Trapping is the safest and most effective method for controlling rats and mice in and around homes, garages and other structures. Rodents that live in close association with humans are called commensal rodents. Rats and mice are the most frequently encountered commensal rodents in California.

Selecting the correct trap

Before trapping, make sure you know what rodent pest you have. It is a very common mistake to select the wrong size trap when you have not yet determined whether you have mice or rats (and the correctly identified rat species).

You will not catch a rat with a mouse trap, and you will not catch a mouse with a rat trap. To determine the...

For the past several years, California rice has been dealing with a pesky new weed, weedy rice, aka “red” rice. Weedy rice is a difficult pest to manage, because it is the same species as rice (both are Oryza sativa L.), rendering herbicide use next-to-impossible. In the southern U.S, rice-growing region (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas), they utilize two rice varieties (in rotation) that have been conventionally bred to tolerate the use of two herbicides: Clearfield (imazamox) and Provisia (quizalofop). Since weedy rice is susceptible to these chemicals, the entire field can be sprayed with these herbicides: the rice varieties survive, and the weedy rice is controlled. In...

Proper weed management is important for several reasons, but in general younger orchards are much more susceptible to the negative impacts of weed overgrowth. The full canopies of mature orchards limit the amount of sunlight reaching the orchard floor, which suppresses the growth of many weed species. Younger trees also have less extensive rooting systems, putting them into direct competition with weeds for water and nutrients. The presence of weeds provides habitat for insects, pathogens, and rodents, which can affect trees of all ages through direct damage to vascular tissue and foliage, and as disease vectors.

Rank growth of weeds also visually obscures irrigation...

Advances in molecular tools already have led to the development of large numbers of genetic markers distributed across the avocado genome. These markers are being put to good use, many forming the basis for projects to inventory avocado germplasm repositories and, in our own case, to create a pathway toward marker-assisted selection.

Most recently, the first avocado genome was sequenced, marking the beginning of a new era. Genome annotation entails adding functional information about genes and other compartments of the genome, aided by comparisons with model organisms. The challenge is that the avocado occupies a highly divergent position on the evolutionary tree of life, close to such plants as laurel and magnolia,...