Following six years of unprecedented growth for Idaho potatoes in international markets, the Eagle, ID-based Idaho Potato Commission has hired Amanda Albers as its first international marketing manager and has established new offices in Mexico, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

The main objective of the commission's expanded international division will be to mine opportunities in foreign markets and provide assistance to Idaho potato shippers wishing to export fresh potatoes overseas.

With record-breaking volumes of Jazz apples coming off the trees this season, Enza and Oppenheimer are sharing the abundance.

Washington Jazz volume is forecasted to grow over 30 percent in a single year, prompting the variety's owner, Enza, to invite Rainier Fruit Co. in Selah, WA, into a sub-agency marketing arrangement with Vancouver, BC-based The Oppenheimer Group.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack has designated 16 New Jersey counties as natural disaster areas to assist farms that suffered losses due to excessive heat and drought during the 2010 growing season.

Farmers in New Jersey's Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Salem, Somerset, Sussex and Warren counties may now access federal assistance programs for damages to their crops from the severe weather they endured.

PHILADELPHIA - Eugene Bailey, executive director of the Diamond State Port Corp. in Wilmington, DE, was named the recipient of the 13th annual Friend of Chile Award Nov. 18. The Chilean & American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia gives the honor. Arturo Fermandois, Chilean ambassador to the United States, presented the award.

First lady Michelle Obama hopes to donate at least 6,000 salad bars in schools in the next three years under a new initiative, Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools, launched Nov. 22, that teams the federal government with the produce industry to improve nutrition in school-age children.

At Riverside Elementary School in Miami, the first lady spent nearly an hour talking with children at the first school to receive donated salad bar equipment under the new initiative.

Texas citrus growers have voluntarily placed a temporary hold on shipping to other states as they deal with an outbreak of sweet orange scab first reported Oct. 12 in The Produce News.

Texas growers voluntarily halted citrus shipments to other states Nov. 4, and the ban was to be lifted Nov. 19 but has been extended indefinitely.

Ray Prewett, president of Texas Citrus Mutual in Mission, TX, said that the voluntary quarantine was a good-faith effort by the Texas industry to investigate the infestation further before potentially putting other states at risk.