- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It’s official.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology has been renamed the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Carolyn de la Pena, UC Davis interim vice provost for undergraduate education, relayed the message May 28 to interim dean Mary Delany of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The faculty of the Department of Entomology and Department of Nematology had earlier proposed the consolidation of the two departments in response to a recommendation by the college for the elimination of the Department of Nematology. In the interim following consolidation, the name, “UC Davis Department of Entomology,” was used until university administrators approved the new name.
Of the 27 faculty members in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, five are nematologists.
Michael Parrella, professor of entomology, serves as the department chair, and nematologist Edwin Lewis, professor of both entomology and nematology and former interim chair of the UC Davis Department of Nematology, is the department’s vice chair. Professor Steve Nadler served as the last chair of the Department of Nematology.
“We are pleased that the name change to the Department of Entomology and Nematology has been approved,” Parrella said. “This 'officially' recognizes the importance of the discipline of Nematology to the research, teaching and outreach components of the university and we look forward to developing a strategic and academic plan that will guide this new department into the future. “
Said Nadler: “Since approval of the consolidation of our departments nearly two years ago, our nematologists and entomologists have been working together and finding common ground to build upon prior successes. As the state economy improves and the university grows, I believe our newly named department will be successful in adding faculty positions that rebuild core research areas that were lost through faculty retirements.”
The department is headquartered in Briggs Hall, but faculty members are also housed in Briggs, Hutchison, Robbins and Storer halls; the Academic Surge building; and at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Parlier. The nematology administrative office was housed in Hutchison.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology began as an offshoot of the UC Berkeley Department of Entomology, while the UC Davis nematologists were closely linked with UC Riverside nematologists.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology traces its roots back to Oct. 30 1907 when UC Berkeley professor C. W. Woodworth spoke to the State Farmers' Institute in Davisville (now Davis) on the "Whitefly Situation in California." This was a forerunner to the Farmers' Short Courses (three-to-six-week courses) launched in the fall of 1908.
UC Davis established a two-year non-degree program in entomology in 1913 and its first degree in entomology in 1923-24 when Stanley Freeborn moved from Berkeley to Davis to head up this new and expanding program. The Davis campus began its administrative independence from Berkeley under Provost Freeborn (later chancellor) in 1952. R. M. Bohart became vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 1957, and the following year, the College of Agriculture instituted the rotating-chair system. In the spring of 1960, entomology settled into its new quarters in Robbins Hall, and in 1971, moved into the newly built Briggs Hall, intended for biological sciences faculty and staff.
The history of the UC Davis Department of Nematology began in 1954 with the establishment of the Statewide Department of Plant Nematology, comprised of the UC Riverside and UC Davis nematologists. The University of California was the first academic institution to recognize nematology as a field of science separate from plant pathology, entomology or parasitology.
In 1962, research competency at the two sites broadened sufficiently for the university to approve of a name change from the Statewide Department of Plant Nematology to the Department of Nematology. In 1962, J. D. Radewald was appointed as a Cooperative Extension Specialist at UC Riverside. In 1965, statewide University administration embarked on a decentralization program, giving the individual campuses greater autonomy.
From 1965 onwards, the two nematology departments evolved independently. In 1969, D. E. Johnson was appointed as a Cooperative Extension Specialist at the San Joaquin Valley Research and Extension Center at Parlier.
UC Davis entomology and nematology faculty have received worldwide recognition for their research, teaching and public service.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, considered the top news and job-information source for college and university faculty members, administrators, and students, ranked the UC Davis Department of Entomology as the No. 1 in the country in 2007. Factors considered were remarkable performances in faculty scholarly productivity, scientific citations per faculty, percentage of faculty with a journal publication, number of journal publications per faculty, and grantsmanship, among other factors. The rankings have not been updated since 2007.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
California legislators have enacted the state's first conservation banking law, based on a pioneering program launched here 18 years ago. The new law provides a regulatory framework for the first time, adopting several reforms proposed by a comprehensive study appearing in the April-June 2013 issue of UC’s California Agriculture journal.
Conservation banks enable farmers, ranchers and other landowners to receive income for managing their lands to benefit wildlife. California established the nation's first conservation banking program in 1995, but it was by executive order only.
“For the first time, Senate Bill 1148 provides statutory procedures for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to evaluate and approve proposed conservation banks.This new law could become a model for other states,” says David Bunn, lead author of the article and researcher for the Wildlife Health Center at UC Davis. "It also authorizes new fees that will make it possible to fund more dedicated staff to carry out the program. However, further reforms are needed, for instance to set minimum conservation standards, enabling wildlife agencies to prioritize potential sites within a region.”
Bunn’s article reports the first evaluation of the 18-year old California Conservation Banking Program. Although the bellwether program fostered 29 conservation banks, new approvals have dropped in recent years; most were approved before 2006 and none has been approved since 2009.
“This is partly because the lack of clear standards and procedures caused negotiations over potential new banks to drag on for five or more years,” says Bunn. The economic recession also contributed to the dwindling use of the program, he adds, because banks provide credits to developers who need to mitigate environmental impacts — and since 2009 there has been little new residential or commercial development.
The new law became effective in January. California is recognized as a world leader in implementing biodiversity offsets as a means to conserve species. Modeled on the federal wetlands mitigation bank program, California’s program fosters establishment of conservation banks to protect species and their habitats in perpetuity. The owner, or management firm owning the bank, is authorized by wildlife agencies to sell credits to developers to mitigate impacts of their proposed developments on wildlife.
In contrast to the regulatory approach that penalizes landowners for harming protected species, conservation banking creates a market incentive for landowners to conserve wildlife. These banks are publicly or privately owned lands managed to provide habitat for species of concern. The owner, or management firm owning the bank, is authorized by wildlife agencies to sell credits to developers to mitigate impacts of their proposed development projects on wildlife.
Developers have to mitigate with habitat similar to the species’ habitat they are negatively impacting, and they have to buy credits in the Bank Service Area designated for the particular species.
Bunn and colleagues first identified the factors limiting the program’s potential, and then surveyed the state’s wildlife agency conservation bank staff and practitioners to identify needed reforms. Three key actions proposed were enactment of standards in critical areas such as prioritizing potential sites, addition of experienced program-dedicated staff, and establishment of a regional approach to planning and monitoring.
The research article, and the entire April-June 2013 issue, can be downloaded at http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.edu.
For more information on the new conservation banking law, visit http://www.dfg.ca.gov/habcon/conplan/mitbank.
Also in this issue:
For switchgrass cultivated as biofuel in California, invasiveness limited by several steps. Weedy traits bred out of food crops are bred into biofuel crops, but switchgrass invasiveness in California is limited by climate.
Buffers between grazing sheep and leafy crops augment food safety. Pathogenic bacteria were occasionally recovered from sheep feces and soil samples collected near fields with grazing sheep.
Stinkwort is rapidly expanding its range in California. Understanding stinkwort’s basic biology is key to predicting where the weed will invade as well as to developing effective controls.
- Contact: Eve Hightower, (530) 752-8664, ehightower@ucdavis.edu
The annual award will be presented to Hayden-Smith tomorrow at a ceremony featuring distinguished speaker Craig McNamara.
The Bradford-Rominger award recognizes and honors individuals who exhibit the leadership, work ethic and integrity epitomized by the late Eric Bradford, a livestock geneticist who gave 50 years of service to UC Davis, and the late Charlie Rominger, a fifth-generation Yolo County farmer and land preservationist.
“I’m extremely humbled to receive the award and actually don’t feel deserving when I read about the amazing attributes and characteristics and qualities that defined the work and character of those two individuals,” said Hayden-Smith.
Learn more about the award: http://asi.ucdavis.edu/awards/br-award/br-award/br-award
Rose Hayden-Smith has been a UC ANR Cooperative Extension 4-H youth, family and community development advisor in Ventura County since 1992. Since March 2011 she has served as the leader for ANR’s strategic initiative in sustainable food systems.
Learn more about Rose Hayden-Smith and past Bradford-Rominger award winners: http://asi.ucdavis.edu/awards/br-award/br-award
After the Bradford-Rominger award is presented to Hayden-Smith at tomorrow’s ceremony, Craig McNamara – an organic farmer, president of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, and the president of the Center for Land-based Learning – will give a talk entitled “Changing the Way We Think about Food.”
Eric Bradford and Charlie Rominger Agricultural Sustainability Leadership Award Ceremony
4:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 22
Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center
UC Davis campus
This event is free and open to the public. Students are encouraged to attend.
Hailing Jin, an associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology at the University of California, Riverside, recently published a paper in the journal Molecular Plant in which she reports having profiled small ribonucleic acid (sRNA) from citrus plants, some of which were affected by HLB.
Her research showed that several sRNAs were found to have been induced specifically by HLB, meaning they could potentially be developed into early diagnosis markers for the disease.
The study also showed that in a three-year field trial in southwest Florida diseased trees suffered from severe phosphorus deficiency and that application of phosphorus solutions to the diseased trees significantly alleviated HLB symptoms, improving fruit yield.
In the trial, 19 healthy sweet orange trees were grafted with HLB-positive bark or leaf pieces. As controls, five trees were mock-inoculated with pathogen-free healthy tissue. Phosphorus solutions were applied to the 19 HLB-positive trees three times a year. After two years of treatment, the diseased trees displayed significantly reduced HLB symptoms.
“Compared with the mock-treated plants, the phosphorus-treated trees had a greener appearance and more vigorous growth,” Jin said. “Fruit yield increased approximately two-fold compared with the mock-treated plants.”
She cautioned that the application of phosphorus solutions did not cure the trees. Her research suggests, however, that additional phosphorus application may help diseased trees look healthier and improve fruit yield.
Jin was joined in the research by Hongwei Zhao, Ruobai Sun, Chellappan Padmanabhan, Airong Wang, Michael D. Coffey, Thomas Girke, Timothy J. Close, Mikeal Roose and Georgios Vidalakis at UC Riverside; and researchers at Nanjing Agricultural University, China; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, China; and the University of Florida.
The research was supported by a grant to Jin from California Citrus Research Board.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
“We’ve had some very severe frosts in San Luis Obispo County and on the Central Coast over the years,” said Mark Battany, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. “In 2011 we had the most severe frost in 30 years and many millions of dollars of crop and wine value were lost because of that freeze.”
Farmers take various measures to protect their crops when temperatures dip below freezing, such as mowing or tilling the vineyard row middles, or running sprinklers with water pumped from underground aquifers or diverted from streams.
“Sprinkler frost protection is very effective in many areas,” Battany said. “The concern we have in California is that water is becoming more limited. We don’t have the ability to easily import water from other areas to our coastal regions, and our local supplies are being stretched quite thin.”
Some farmers are considering wind machines, which mix warmer air high above the ground with air closer to the ground to raise the temperature. But wind machines are expensive, and the potential effectiveness depends on the strength of the temperature inversion. UC scientists are now gathering data to help inform farmers before making the costly investment.
Battany and his colleagues - Rhonda Smith, UCCE advisor in Sonoma County, Richard Snyder, UCCE specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis, and Gwen Tindula, UCCE staff research associate - are collecting temperature inversion data at different locations in 60 coastal vineyards throughout three counties to document inversions during frost events.
The scientists installed 35-foot-high meteorological towers with data loggers at the top and at the five-foot height to measure the difference in temperature. In the first year of the study, there were useful inversion conditions on nearly three-fourths of the nights when there was frost.
“That’s a fairly good success rate,” Battany said. “The wind machine will provide quite a bit of protection under those conditions.”
The study will continue this year and in 2014. Farmers who wish to install their own meteorological towers with data loggers can do so at a cost of about $250 each. Installation instructions and specifications are available on the UCCE website.
The UCCE research is funded with a grant from the American Vineyard Foundation and a CDFA Specialty Crops Block Grant.
For more details, see the video below:
