- Author: Laura J. Van der Staay
An Op-Ed article written by Jeff Mitchell, CE Cropping Systems Specialist in vegetable cropping systems, irrigation management, soil quality, organic soil amendments, extension models, and postharvest physiology in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis and at UC ANR Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center and Randy Southard, Professor and Soil Genesis/Morphologist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis was included in the October 30 issue of the Sacramento Bee. More information on conservation tillage practices can be found on the Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (CASI) website.
- Author: Laura J. Van der Staay
This is agriculture literacy week. Please enjoy this video by California Secretary of Agriculture, Karen Ross.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
At Kearney she gained her first experience conducting and extending applied research working with her mentors, UC ANR Cooperative Extension specialists Charlie Summers, Jim Stapleton and Jeff Mitchell.
Roche presented the research at the State FFA Conference 2000 and was named the California State FFA Agriscience Student of the Year. Roche continued to excel in her education and research. In 2012, she received the Shapiro Family Award for Excellence in Science for the quality of her doctorate dissertation and outstanding academic and research record at UC Davis.
Roche has a bachelor's degree in agricultural management and rangeland resources, a master's in horticulture and agronomy and a doctorate degree in ecology. Her current projects include “California Ranch Stewardship Project: Adaptive Management for Profit and Rangeland Health,” “On-Ranch Impacts, Management and Planning Horizons Following Severe Drought” and “Wildfire and Grazing Management and Planning.”
- Author: Laura J. Van der Staay
About 20 carrot industry stakeholders attended a carrot field day on October 7, 2015. The field day showcased the current status of a 20-year program to incorporate root-knot nematode resistance into commercial quality carrots. Philip A Roberts, Chair, nematologist, and professor in the Department of Nematology at UC Riverside, Philipp Simon, Carrot and Garlic Geneticist at USDA-ARS and the Department of Horticulture at University of Wisconsin, Madison lead the project. The research and breeding effort is funded by grants from the California Fresh Carrot Advisory Board and USDA-NIFA.
Numerous carrot advanced breeding lines show good resistance to root-knot infection and will be important in nematode management strategies when resistant varieties are released for growers. The project sites are infested with Meloidogyne javanica and M. incognita, the two common root-knot species in the warm interior valleys of California. To ensure uniform and heavily infested research sites, a 4-year rotation for experimentation (control and advanced selections and crosses of carrots) and uniform cropping (susceptible sorghum, lima beans, and tomatoes) is used.
Kearney is one of several sites used in field screening wild germplasm, new and advanced breeding lines, and finished varieties of carrots. The plots are coded for the source of resistance, and a highly susceptible carrot cultivar planted in every fifth plot is used to indicate the infestation levels. The primary goal is to select for resistance as well as market quality. The crossing of resistant and susceptible carrot lines is followed by agronomic and resistance selection to provide high quality resistant carrot breeding stocks to the seed industry. The seed companies then inter-breed the resistance with their own breeding lines to develop commercial varieties with resistance. The resistance should be highly beneficial for nematode management. Field site data is used with greenhouse data at UC Riverside. The project has also facilitated carrot genome mapping.
- Author: Laura J. Van der Staay
If you are interested in getting information regarding research on the use of sorghum as a multi-purpose low-input crop for California, please go to this link. Under the research link, there are some videos showing the harvest of experimental plots as well as the use of a drone to perform rapid, robotic phenotyping of sorghum for character traits such as plant height, leaf area, and biomass area--data points used to help search for genes that control mechanisms involved in both drought tolerance and salinity tolerance in sorghum. Research is currently being performed at Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Desert Research and Extension Center, and West Side Research and Extension Center.