As you drive through the Central Valley from now through September, no matter the time of day, you’ll likely have to swerve around trucks mounded impossibly high with tomatoes. This year promises to be a good year for processing tomatoes, with a projected 14.3 million tons harvested.
This would not be possible without the innovation of two UC Davis scientists in the 1950s. When plant breeder Jack Hanna and engineer Coby Lorenzen teamed up to invent a machine that could mechanically harvest tomatoes, no one thought they could do it. The laughing stock of the plant science department for more than a decade, the two made countless prototypes that failed — tomatoes split and turned to juice in the field, and the machine broke down after hitting clods of dirt.
Their perseverance is a hallmark of California agriculture and clearly has paid off as we watch the tomato trucks moving from the fields to the processing plants.
The article can be viewed at: UC Davis – Tomato harvester changed the industry.
