More than 600 members and guests honored the installation of Liane Mast as chairman of the board of the Fresh Produce & Floral Council at the organization's annual dinner dance, which was held Jan. 26 in Anaheim, CA.

Ms. Mast is in charge of the floral departments for Stater Bros. Markets, one of the nation's larger independent regional supermarket chains, headquartered in Colton, CA.

AgriWorld Exchange, an on-line agri-trading marketplace, announced that Cal Citrus Packing Co., with a grower base of 4,000 acres, has signed an agreement to trade produce using the AgriWorld Exchange on-line service.

The agreement will enable the company to offer its 2.5 million cartons of fresh citrus annually via on-line, real-time exchange.

A new 25-pound carton for Washington state's famed Red Wing variety of onions is finding good reception from high-end foodservice customers, according to Bill (Sweet Willie) Brownfield of Sweet Clover Produce.

From his Walla Walla, WA, office, Mr. Brownfield told The Produce News that the new carton provides better protection for the onions, and in addition to the Red Wings grown by Grigg & Sons in Quincy, WA, the box will be used to ship sweets and yellows.

Increasing customer demand spurred by the success of its non-stop unit train with guaranteed fifth-morning arrival from Washington state to upstate New York has prompted Railex LLC to add a second weekly unit train, which is scheduled to make its maiden voyage on Feb. 9 and arrive late at night on Feb. 15

Railex, a division of ADS Management LLC, operates the 55-car unit trains year round from two state-of-the-art, freight-forward distribution terminals in Wallula, WA, and Rotterdam, NY.

Jarrod Snider, the national account manager for Frontera Produce in Dallas, has multiple perspectives on the produce industry.

As a cattle rancher, the 30-year-old runs a business, Progressive Genetics, in Waxahachie, TX, with his father, Charles Snider. The father-and-son operation raises and promotes purebred cattle through exhibitions, annual production sales and the incorporation of such technologies as embryo transfer and artificial insemination.

The Hass Avocado Board is continuing a tradition it established several years ago of targeting the Super Bowl as a time for heavy avocado promotions in step with the Super Bowl being one of the highest-consumption days for avocados.

In fact, the board estimated that consumers would eat 49.5 million pounds of Hass avocados during this year's Super Bowl.