Every year in June, when the potato plants bloomed, Jacqueline Zalewski would receive a bouquet of the blossoms from her husband, Jim.
Even after Jim died of pancreatic cancer in the spring of 2014, Jackie came home one day to find a potato blossom bouquet waiting for her on the front porch—a request Jim had made of one his fellow researchers at work.
Now, Jim Zalewski’s memory will live on not only in sweet moments like that one, but at the research center in Meridian, Idaho, where he helped advance agricultural research.
The company for which Jim worked, called 1,4Group, creates products to stop harvested potatoes from sprouting, allowing growers to store their potato harvest throughout the year without losing it to rot. The company revamped its research center this year with state-of-the-art potato storage research bins. The center was named for Jim Zalewski at an Oct. 7 ceremony.
“Jim came in with a wealth of understanding of potatoes,” said 1,4Group general manager John Forsythe, who started the company in Meridian with his father, Darol Forsythe, in 1990. “He had a passion for science, a passion for teaching and a passion for people.”
Zalewski grew up on a potato farm in Wisconsin. He continued to work with potatoes all his life, but instead of growing them, he researched them. After earning a doctorate in plant pathology, he moved out West to teach and continue his research. He joined 1,4Group in 2009.
“I’m so proud of him, because he loved the work that was going on here,” Jackie said at the ceremony. “Even though he left the farm, he stuck with the potatoes.”
The ceremony fell on Jim’s birthday, which is also the date he was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. He would have been 70 years old this year.
Research
The research bins at 1,4Group, designed and upgraded by BTU Ventilation, can hold up to 15 tons of potatoes. The new upgrades to the bins allow Addie Waxman, the company’s senior scientist who worked under Zalewski, to closely monitor the conditions of the potatoes in the bins.
“I believe, as a research facility, we’re one of the most modern research storage areas in the country right now,” she said.
Alerts on her phone and watch tell Waxman when the temperature in the bins is too high or low, or when there’s too much carbon dioxide—which might mean the potatoes are stressed and are rotting.
“I get so much information from the bins that I didn’t get before,” Waxman said. “People forget the potatoes are alive; they’re not little brown rocks. They respire and they heal themselves after they’ve been wounded, so they’re very much a living system.”
1,4Group sells a product called 1,4DMN, a biopesticide that is found in the peel of a potato. The chemical basically tells the potato to sleep, halting it from sprouting.
“If you didn’t do anything, you would lose half your crop,” Forsythe said. “It all sprouts, and it’s just of no commercial use.”
Forsythe said 1,4Group registered 1,4DMN in the United States in the 1990s, and the company is exploring new ground in this type of research.
“We’ve got two new products in the mill right now that we’re working on—completely novel [things] that [have] never been tried before,” he said. “We’re starting to experiment with them.”
A Family
1,4Group employs about 17 people at its warehouse, research center and distribution facility in Meridian. The company works with farmers around the world.
“It’s a small group, and we’re definitely a family,” Waxman said. “I applied here, and Jim gave me a chance. I’m so grateful for that. He saw something in me and mentored me, and now I’m getting a Ph.D.”
Zalewski also invested in local students.
“Jim loved young people, and he wanted to support agriculture through young people,” Waxman said. “We go to the local high schools, to the FFA chapters, and we bring in kids. We have had pass through the doors since Jim worked here about eight kids in our internship program, and they have gone on to jobs at Syngenta and Walmart, getting their degrees in agriculture.”
Jackie Zalewski said she feels fortunate to still be part of the 1,4Group family, and she’s proud that her husband’s legacy will live on through the research conducted there.