The state of Washington has a thriving fruit tree business — and if the state department of agriculture has anything to say about it, that will continue. As part of that effort, the Washington State Department of Agriculture recently dedicated a new greenhouse built to support the state's fruit tree industry.

The new, larger greenhouse will help protect the state's fruit tree industry from virus diseases. The facility has a range of automated features, including improved temperature controls and a watering system that provides higher capacity to test registered trees than in the past.

The new facility is 156 feet by 30 feet, nearly 4,800 square feet, and is at Washington State University's Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center. The greenhouse is built on 7.5 acres leased from WSU.

The new building has three separate growing bays, with individual temperature controls to better duplicate temperature ranges where fruit tree viruses can thrive. This makes symptoms readily discernable, boosting the effectiveness of virus indexing. The facility also has work areas for potting, and a walk-in cooler. A separate storage building houses equipment.

This facility will replace a smaller, traditional WSU-owned greenhouse that had minimal temperature control and was used by WSDA for decades.

The Fruit Tree Planting Stock Certification Program has nearly 35,000 registered mother trees that serve as a source for the propagation of trees that provide millions of high-quality trees to the industry annually. The trees are grown by WSDA-certified nurseries that acquire stock from the Clean Plant Center-Northwest, which is also at WSU's facility and part of the National Clean Plant Network. This is one of only three clean plant centers for fruit trees in the United States.

Washington fruit trees are sold worldwide. Producing nursery trees free of viruses is key to the success of Washington's fruit trees, which are essential to the states apple, pear and cherry industries.

Construction of the greenhouse and installation of the specialized equipment took more than two years to complete. The project cost $750,000,and used funds provided through assessments on nurseries that sell Washington-grown fruit trees.

Source: Washington State Department of Agriculture