Research has shown that hedgerows of native California flowering shrubs planted along the edge of a crop field helps keep crop pests under control by increasing the activity of natural enemies.
UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and UC Berkeley researchers analyzing hedgerows in Yolo County have found that not only are farmers diversifying their land by planting hedgerows, but those hedgerows are attracting natural enemies that provide economic benefits.
The two-year study of hedgerows planted adjacent to processing tomatoes showed higher numbers of natural enemies such as lady beetles (aka lady bugs) and fewer crop pests compared with conventionally managed field crops edged with residual weeds.
The...
Bats are voracious predators of night-flying insects that target California crops. Research statistics show that a pregnant or nursing female can consume as much as two-thirds of her body weight in insects per night. That's somewhat like a 150-pound man eating 100 pounds of food per day.
What's the economic value of bats to the agricultural pest control? It probably exceeds $23 billion per year, according to recent studies. However, very little data exists on the benefits of bats for individual crops, such as walnuts.
UC Agriculture and Natural Resources researchers, together with UC Davis, are launching a survey to better understand the value of bats (and birds) on managed lands. The...
- 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: Janet Byron
A lack of pollination by honey bees — brought on by increased insecticide use to control onion thrips — was linked to a sharp decrease in yields of California onion seeds, according to research published in the July-September 2011 issue of the University of California’s California Agriculture journal.
“Honey bee visits to onion flowers were negatively correlated with the number of insecticides applied per field and field size,” wrote the study’s authors, Rachael F. Long of UC Cooperative Extension in Yolo County and Lora Morandin of the Department of...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
White-nose syndrome, a horrific disease that has killed millions of bats on the East Coast since its identification in 2006, is spreading fast across the United States, warns Rachael Long, UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor for Yolo County. She dreads its arrival in California.
This disease is caused by a fungus that grows most noticeably on a bat’s muzzle, coating it in a white powder, hence the name "white-nose." It primarily affects hibernating bats by causing them to be more active, according to Long.
"As a result they wake up more often during the winter, burn up fat reserves, and die of starvation," Long said. Where the disease is occurring,...