In late August, CAC released a call for research proposals to the international avocado research community. This call for proposals included the latest version of CAC’s Production Research Priorities document that was originally developed by the Production Research Committee in late 2024. That original priorities document was developed over several meetings, by having each committee member contribute ideas for research needs, divide those ideas into categories, and then ranking them.
Based on the original priorities document, CAC has funded a number of projects. These projects are listed at the end of the updated priorities document so the research community can see what has been funded, where gaps may still exist for specific priority topics, and have a general sense of what types of proposals have been successful in securing funding.
While the PRC is composed of 10 members representing the diversity of the California avocado industry — small growers, large growers, grove managers, PCAs, nursery producers, handlers and researchers — who converse with many different people in the industry, they by no means hear every concern from everyone. We invite you to review the research priorities document and provide feedback. If you have ideas for topics that may be missing or see topics that could be flushed out more, please reach out to CAC’s research program consultant, Dr. Tim Spann, at [email protected], so that we can invite you to attend a future PRC meeting to help improve the document for future calls for proposals.