- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
While Californians are tightening their pipes to conserve water during this fourth year of drought, the California black rail might say, “Let it leak,” if it could speak.
The rare bird species makes its home in marshes created in large part by leaky pipes, stock ponds, irrigation tailwater and unlined canals. Even the springs that support some habitat may rely on water flowing from leaky canals. In 1994, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists found the small, red-eyed bird with the black breast and speckled black feathers at UC ANR's Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center. Since its discovery, a group of scientists have been...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When Virginia creeper leafhopper made its way into Mendocino and Lake county wine country a few years ago, some certified organic winegrape producers threw in the towel.
“They lost too much income,” said Glenn McGourty, a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension advisor in Lake and Mendocino counties. “They decided they were not going to risk their crop until there is a workable biological control solution to this new pest.”
Meanwhile, other organic grape producers are hanging on to their organic certification and counting on UC ANR researchers to come through with a biological control option...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Insecticides farmers use in Northern California onion seed production appear to repel honeybees, which can result in reduced seed yields, according to a recent study by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) researchers.
Visitation by honeybees is the single most important factor for onion seed set in commercial fields, said Rachael Long, UC ANR Cooperative Extension farm advisor in Yolo County.
“The more honeybees that visited the onion flowers, the higher the seed yield,” Long said.
If insecticides are applied repeatedly prior to onion bloom, honeybees were less likely to visit once the flowers opened...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Stately oak trees with blue-green leaves – known as blue oaks – are found in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada and coast range, and nowhere else on earth. They are valued for their beauty, wildlife habitat, shade and acorn production. Protecting the resource poses challenges since the vast majority of blue oak woodlands are part of privately held ranches where owners use the landscape to raise cattle for a living.
Researchers with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) have worked with landowners for decades to help them manage these oak woodlands in ways that balance the ranchers' economic needs with ecological considerations.
In the late 1990s, Tulare County...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Long-term research by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists has documented the capacity for farmland in the San Joaquin Valley managed with conservation practices to sequester carbon, results that could give farmers a seat at the carbon trading table. The study was published this month in the Agronomy Journal.
Published research results provide evidence that farmers will need to get credit for sequestering carbon if such an opportunity arises in the future. In addition, the conservation practices have been shown to offer other environmental benefits – such as reducing dust emissions...