Datepac LLC, a leading U.S. packer and shipper of Medjool dates, has invested in new controlled-environment drying rooms to ensure food safety and strict product quality of its “Bard Valley Natural Delights” brand of Medjool dates.

Double D Farms, a grower-packer-shipper of organic and conventional blueberries located southwest of Fresno, CA, is already harvesting limited quantities of conventional blues from its hoophouses. “We will see production increasing gradually as we get into May and June,” Director of Sales Gurdeep Billan told The Produce News April 18. “Our organic blueberries have a later start, and we should be harvesting late April early May this year.

Prosser, WA-based Sunset Produce LLC is a family partnership dedicated to moving top-quality onions to the marketplace.

“We’re a very large company that’s been built from the ground up,” said Brenden Kent, vice president of sales and marketing.

The company is owned by the Robert and Duane Munn families, fourth-generation farmers. “The company was formed in 1989,” Mr. Kent told The Produce News. “But the brothers have been farming since the 1970s.”

The formula for California blueberry production can be summarized simply. “You bloom in March. You pray in April. You pick in May,” Alex Ott, executive director of the California Blueberry Commission, told The Produce News on April 10.

Those lucky enough to be attending the United Fresh 2012 in Dallas will have had ample opportunity to experience some world-class cuisine, starting with the opening reception April 30.

Kent Rathbun, executive chef and owner of five of Texas’s most popular restaurants, including Abacus in Dallas, is overseeing the menu and preparations for the expected approximately 800 people at “A Taste of Dallas Opening Party” at the Dallas Arboretum.

HERMOSILLO, SONORA -- About 13 percent more table grapes for export will be coming out of Sonora during 2012 than the year before, the growers´ association said.