April 2020 - 1

National Onion
Association president
lobbies for change
New products, use of
beneficials emerge to
address grower needs
8
14
22
A Q&A with MSU
greenhouse educator
Heidi Lindberg
April 2020 | Volume 54 |
Issue 4
Five Crowns Marketing expands year-round marketing
Joe Colace, left, and his brother William Colace own Five Crowns Marketing, a grower, packer and shipper of fresh fruits and vegetables. Photos: Five Crowns.
By Stephen Kloosterman
Associate Editor
Crops production spanning the
calendar year is a great marketing
capability - that's why California's Five
Crowns Marketing has evolved into a
shipping-packing operation that sources
produce from several countries in both
the American continents.
The owners - brothers Joe and
Bill Colace - with their sons are an
Italian family that has been growing
in southeastern California's Imperial
Valley for three generations. They're
very attached to their neighbors and
the land - a low, desert valley with sand
and clay soils, irrigated by the Colorado
River. They farm 3,500 acres, producing
sweet corn and cantaloupe melons and
growing forage for crop rotation.
But while tilling its home valley,
and from its headquarters in Brawley,
California, the operation has been open to
working with growers at home and abroad.
The company in January announced
plans to expand - doubling its asparagus
business, sourcing berries from a larger
area and adding new wet vegetables like
cabbage, cilantro and Brussel sprouts to sell
alongside their asparagus.
Five Crowns sells asparagus from
Mexico and Peru; blueberries from
British Columbia; and melons and sweet
corn from its neighbors in the valley.
Generations of growth
The family tradition of growing crops
goes back to Europe. Joseph Colace Sr.
grew grapes and olives in Naples, Italy,
before immigrating to America with his
wife and three sons. The family in 1952
moved from Philadelphia to El Centro,
California; the three brothers started a
packing and shipping company there,
called Colace Brothers, that dealt mainly
in iceberg lettuce and cantaloupe melons.
Colace Brothers closed in 1985, but the
next generation remained in the picture.
Two brothers, Joseph III and Bill, started
See GROWER, page 5
Robot tapped for strawberry
phenotyping to boost breeding
By Stephen Kloosterman
Associate Editor
The academic developer of a
robot for row crops will soon test its
viability for speeding up strawberry
breeding programs.
North Carolina State University
(NCSU) Biological and Agricultural
Engineering Assistant Professor Sierra
Young said she's looking forward to
working again with TerraSentia - the
commercialized version of a prototype
she built as a student at the University
of Illinois.
" The prototype that I helped work on
and build was much different than the
one that they are using now, " she said.
" But that core idea of getting architecture
traits and being able to have a small robot
between rows stayed the same. ... It's
really exciting to see how it's progressed,
and I'm really excited to use it again. "
TerraSentia crawls in the rows between
plants where airborne drones can't
see. The early version of the robot she
developed was built for phenotyping -
visually checking plants in the row for
desired traits. They first used it in rows of
sorghum, whose leafy canopies made it
difficult for airborne drones to distinguish
See ROBOT, page 6

April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2020