About Our Endowment

The UC Fruit & Nut Research and Information Center Endowment Fund was established in the Department of Pomology during 2002 to support our mission:

To aid coordination and dissemination of University of California (UC) research-based information, accomplishments, and statewide research and extension activities related to fruit and nut crops.

Initial funding came from a portion of sales by Foundation Plant Services (FPS) of pistachio seed generated from a UCB-I pistachio tree in the research program of UC Pomology Specialist, Louise Ferguson and located at Kearney Agricultural Center. The original cross of this tree was developed by Dr. Lee Ashworth of the Dept. of Pathology at UC Berkeley - hence the name UCB-I.

The interest on this endowment is used to partially support some of the following activities:

• Coordinating UC-generated and other fruit and nut crop information into easily used and timely Web sites:

• Fruit & Nut Research and Information Center
• California Backyard Orchard
• The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Plant Transformation Facility
• Air Quality Effects Laboratory

• Facilitating internal communication among all UC personnel involved in fruit and nut research and extension through a combination of listserv groups and calendars.
• Coordinating research-related conferences and meetings, and providing hands-on training sessions that further our mission.
• Seeking to determine fruit and nut crop research and industry needs, particularly those with cross-commodity application, and hosting an annual research coordination meeting involving UC Liaison officers, commodity group research chairs, and commodity group research coordinators to facilitate research coordination among the various California fruit commodity groups and the University programs.
• Coordinating related grant application and project development. Examples, supported by six commodity groups, are the interactive chilling hour calculator and harvest prediction modules located at Weather Services. Cooperating with the other Research and Information Centers (RICs) and ANR computer support in pursuing our mission. Though methods differ, our missions are similar.

If you have any questions about the UC Fruit & Nut Research and Information Center Endowment, or the UC Fruit & Nut Research and Information Center, please call me at (559) 646-6541, (530)752-0507, or contact me by e-mail (louise@uckac.edu).

Contribution Form

Thank you,

Louise Ferguson
Director, UC Fruit & Nut Research and Information Center