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CapitalPress.com
July 28, 2017
Making harvests more efficient
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Washington State University plant pathologist Gary Chastagner
researches Christmas trees at the school’s research center in
Puyallup.
Seeking a better Christmas tree
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
PUYALLUP, Wash. — As
befits a scientist who studies
Christmas trees, Gary Chast-
agner discusses his research
with good cheer.
Not that the job is a holi-
day. The Washington State
University plant pathologist
tackles problems that would
make a pre-reformed Grinch
smile.
Slugs and yellowjackets
lurk in firs, and no one wants
that under the tree.
Like other crops, Christ-
mas trees are threatened by
pests and pathogens. Un-
like other crops, Christmas
trees compete with artificial
facsimiles. An organization
called the American Tree
Christmas Association touts
the purported ecological ben-
efits of faux over fir.
“Everyone knows the envi-
ronmental value of trees, and
here we are, selling trees! That
have been cut off!” Chastag-
ner said. “I don’t know of any
other agricultural crop mar-
keted as a tree — that’s been
harvested. Even though it’s
grown as a crop and replanted.”
Chastagner, 68, has studied
Christmas trees over a nearly
40-year career at WSU’s re-
search center in Puyallup.
The research has been
wide-ranging. He evaluated
tree stands to see which ones
hold enough water to slake a
cut fir’s thirst (very few). He
set up a Christmas tree lot in
Tempe, Ariz., to test how Pacif-
ic Northwest firs weather desert
heat. The lot was not profitable,
but the venture yielded infor-
mation to help other retailers,
Chastagner said.
The American Phytopatho-
logical Society awarded him
the Excellence in Extension
Award in 2011 for his research.
A university profile called him
“Mr. Christmas Tree.”
“Boy, as an industry, did
we get lucky when he decided
to do research in our industry,”
said Philomath, Ore., Christ-
mas tree grower Betty Malone,
chairwoman of the national
Christmas Tree Promotion
Board.
“You can trust what he says
because he is so precise about
his research,” she said.
Chastagner said he’s not
sure when he will retire. But
until he does, he will continue
working on a career-long proj-
ect: Keeping Christmas trees
Western
Innovator
Gary Chastagner
Age: 68
Position: Washington State
University professor of
plant pathology at Puyallup
research center
Education: Bachelor’s
degree, 1971 California State
University-Fresno; master’s
degree 1973 and Ph.D. 1976
University of California-Davis.
Favorite Christmas tree:
Noble fir
from making a mess.
“If we can eliminate needle
shedding, that would be a ma-
jor improvement in the overall
quality of trees,” Chastagner
said.
It was needles that got
Chastagner into Christmas tree
research.
Chastagner was hired in
1978 by WSU to research orna-
mental bulbs and turf grass.
At the time, however, the
plant disease Swiss needle cast
was rampant among Douglas
firs in the Pacific Northwest.
Needles turned yellow and fell
off. Some 84 percent of the
Douglas firs on Oregon and
Washington Christmas tree
plantations were infected in
1981, according to a USDA
publication.
The Legislature gave WSU
money to study the problem,
but the school needed a re-
searcher.
“I was the new kid on the
block. The dean came into my
office — it’s probably the only
time the dean has been in my
office — and wanted to know
if I would be willing to work
on Christmas trees,” Chastag-
ner said.
Research and solutions fol-
lowed, namely the application
of an inexpensive fungicide.
Only 13 percent of thousands
of trees surveyed between
1987 and 2007 had the dis-
ease, according to the same
USDA publication.
“We got a clear path to
solving the problem, thanks to
Gary,” Malone said.
This story was first pub-
lished Oct. 1, 2016.
MOSES LAKE, Wash. —
J.J. Dagorret doesn’t make de-
tailed drawings. When he gets
an idea he mulls it over in his
mind.
“I get irritable. I need my
concentration. I can be like a
mad scientist,” he says.
When he’s ready, he tells his
workers what he needs. What to
cut. What to weld. What goes
here. What goes there. How
long that needs to be. No, it
needs to go like that.
“It’s all wrapped up in my
head and I can see it. It takes
me eight weeks to build a pro-
totype. I like the nuts and bolts
side of things,” he says.
Dagorret, 41, is an innova-
tor who is beginning to make
his mark on the tree fruit in-
dustry. His self-propelled har-
vest assist platform, the Bandit
Xpress, which he designed in
2012, has become a hot item
for picking and thinning apples
and pruning and training trees.
Automated Ag Systems,
Dagorret’s Moses Lake com-
pany, has built and sold about
450 Bandit Xpress platforms
from 2013 through 2016.
Most of them went to grow-
ers in Washington, but others
also went to Oregon, Cali-
fornia, New York, Michigan,
New Zealand, Australia, South
America and South Africa.
About 70 of the 275 on or-
der this year have already been
built, and production capacity
will double next year when
the company gains full use of
a 60,000-square-foot facility it
bought in January.
Dagorret says he needs the
space to keep up with demand.
“We have guys screaming
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Kelly and J.J. Dagorret, owners of Automated Ag Systems in Moses Lake, Wash., in front of the
assembly line for Bandit Xpress harvest-assist platforms.
How it works
Western Innovator
J.J. Dagorret
Occupation: Owner, Automated Ag
Systems LLC, Moses Lake, Wash.
Age: 41
Born: Chico, Calif., raised in Corning.
Family: Wife, Kelly, company office manager; son, J.P., 18, also
works in the company.
Education: Graduate of Corning High School, 1994; welding certifi-
cate, Butte Community College, Chico, 1996.
Work History: Worked for Orchard Carriers, a produce bin carrier
manufacturer in Corning, during and after high school; bought the
company in 2000; sold the company in 2005; started Automated
Ag Systems in Tampa, Fla., 2007; moved the company to Moses
Lake, Wash., in 2011.
for machines. It’s hard to grow
with demand,” he said.
He sees no end in sight to
the growth the next several
years as more orchardists see
that a $63,000 Bandit Xpress
is 35 percent more efficient,
and safer, than picking apples
with ladders, he said.
That’s a savings as labor
grows more scarce and expen-
sive. Simplicity, quality and
affordability are what growers
want, Dagorret said.
Up to four pickers are teth-
ered to the Bandit Xpress plat-
form, two fore and two aft,
on areas that are adjustable in
height and width. They pick into
conventional bags and gently
dump apples from bags into a
bin that is raised to the platform
with a hydraulic scissor lift. Bins
are set out by tractors in advance
and removed when full.
The 22-foot-long, 7-foot-
wide self-propelled platform is
powered by a 24-horsepower
Honda engine that can go eight
hours on 3.5 to 4 gallons of
gas.
Dagorret soon will offer
the Bandit Xpress .5 that will
be four feet shorter and a foot
narrower to better fit 10-foot-
wide alleys in V-trellis orchard
systems.
This story was first pub-
lished April 17, 2017.
Keeping apples fresh in storage
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
WENATCHEE, Wash. —
When Jim Mattheis was a boy
in Lennox, S.D., he was curious
about the orchard his friend’s
family had: It didn’t produce
any apples.
It wasn’t a commercial or-
chard. It was just a small, home
orchard that had been neglect-
ed for years. The trees hadn’t
been pruned or sprayed. Spring
frosts took their toll. Finding an
apple was a novelty.
The orchard didn’t bear
much fruit but it did spawn an
interest in horticulture in young
Mattheis. Half a century later,
Mattheis, now 59, is regarded
as a transformative innovator
by the apple industry.
As a plant physiologist and
research leader at the USDA
Agriculture Research Service
Tree Fruit Research Laborato-
ry, Mattheis has been the key
figure in the testing and devel-
opment of the synthetic mol-
ecule 1-methylcyclopropene
— also called 1-MCP — which
slows the ripening of apples
to keep them fresher longer in
storage. Industry packers and
shippers worldwide have used
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Jim Mattheis, plant physiol-
ogist at the USDA ARS Tree
Fruit Research Laboratory in
Wenatchee, Wash., demon-
strates removing a sample of
ethylene gas from the core of
an apple.
it for 12 years, and Mattheis
keeps refining best practices
for new technologies and apple
varieties.
Paradigm shift
Extending the quality and
shelf life of apples by using
1-MCP has represented a “para-
digm shift” as significant to the
industry as the development of
controlled-atmosphere storage
in the 1960s, Jim McFerson, di-
rector of the Washington State
University Tree Fruit Research
and Extension Center, has said.
No one can really pinpoint
how much, but it’s safe to say
1-MCP has added millions of
dollars in grower returns since
widespread usage began in
2004. AgroFresh Inc. of Spring
House, Pa., released it commer-
cially as SmartFresh in 2002.
“Jim and his program team
have not only been world lead-
ers in developing robust ap-
proaches to using SmartFresh
technology, but have consis-
tently kept our Pacific North-
west tree fruit industry on the
cutting edge of technological
innovations in fruit handling
and storage that enhance our
ability to deliver the consumer
a consistently superior eating
experience,” McFerson said.
As the laboratory’s leader
for 14 years, Mattheis has guid-
ed it to a “pre-eminent position
in tree fruit physiology and
soil-borne diseases,” he said.
Mattheis works well with
the industry and the “industry
would not be the same without
his work,” McFerson said.
This story was first pub-
lished Aug. 5, 2016.
Western
Innovator
Jim Mattheis
Age: 59
Born: Sioux Falls, S.D.
Raised: Lennox, S.D.
Family: Wife, Darcee, is a
social worker. Their son, Carl,
21, is training to become an
aircraft mechanic.
Education: Bachelor’s
degree in biology, Augustana
College, Sioux Falls, S.D.,
1979; master’s degree in
public health, University of
Minnesota, 1981; doctorate
in horticulture, Washington
State University, 1987.
Occupation, work his-
tory: Plant physiologist,
USDA Agriculture Research
Service Tree Fruit Research
Laboratory, Wenatchee,
Wash., since 1988; laboratory
research leader since 2002.
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