 Together they were influential in promoting the use of varietal labelling for wines made in the Yakima Valley, including the state's first dry Riesling.In 1917, the Washington State Legislature passed an act setting aside of sagebrush desert near Prosser to become an agriculture research center known as the Irrigation Branch Experiment Station (today known as the Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center, and operated jointly by Washington State University and the USDA).The first crop was of apples used in an irrigation study .