- Author: Mike Hsu
Study at Desert Research and Extension Center highlights agriculture's sustainability role
Under the blistering sun of Southern California's Imperial Valley, it's not surprising that subsurface drip irrigation is more effective and efficient than furrow (or flood) irrigation, a practice in which up to 50% of water is lost to evaporation.
But a recent study also concludes that drip irrigation can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from soil – which contribute to climate change and unhealthy air quality in the region – without sacrificing yields...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Over a century of growing cotton in California, scientists and farmers have learned how to better manage soil health. To share their collective knowledge, they have produced a series of videos about cultivating better soil health in cotton fields.
At its peak cotton production, California harvested as much as 1.6 million acres of cotton in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Due to water shortages, growers harvested less than 200,000 acres of cotton in...
- Author: Kat Kerlin, UC Davis
Reducing leaks a cost-effective way to save urban water without draining utilities
Before a drop of treated water in California ever reaches a consumer's faucet, about 8% of it has already been wasted due to leaks in the delivery system. Nationally, the waste is even higher, at 17%. This represents an untapped opportunity for water savings, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first large-scale assessment of utility-level water loss in the United States. It found that leak reduction by...
- Author: Kat Kerlin, UC Davis
The world's abalone are threatened, endangered or otherwise vulnerable in nearly every corner of the planet. While captive breeding efforts are underway for some species, these giant sea snails are notoriously difficult to spawn. If only we could wave a magic wand to know when abalone are ready to reproduce, without even touching them.
Scientists from the University of California, Davis, found that wand — although it isn't magic, and it only looks like a wand. It's an ultrasound transducer, and it can be used to quickly and noninvasively detect when abalone are ready to spawn, according to
- Author: Rick Kushman, Almond Board of California, (916) 716-9909, rkushman@almondboard.com
Almond Board of California biopic details how one man's vision and determination led to a new best practice in orchard replanting
Brent Holtz grew up on the farm his grandfather bought in the 1940s, six miles north of Modesto at the time. By the 1970s, the land was on the urban edge of the city, surrounded by houses.
By the late 1980s, Holtz's family had to farm differently, and they could no longer burn their brush. At that time, Holtz was a UC Berkeley plant pathology graduate student. “I felt a responsibility to help my family find a solution for ag burning,” the UC Cooperative Extension pomology advisor says now.
One...
