Dear friends,
Happy holidays!
In reflection, 2025 was a year of unusual challenges, including funding delays, an extended federal government shutdown, hiring freezes, and other disruptions to our usual processes. Despite these hurdles, the dedicated IR-4 team continued to develop data to provide essential support to specialty crop growers by facilitating and securing new registrations for pest management products.
While this year’s challenges slowed our quantitative progress, our lab, field, quality assurance, and research management teams have continued to serve our stakeholders admirably, demonstrating remarkable professionalism and unwavering commitment to our stakeholders and mission. I am deeply grateful to the IR-4 community for their resilience in the face of these multiple challenges.
For me, 2025 was a very special year—my last with IR-4. I am retiring on January 1, 2026. It has been my profound honor to serve alongside my IR-4 colleagues for the past 40 years, helping the specialty crop community with their pest management needs.
I have complete confidence in this team’s readiness to guide IR-4 into the next chapter with an unwavering commitment to our mission. While the process of appointing the next Executive Director continues, we hope to share an update on the search’s outcomes very soon.
I hope you’ll join me in reflecting with appreciation on all we weathered and accomplished together this year. IR-4 is fortunate to have such a strong and dependable network of collaborators. Thank you for your contributions to the specialty crop community.
Here’s to a healthy, happy holiday season!
Cheers,
Jerry Baron
Executive Director, The IR-4 Project (through January 1, 2026)
