VINELAND, NJ — How each new spring produce season begins in New Jersey depends on the weather during the previous winter and early-spring months. That’s just mother nature.

For example, the 2012 New Jersey spring produce season started earlier than in many, many decades, thanks to an unusually warm winter and early spring.

With a return to more normal temperatures during the most recent winter and early spring, the 2013 New Jersey spring produce season started with “fairly regular timing,” according to Skip Consalo, president at The Fresh Wave.

Freshness is the name of the game at PEAKfreshUSA, located in Lake Forest, CA.

The company and its partner, XPEDX, are working together to ensure that cherry growers in the Pacific Northwest can provide their own customers with packaging that extends product shelf life and guarantees freshness.

North Carolina State University has gained support from the U.S. Army to create functional food ingredients from fruits and vegetables that will be used to develop healthier, more portable combat rations for soldiers. Researchers with N.C. State's Plants for Human Health Institute, located at the N.C.

Along with a full schedule of events, both educational and social, that has always marked the Southeast Produce Council’s fall conference, the council has announced that Bobby Bowden, Florida State University’s legendary football coach, will deliver the keynote speech Sept. 27 at the general session of the 2013 conference.

As the Vidalia onion season started in mid-April, growers feared they had a disaster on their hands. With seed stem bolting through the crop, it appeared that as much as half the Vidalia deal would disappear. For the first half of the season those projections were correct.

Moonlight Cos. and Wawona Packing Co. have reached an agreement with Sun Pacific Marketing to supply clementines and mandarins that will be marketed under the "Cuties" brand.