C.A.T.T.S. for organic post harvest, Pt.2

C.A.T.T.S. stands for Controlled Atmosphere / Temperature Treatment System, a new, box like, technology for post harvest. NEVEN: What it does is it applies a short term, high temperature treatment, under a controlled atmosphere. By running it under a low oxygen, high carbon dioxide environment, what we do is prevent the insects from acclimating to the heat, Lisa Neven of U.S.D.A.'s Yakima Agriculture Research Lab says the ultimate goal with C.A.T.T.S. is commercial development. NEVEN: The commercial company is actually located in the Netherlands. And they are in the process of investigating the applicability of this technology to what they currently do, and are working with the originator of the technology that I'm working with at the moment, which is Dan Black from Techni-systems, in order to come up with commercial units, and these are units that would treat twenty tons at a single time. But for now the best application for C.A.T.T.S. according to Neven and others appears to be in the organic tree fruit sector. NEVEN: We're trying to market this for the organics because it's a much smaller group, and until the technology is really out there and being used a lot, and we become more familiar with the technology, I think working with a smaller commodity group which would be the organic growers would be better mode to get the technology out there in the long run.