The recent announcement of a record-breaking $27 million donation to WSU is a sign that the university remains competitive and connected around the world, said Pete Jacoby, associate dean of College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences.

“I think it is about the best indication one could receive that we are on the cutting edge, and we are honoring the land grant mission of WSU,” Jacoby said. “It also implies that we have a global reach.”

The donation comes from a new tax passed by a vote from apple and pear growers throughout the state. Growers agreed to donate $1 for every ton of fruit produced to fund tree fruit studies conducted at WSU research centers in Prosser and Wenatchee for the next eight years.

As the director of the Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center at WSU Prosser, Jacoby knows research projects at his facility will receive a good portion of the money. However, he will have to wait a little longer to find out just how much of the donation will go his way.

“We haven’t heard directly how they want to allocate that funding,” he said.

So far, the general idea of what the money will accomplish is clear, said Ben McLuen, assistant director of development for CAHNRS.

“They want to have the best researchers in the world working on their issues in their environment,” McLuen said.

But those involved at the university and in tree fruit industry still need to figure out which specific research projects will receive funding from the donation, he said.

The money will sponsor six new professors, each hired to focus on a specific area of tree fruit research between the centers in Wenatchee and Prosser, McLuen said.

Those areas are: physiology, pomology, crop protection, molecular biology, soil health and productivity and creating automated orchard systems, said Jay Brunner, director of the Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee.  

“It’s likely, and it makes sense, that the automation would go to Prosser,” Brunner said, alluding to the fact that the Prosser research center houses the Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems.

One of those automated agricultural tools includes a hydraulic-operated platform that picks fruit in the field, enabling workers to gather fruit without having to stand on hazardous ladders.

“There are a lot of injuries that occur from people falling off ladders and things,” Jacoby said.

A few of the central goals of the donors are to fund studies that will improve pest and disease management strategies while maximizing growth and enhancing safety for workers picking fruit in the fields.

Whichever research projects the funding ends up supporting, Jacoby said it will go toward something fundamentally important for the state’s $6 billion tree fruit industry and the rest of the world beyond Washington.

“All of these programs are actually global in their perspective,” he said. “About one-third of Washington’s tree fruit is exported each year.”  

While Jacoby and his colleagues wait for the rest of the details, McLuen and others at the university are working with a group of volunteers and industry leaders to raise an additional $10 million during the next year for tree fruit research. The money would go toward modernizing equipment and infrastructure and building more orchards at the Prosser and Wenatchee research centers.

“At the end of the day, they need those facilities,” McLuen said.