Professor honored to be named Apple Citizen of the Year

From the Basin Business Journal

Brunner-80WENATCHEE, Wash. – Jay Brunner picks up a clear plastic bag of fruit tree leaves infested with leafroller caterpillars. The leaves were brought in by growers, samples of leafrollers from their orchards.

Brunner smiles as he explains how they will be tested for resistance in order to find the correct control strategy. He obviously enjoys the work, saying normally a graduate student would do it but he likes to be involved, too.

Brunner
Jay Brunner, director of the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center, is the 2015 Apple Citizen of the Year. (WSU photo)

Brunner is director and professor at the Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee. He was selected as the Apple Citizen of the Year for the 2015 Apple Blossom Festival on May 2.

“It was a great surprise and a great honor,” he says, adding that when you look at who has been chosen in the past, “it’s an honor to be included in a group of people like that.”

Read the full story by Sheldon Townsend published by the Basin Business Journal at http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/basin_business_journal/dr-jay-brunner-honored-to-be-apple-citizen-of-the/article_850cbf6a-ef50-11e4-a74b-a377ceadf755.html

Learn more about the work done at the WSU research and extension center at http://www.tfrec.wsu.edu