- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
“I’m not going to get the job,” Harivandi thought.
As he retires on June 27 after 33 years of providing turfgrass advice to Northern California golf course superintendents, managers of parks, sports fields and cemeteries and homeowners, Harivandi, who was born in Iran, is grateful to the University of California for having given him the opportunity to pursue work he enjoys.
“If I had written the job description myself, I couldn’t have made it more perfectly match my qualifications,” he said.
The UC Cooperative Extension advisor job required expertise in turfgrass, soils, salinity, irrigation and recycled water irrigation — the same subjects he had studied, first at Shiraz University in Iran, and then at Colorado State University where he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in turfgrass science.
Over the course of his career, Harivandi expanded his research to include weeds, turf diseases, insect management, erosion control and water quality. He began to promote sustainability before sustainability became a popular topic, and is best known for his research and educational efforts in water conservation and the use of recycled water for irrigation.
When Harivandi came to California, water-loving grass varieties such as Kentucky bluegrass were commonly planted for lawns. He introduced tall and fineleaf fescue species that use less water as low-maintenance, environmentally friendly alternatives. More than 90 percent of Northern California residential lawns are now planted to tall fescue. No-mow, a type of fescue that rarely needs trimming, is now planted on slopes and rough areas of golf courses, road medians, cemeteries, and small areas that are hard to mow. Besides making maintenance of these areas much simpler, No-mow reduces labor costs and air pollution associated with mowing.
To help people avoid overwatering, he published a map that shows evapotranspiration estimates for regions of the Central Coast. Homeowners and landscape managers use the map as a guide for programming their sprinkler systems.
Harivandi is recognized nationally and internationally as an expert on recycled water use on golf courses and other landscape sites. In the Southwest, 35 percent of golf courses are irrigated with recycled water; nationally, the number is closer to 15 percent.
“I have consulted with Ali on recycled water use at three of the courses where I have worked, including Shoreline Golf Links, San Jose Municipal Golf Course and Sunnyvale Golf Course,” said Gary Carls, golf operations supervisor for the City of Sunnyvale.
“I first met Ali when we were building a new golf course in Mountain View, Shoreline Golf Links,” said Carls, who has worked with Harivandi since 1981. “Ali helped us with several issues we were facing, including methane gas concerns, salinity issues and recycled water concerns. Over the years, I know he has worked with hundreds of superintendents facing similar issues.”
“Without a doubt in my mind, his greatest contribution to the golf industry has been helping to create strong educational programs for golf course superintendents both nationally and locally,” Carls said. “Ali was an instructor at the GCSAA’s (Golf Course Superintendents Association of America) national conference for most of his career.”
In the 1990s, the state Integrated Waste Management Board launched a campaign to reduce solid waste disposal in order to extend the useful life of landfills. Harivandi’s research showed that leaving grass clippings on the lawn did no harm—in fact, the decomposing grass naturally fertilized the lawn. He began to encourage homeowners and landscape maintenance professionals to practice “grasscycling” instead of bagging up lawn clippings to send to landfills. Grasscycling is now standard practice.
On weekends, Harivandi referees soccer games at high school and collegiate levels to stay fit and to serve his community. “I get to see a lot of sports fields,” he added. While refereeing soccer games, he noticed that the turf didn’t recover well from the damage inflicted by people playing on wet fields, so he began to recommend that sports fields be closed following rain. It has become a common practice.
Aside from his wife Sue, Harivandi credits much of his career success to UC Cooperative Extension. “It probably wouldn’t have worked as well for me at any other university. The ambience, the environment, the culture allow a person to do as much as you want to do,” he explained. “People help you to get things done.”
Harivandi has served as a member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America’s Technical/Resource Advisory Committee and currently serves on the International Sustainability Council and U.S. Golf Association Turfgrass and Environmental Research Advisory Committee. UC has granted Harivandi emeritus status so he plans to continue his research and to accept speaking engagements with interested groups, including UC Master Gardeners. He also looks forward to “a lot” of traveling with his wife Sue.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Munier always enjoyed working outdoors - both the working and the outdoors, he said. He developed an interest in agriculture as a high school student employed part-time and during the summer on a dryland barley and cattle farm near Banning, Calif.
Munier earned bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and biology at UC Irvine in 1975, and a master’s degree in soil science at UC Davis in 1977. He joined UC Cooperative Extension in 1979 as the farm advisor for field crops, soils and irrigation in Kern County.
The opportunity to help farmers and pest control advisers with crop production and help consumers by contributing to a low cost and healthy food supply drew him to the UCCE career. He attributes his success over the years to the collaborative relationships he developed with others.
“I couldn’t have done this without the help of many progressive farmers, PCAs and industry organizations,” Munier said. “I’m also thankful for all of the support from my UC colleagues.”
The specialist/advisor team approach was at its best for him, he said, in the 1990s when he was a part of the statewide cotton extension team under former UCCE cotton specialist Tom Kerby.
“Tom was a very effective leader who understood the importance of sharing ideas, resources and credit with everyone on the team,” Munier said.
Over his 34-year career, Munier was a part of some very useful and practical research and extension developments including: cotton growth regulator use on variable height cotton, Temik pesticide soil applications for nematode control, analyzing the accuracy of cotton degree-day forecasting, controlling wheat stripe rust disease with varietal resistance and fungicide applications, canola seed dormancy in volunteer plants, and identifying the effectiveness of a new herbicide, Alion, for Roundup-resistant ryegrass control.
In retirement, Munier said he looks forward to volunteering and spending more time with his wife, Patti, and his children and grandchildren. He also hopes to do some part-time work where he can continue to contribute to agricultural production.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Johnson traces his interest in insects to a visit with a family friend on the outskirts of his hometown, Roanake, Va., when he was 10 years old. He was intrigued by a copy of “A Golden Guide to Familiar American Insects,” and the friend gave it to him. “That’s how I got started,” Johnson said. He never looked back.
Johnson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in entomology at North Carolina State University and in 1974 completed a Ph.D. in entomology at UC Riverside. After conducting short stints of entomological research at two locations on the mainland, he moved to Hawaii in 1983 to serve as a professor and focus his research on biological control.
In Hawaii watermelon production, Johnson was able to help farmers reduce pesticide use by 90 percent by showing that pesticide applications were killing natural enemies of a Liriomyza leafminer pest they were trying to control. He also worked on biological control of pests on cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, pineapple, papaya and coffee.
In 1995, Johnson took a six-month sabbatical leave to UC Davis and realized how much he missed living on the mainland. He started looking for a new job and eventually was offered the combined extension and research position at his alma mater, UC Riverside, based at the off-campus research center in Parlier, Calif.
Johnson’s arrival coincided with the introduction of olive fruit fly in California, a serious pest that has devastated olive production in the Mediterranean region for more than 2,000 years. Olive fruit fly was detected in Los Angeles in 1998, and by 1999 had made its way into the San Joaquin Valley, the leading producer of the state’s olives.
To the great relief of valley olive growers, Johnson and his biological control colleague Kent Daane, UCCE specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, found that hot summertime temperatures in the valley depress olive fly populations. But that didn’t provide a statewide solution.
Johnson and Daane worked together to introduce exotic natural enemies of the pest from Africa. The beneficial insects have been released from quarantine and introduced at several locations in California, with recovery of one species in the San Luis Obispo and Redwood City areas.
“We think it’s on the way to establishment. That’s a good sign,” Johnson said. “Now we're waiting to see if the parasite’s presence will have an impact on olive fly populations.”
Johnson was also involved in research that showed the Central Valley isn’t as hospitable to glassy-winged sharpshooters as other parts of the state. When it gets very cold, GWSS cannot move or feed. They either starve or get dehydrated.
“About every 2 out of 10 years, it gets cold enough in the valley that glassy-winged sharpshooter populations are reduced 90 to 95 percent,” Johnson said. “It is unlikely glassy-winged sharpshooters would ever become well established in the Sacramento Valley or the northern San Joaquin Valley. But it is well established in the Bakersfield area.”
Johnson ended his career with a video production project designed to raise awareness about integrated pest management. Posted on the website Extending Orchard IPM Knowledge in California, the videos include interviews with IPM practitioners, researchers and farmers plus overviews of specific pest control techniques, such as biological control, cultural practices and pheromones.
For his research and extension efforts, Johnson received numerous awards and honors over the years. Most recently, he was named “Distinguished Scientist of the Year,” by the International Organization for Biological Control. He is an elected fellow of both the Entomological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was author or co-author of more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and extension publications.
During retirement, Johnson plans to spend more time pursuing the art of photography, mainly landscapes and seascapes, which he captures during travels around the United States. Johnson also plans to continue cataloging the history of the family of his mother, whose maiden name was “Marshall.” He has already traced his lineage back to a 1729 immigrant from Ireland. An earlier ancestor, a member of the provincial council in Pennsylvania, was governor for one day when William Penn was absent from the colony, Johnson said.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Lynn-Patterson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography/climatology at Fresno State University and taught weather, climate landforms and global information systems classes there as a full-time lecturer for five years and part-time at State Center Community College for 10 years.
In 1990, while still teaching part time, she took a new position as a climatologist with a crop insurance firm.
“We were embarking on a brand-new initiative in the crop insurance business using remote sensing and spatial imagery to appraise losses from weather events,” Lynn-Patterson said.
In 2000, she again broke ground by introducing geospatial technologies to agricultural research at Kearney. Geospatial technologies now allow scientists to take a broader view of landscapes than is possible from the field level.
For example, Lynn-Patterson worked with Pete Goodell, UC Cooperative Extension advisor with the Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, to understand the migration of lygus bugs through the San Joaquin Valley’s mosaic of diverse crops. In the spring, lygus can reproduce in lush vegetation on foothills surrounding the San Joaquin Valley. As the plants dry when the weather warms and rain stops, the lygus begin looking for a new home in valley agriculture, including cotton, which suffers severe economic losses from lygus.
By combining observations made on the ground with GIS mapping technology, Goodell was able to determine the areas in the San Joaquin Valley where cotton is most likely to have lygus problems in mid-summer. Where alfalfa is scarce, cotton fields absorb the migrating bugs. But where alfalfa is close to cotton fields, the alfalfa acts as a lygus sponge and spares cotton most of the damage.
Recently, Lynn-Patterson and her staff, in collaboration with the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Program, have been engaged in mapping cropping patterns in the Central Valley citrus belt. This geographic database will provide information needed to ensure quick action when Asian citrus psyllids or huanglongbing disease is found.
Last year, the Kearney GIS program became part of a larger UC Agriculture and Natural Resources statewide program called Informatics and Geographic Information Systems. IGIS is organizing and preparing data pertaining to agriculture and natural ecosystems statewide and making the information accessible on the web.
Lynn-Patterson has a full retirement planned. She is establishing a non-profit animal rescue organization, “Four Feet Inn,” that will connect homeless dogs, horses and other animals with foster families.
“My goal is to find a path to get animals off the street and into no-kill shelters,” Lynn-Patterson said. “I love animals and I love people who want to help animals, so facilitating this connection is what my spirit wants to do.”
Lynn-Patterson is also pursuing a writing career. She has already completed the first novel in a trilogy and begun work on the second. Both of these hobbies she plans to combine via the Internet with travels around the United States and Canada in a motor home.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC ANR scientists get $450,000 to study pesticide alternatives
The root maggot, a pest of cole crops, can wipe out an entire field of broccoli or cauliflower by tunneling through the plants’ roots. With a new $302,542 grant from the Department of Pesticide Regulation, Shimat Joseph, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Monterey County, will study ways growers can protect their high-value crops from this persistent pest.
“In the Salinas Valley, cabbage maggot infestation in a field can exceed 90 percent,” said Joseph, who specializes in integrated pest management.
Joseph, who specializes in entomology, will evaluate the susceptibility of broccoli when it is planted next to other various crops such as turnip, lettuce, cauliflower or cabbage, to see if the neighboring crop influences the broccoli field’s attractiveness to cabbage maggots. He will also evaluate different broccoli and cauliflower varieties for their resistance or tolerance to the maggots and will look into the role planting date in determining a plant’s susceptibility to the pest.
Lynn Epstein, professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Davis, received a $153,289 Department of Pesticide Regulation grant to study alternatives to methyl bromide for strawberry nursery fumigation.
California produces more than a billion strawberry runner plants every year, with a total annual value of approximately $60 million. For the past 50 years, fumigating the soil with methyl bromide before planting has been the most effective way to keep soil-borne pathogens, nematodes and weeds from overwhelming strawberry nursery plants. In recent years, though, methyl bromide has become increasingly restricted, with the intention of eventually phasing it out entirely.
Anaerobic soil disinfestation integrates heat from solarization and oxygen deprivation from flooding, according to Epstein.
“We’ll incorporate a relatively inexpensive carbon source into the topsoil, irrigate it to field capacity, and then cover the amended soil with a plastic tarp,” Epstein said. The anaerobic byproducts that build up are toxic to pathogens, but those byproducts will degrade rapidly after the tarp is removed.”