Imagine a baby’s bottom exposed for the first time to the sun. That’s how a Washington State crop consultant thinks about apple fruitlets when they lose their protective fuzz and become vulnerable to environmental effects. In the last decade, Jeff Leonardini with Washington Fruit and Produce Company has changed his way of thinking when it comes to efforts to reduce sunburn in the apple orchards of the Yakima-based grower-shipper. He now starts thinking of sunburn long before the dog days of summer and begins his sunburn protection efforts when the “young, innocent, and vulnerable” fruitlets lose their fuzz and the […]