This year's Alfalfa and Forage Field Day held on September 19, 2018 at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, CA, was another success.

The presentations and handouts from that day are now available on the University of CA Alfalfa and Forages website. Click here to reach the page where you can download individual presentation slides and handouts.

ABOUT THE EVENT

Industry sponsorship of this event reached an outstanding level, and the meeting will be funded for another year without the need to reach out to...

The CA Alfalfa Symposium is scheduled for late November and offers an excellent opportunity to earn continuing education (CE) hours for DPR licenses and certificates. Visit https://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/# for details about this event. If you aren't able to attend the symposium, or if you've really waited until the last minute to earn the required CE hours, the UC Statewide IPM Program offers additional opportunities as described below.

Learn about opportunities to receive continuing education hours from UC IPM. November is fast approaching and before you know it, we'll be wrapped up in the busy holiday...

Several new University of California forage oat varieties have been developed by Dr. Cal Qualset, Small Grains program, UC Davis recently.  These are generally grown together in hay mixtures (e.g. a mix of oats, barley, and wheat), or as a sole-crop. 

It's important for farmers to take advantage of breeder's efforts to improve crop varieties, since it takes many years to develop improvements.

These new oat varieties show better disease resistance and grain and forage yields than the standard California Red and Montezuma varieties.  New lines include UC 113, UC 128, and UC 148 (available from Baglietto Seeds) and UC 125 and UC 132 (available from Barkley Seed/Lockwood Seed).

These varieties...

Sorghum is grown in California as a high yielding, drought resistant, low input forage and grain crop.

However, it's been bugged lately.

Last month, a sorghum field in Yolo County and fields throughout the Central Valley were infested with sugarcane aphid. This infestation came in relatively late in the Sacramento Valley.

The sugarcane aphid has a characteristic combination of black marks on its legs and antennae, plus black cornicles. (Photo Ian Grettenberger, left, Texas A&M, right)

This insect infestation isn't as severe as three years ago, when this pest burst with a vengeance upon California sorghum fields, having first troubled plantings in Texas and Oklahoma, where large...