“Managing your forest as a business comes with both complexity and tax benefits. Working with a tax professional and a Registered Professional Forester (RPF) who has experience in the various financial aspects of forest ownership is important for ensuring forest landowners also enjoy the financial benefits their forest offers.”

-Larry Camp, RPF, forest landowner, retired IRS forester and Forest Stewardship Workshop presenter

Larry Camp knows taxes and forests. As a retired IRS tax professional and forest landowner, he acknowledges that income and expenses related to forest management have tax consequences for forest...

Did you ever wonder how that latest plant variety made its way to your local nursery? Few people outside of the plant breeding and marketing industry realize that the “new” plant you just saw at the garden center last weekend actually began its journey from 6 to 20 years earlier ¹ . One of the last steps in that journey is the plant trial.

Plant trials take place all over the country at universities and public gardens and are usually the last step before a company decides to launch a new cultivar onto the market. Although they will have evaluated a promising new...

In May, I looked at a lima bean field in the Sacramento Valley that showed poor seedling emergence scattered throughout the field (photo 1). I sent samples to the UC Davis Plant Pathology lab and the main pathogen consistently recovered from the roots was Fusarium root rot, a fungal disease caused by Fusarium solani f. sp. phaseoli. This pathogen is specific to beans and field peas and will not infect other field crops. A few bean seedlings also had Rhizoctonia and Pythium (also fungal pathogens).

Finding Fusarium root rot in a lima bean seedling field was a surprise because this disease is most commonly encountered in established fields during mid- to late season, where it is one of the...

Italian ryegrass is a major weed in orchards, vineyards, field crops and fallow fields of California (Figure 1). Several different herbicides are used to control ryegrass and had been effective in reducing infestations until resistance evolved in many populations following repeated use of the herbicides. To date, resistance to glyphosate, paraquat, and some ACCase and ALS inhibitors has been confirmed in ryegrass infestations across the agricultural landscape of California. To make matters worse, resistance to multiple postemergence herbicides with different modes of action has been confirmed within the same orchard, vineyard, or field in some areas. Consequently, management of Italian ryegrass in California annual and perennial...