Valent BioSciences has registered Accede PGR for peaches and nectarines, a breakthrough practice for thinning tender fruit growers in the U.S. David Hipple has participated in product trials in his Beamsville, Ontario peach orchard with hopes that a label extension will be granted in Canada.

The farmgate value of greenhouse vegetable production is 36 per cent of the approximately $6 billion of Canadian horticultural produce. Currently, lettuce is a small slice of the greenhouse vegetable sector, but it’s well positioned for rapid growth.

Growers such as Mike Chromczak have a big crop protection responsibility – in his case 2,000 acres of asparagus, watermelon and rotational crops of corn, soybeans and wheat near Brownsville, Ontario. In future, biologicals will be a bigger part of the product mix.

Dusty Zamecnik, EZ Grow Farms, is launching a 19-acre glass propagation greenhouse near Langton, Ontario. Building on years of experience with bare-root plants, he’s learned to grow plug plants to meet specific needs of the burgeoning greenhouse industry centered in Leamington, Ontario.

The Grape Growers of Ontario is nurturing a young growers’ group that has its own communications and government relations sub-committees. The Next Generation Committee is chaired by Jessica Solanki (L) at Niagara-on-the-Lake. She is joined by fellow growers Connor Watson and Mark Lepp.