Bob Meek, chief executive officer of Wada Farms Marketing Group, based in Idaho Falls, ID, calls sweet potatoes a "sleeping giant."

Anthony Totta, a produce industry marketing expert, believes sweet potatoes "are an SKU that should be a category."

It is this belief that sweet potatoes are an underperforming and underdeveloped produce item that has led Dole Fresh Vegetables and Wada Farms to make a major push to reinvent the sweet potato in the collective mind of consumers.

The discovery of a disease-carrying psyllid in Fresno, CA, has heightened concerns of California citrus growers that their groves are at risk from, and may soon be infected by, a devastating pest-borne bacterial plant disease known as citrus greening, or huanglongbing (which is known as HLB).

Diseased trees also were recently discovered in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and there is concern that the disease could spread rapidly across Mexico's citrus-producing areas and then up into the United States.

WASHINGTON -- Businesses that handle leafy greens got a better picture of the proposed federal marketing agreement during an Aug. 19 webinar that trade groups hope gets the green light by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In June, a coalition of produce trade groups asked USDA for a marketing agreement that would cover a wide range of leafy greens in hopes of putting industry "in the driver's seat" on how to farm safe products, Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association, said during the hour-long event.

SCOTCH PLAINS, NJ -- During difficult economic conditions, such as those that exist today, start-up companies are anything but the norm. But for three produce veterans, the time was right to join forces and form their own firm.

Principals at both The Cranberry Network LLC and Habelman Bros. Co. have high hopes for this season's fresh cranberry crop in Wisconsin.

"Cranberries are still in their early stage of sizing, but indications are that with sustained warm temperatures, and barring any extreme weather events, we anticipate that Wisconsin's fresh cranberry season will meet our full expectations with respect to quality and quantity," Bob Wilson, managing member of The Cranberry Network, based in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, said in an Aug. 18 press release.

A new company has been formed by a group of New York apple growers to grow, pack, market and sell new advanced apple selections developed by the apple breeding program at Cornell University.

NYAG LLC was formed in March and has recently submitted a business plan to Cornell, whose apple breeding program is led by Susan Brown at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY.