- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Outsized wildfires, rising sea levels and disappearing glaciers are dramatic signs of climate change, but not the only ones. New UC Agriculture and Natural Resources research provides forewarning of a change that will be economically and environmentally costly to California – a fifth generation of navel orangeworm, the most destructive pest of almonds, walnuts and pistachios.
Navel orangeworm (NOW) will be more problematic in the future because of warming temperatures, UC Cooperative Extension scientists report in Science of the Total Environment.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Community Alliance with Family Farmers and UC Cooperative Extension are working with farmers to establish six demonstration sites in walnut orchards that will examine the effectiveness of mating disruption to control two major pests of the crop – codling moth and navel orangeworm.
The three-year research effort is funded with a $1 million award from the California Department of Agriculture Biologically Integrated Farming Systems program.
“The project sites will be in the Sacramento and northern San Joaquin Valleys, but we expect the demonstration to be of interest to...
- Author: Sacha Heath
- Author: Rachael Long
Across the globe, scientists have shown that birds can be farmer allies. Insectivorous birds feed on damaging insect pests in many crops including coffee, cacao, oil palm, corn, cabbage and apples. Raptors, including hawks and barn owls, feed on rodents, including gophers, voles and mice (see blog, Barn owls help clean up rodents naturally).
Despite this deep historic knowledge that birds are important predators of crop pests, over time the perception of birds as natural enemies of pests has been generally replaced with the idea that birds are often major crop pests themselves. Indeed, some bird species — like some types of insects...
- Author: Cheryl Reynolds
‘Tis the season for baking lots of tasty treats. Breads, cookies, cakes, and candy are just a few that come to mind. What makes many of these treats so tasty is the addition of almonds or walnuts to the list of ingredients.
In California, we are lucky to be at the center of almond and walnut production. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture's (CDFA's) latest Agricultural Statistics Review, more than 99 percent of the almonds and walnuts produced in the United States are grown in California.
Almond and walnut growers work tirelessly to supply enough nuts to not only satisfy domestic demand, but also for export. Worldwide,...
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...