Last month, the Almond Leadership Program joined Almond Board staff in presenting a donation of over $500 to UC Davis’ ASABE Student Branch Robotics Team. This team’s main goal during the school year is to design and build an agricultural robot that will compete in a national ASABE Robotics Competition. To win the competition, the team’s autonomous robot must sort plants in a nursery faster than the other team’s robots. ABC funds will help cover expenses for the robot’s parts, etc., and the Almond Board of California’s logo will be placed on the robot.
Almond Leadership Program participants attended a two-day seminar at UC Davis, where they joined Almond Board staff in donating over $500 to UC Davis’ ASABE Student Branch Robotics Team.
“ABC’s donation to the robotics club shows our industry’s support and interest in precision agriculture and allows us to support future leaders in the tech space,” said Guangwei Huang, associate director of Food Research and Technology.
Leadership participants enjoyed the opportunity to meet UC Davis undergrads who are part of the robotics team as it broadened their scope of what robotics and further technology can do for the almond industry.
“Meeting the professors and students and seeing them in their element was really neat. All the individuals are extremely bright, and I am very excited for the future of the almond industry,” said participant Victor Thao of Bank of America, Merrill Lynch.
ABC presented this donation during the Leadership class’ two-day seminar at UC Davis. The seminar focused on everything from the future of almond biomass to food almond quality and food safety. Participants learned about the potential uses for torrefied almond shells, the history of the industry’s mandatory pasteurization program, the use of almond pollinator hulls in soil solarization and much more from professors working on that exact research.
“As a processor, I tend to view hulls and shells as waste. This seminar really showed me that hulls and shells have a potential to be as profitable as our almond meats,” said Leadership participant Kristina Qualls, who oversees the Food Safety, Quality Control, Pest Control and Sanitation divisions at South Valley Almond Company, LLC.
Throughout the seminar, participants gained a greater understanding of the Almond Board’s close relationship with UC Davis and the amount of insightful, forward-thinking research that takes place as a result of that relationship.
“For many decades, the Almond Board has funded research projects with multiple professors across a wide variety of departments at UC Davis,” said Huang.
UC Davis’ Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering (BAE) and Department of Food Science and Technology (FST) have produced research with significant findings and outcomes throughout its years of work with the Almond Board.
“In my 16 years working in the almond industry, I’ve always known that UC Davis does a lot of research on almonds, but the research I learned about during the seminar was beyond impressive,” said Dominique Camou of Famoso Nut Company.
Almond Leadership participants are currently hard at work on their special projects, which they will present before the entire class, their mentors and ABC staff this November. If you’re interested to learn more about the Almond Leadership Program, check out our website or email Jenny Nicolau, senior manager of Industry Relations and Communications, at jnicolau@almondboard.com.
