without having to fumigate or seal off rooms.

Hazel Technologies has developed a time-release 1-MCP solution, Hazel 100™, packaged within a "sachet" just bigger than a sugar packet. The product is applied in seconds by simply dropping it into a box or bin of any apple variety and will provide firmness retention for months. Read more about the success of this tech in the trial below:  

A 2021 study, performed in partnership with Sacia Orchards, was designed to test Hazel 100™ for Apple’s ability to maintain firmness/pressure of a “treated” sample of apples vs. an “untreated” control sample.Two experiments took place. Both measured the “Flesh Firmness” of each set of apples at 0, 7, 10 and 14 days after they were transitioned from a cold storage environment to ambient storage.

Hear from Our Grower

"[While using Hazel 100™] we've gotten much greater retention of pressure on [our] fruit than we ever have in the past. We've kept Golden Delicious until April at 14 pounds pressure with nothing but the [Hazel 100™] product on it. And I gotta tell you, we’ve had difficulty keeping Golden Delicious in our CA rooms with that pressure, in April. I'm not sure the [Hazel] product [for short-term, as opposed to long-term CA]...isn't as good or better than a CA room."‍

Dano Simmons, Owner
Peace Valley Orchards, Inc.

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