- Author: Ben A Faber
Save the Date: Training Opportunity for
Field Crews
The Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Program is hosting free training workshops for field crew supervisors and farm labor contractors in Riverside and Ventura counties this month. The two-hour training workshops will be presented primarily in Spanish and will review best practices for field crews on how they can properly prevent the spread of Asian citrus psyllids (ACP) through hands-on training. English-language workshops can be available following each Spanish workshop; however, the English-language workshops are subject to cancellation depending on the number of sign-ups.
For more information and to RSVP, please visit our Training Workshop webpage. Please select the preferred language and meeting location for each attendee in the details below.
The Train-the-Trainer workshops will take place on the following dates:
Riverside County
Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at Citrus State Historic Park, Riverside County
- Spanish-language workshop: 9 a.m.
- English-language workshop: 11 a.m. (Subject to change)
Ventura County
Thursday, August 29, 2024 at Limoneira, Ventura County
- Spanish-language workshop: 9 a.m.
- English-language workshop: 11 a.m. (Subject to change)
The training workshops will also fulfill the requirement listed in CDFA's harvesters/farm labor contractors' compliance agreement for these industry members to stay abreast of ACP and Huanglongbing (HLB) prevention best practices.
RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Location details, workshop start times and additional information will be sent upon RSVP. Please RSVP using the following link below.
Front-line leaders in the field will learn firsthand about what they can do to reduce the risk of spreading ACP, and ultimately how to protect local groves from HLB.
During the workshop, participants will:
- Learn best practices for field crews to prevent ACP from spreading in between neighboring groves.
- Practice using effective communication techniques to help their crews and others understand these best practices and why they are important.
- Understand the threat of HLB to the livelihood of the California citrus industry.
We all must do our part if we're going to protect California citrus from this pest and disease – and field crews are the first line of defense in this effort. Packinghouses are encouraged to send their staff and crews to this valuable workshop as a way to provide an extra layer of protection in preventing the spread of ACP in their groves.
For questions, please email Makayla Thompson at mt@nstpr.com.
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- Author: Ben A Faber
Field Day at Pine Tree Ranch, Santa Paula
19455 E. Telegraph Road, Santa Paula,
Planting technique, Entomology, Pathology, New rootstocks/scions
Topics and Speakers
- Author: Ben A Faber
It is unfortunate that we allow the passing of individuals without recognizing their contributions. B. O. Bergh was an important part of the avocado industry and his passing should surely be noted. Below is his obituary:
Berthold Bergh Obituary
Berthold (Bob) Orphie Bergh January 30, 1925 - July 14, 2021 The family of Dr. Bob Bergh is deeply saddened to have to tell of the death of their husband, father, grandfather, uncle, brother, and brother-in-law. This brilliant, witty, exuberant, uproarious and completely lovable man was born the fourth of seven children, to Mina (Grambo) Bergh and Ingvald Bergh, in Domremy, Saskatchewan, Canada, on January 30, 1925. He was premature, and his mom (a nurse) kept him warm in that cold Saskatchewan weather, she told us, by putting him in a cosily lined shoe box, and setting it on the open oven door! When he was six years old, his family moved to a homestead at Chelan, SK, where they definitely lived the pioneer life. Because Chelan School offered education up to grade 11 only, he returned to Domremy and lived with his Uncle Palmer and Aunt Alice while he took grade 12. A lovely red-head was also living and working in this home, so this is where Gwen and Bob met. Following grade 12 he returned to Chelan, enlisted in the military, and in 1944 went overseas to England. His military superiors recognized him as no ordinary man, and decided they needed him as a clerk. So he spent the war years answering correspondence, keeping records, ordering supplies, working with the archives, dealing with soldiers' uniforms and furloughs. He was singled out for special honor during his Army career when Stroma Sinclair, daughter of the Duke of Portland, asked for a "nice young Canadian boy" to spend his furloughs with her in the ancestral home, Dunbeath Castle in Scotland. This was a wonderful gift to Bob, and they remained friends and in touch until her death. Suddenly the war ended and Bobby and hundreds of thousands of young Canadians returned home. He and Gwen were married in Saron Lutheran Church, Hagen, SK. on September 17, 1948. After earning his Bachelor of Agriculture degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, he and Gwen moved first to Columbus, Ohio, where he received his Masters Degree in Horticulture. Then it was off to Berkeley, CA, where he earned his PhD in Genetics. With no job prospects in Canada at that time for a Doctorate in Genetics, he and Gwen made the decision to stay in the USA, where he was offered a professorship at the University of California at Riverside. Here he had an illustrious career---he won the Distinguished Teacher Award several times, both for his teaching skills as well as for the rapport he had with his students. Word of this phenomenal man spread among the student body, and the high enrollment in his Genetics class often necessitated arranging for larger classrooms. Gwen has told us that long after he retired he continued to receive calls from ex-students around the world, often asking for advice on personal and spiritual matters. Bobby was a great man of faith. His research area was avocados, and for many years he had a world-wide reputation as the leading authority on the avocado. He was frequently seconded to other avocado-growing nations, including Israel, New Zealand, and Kenya. Gwen often accompanied him on these travels, and they made many friends around the globe. Bob developed a new, improved variety of avocado, named after his wife, Gwen. An offspring of the "Gwen" is marketed as the "GEM" avocado. Bob and Gwen adopted two children: Linda in 1959, and Robert in 1960. These two were loved passionately and forever! Over the years Bob and Gwen have made many trips back to Saskatchewan to see their families. And over the years they have hosted so many of us, (both Bob's family and Gwen's), to delightful California winter holidays. Bob and Gwen loved their adopted country and their many friends in the USA. Bob's extraordinary compassion, generosity and larger-than-life-presence made the world a better place. Bob was predeceased by his parents, four siblings, and numerous other relatives and friends. He is survived by his wife Gwen; his daughter, Linda Sanborn, granddaughter, Heather and grandson BJ; son Robert Bergh, grandson Justin and granddaughter Katie; two sisters, Ione Peters and Shirley Kasdorf; 7 sisters-in-law, and 7 brothers-in-law. A memorial service will be held in Hope Lutheran Church (2882 Arlington Ave., Riverside, CA) on August 19 at 1 pm. Memorial donations may be made to Hope Lutheran Church. Or plant a tree in his memory--he would like that! The Nautilus Society 16316 Hawthorne Blvd Lawndale, CA 90260 310-370-8080
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Published by The Press-Enterprise on Aug. 1, 2021. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/pressenterprise/name/berthold-bergh-obituary?id=14216300
Bob Bergh had a vision for a better ‘Hass' and worked assiduously towards this goal. The fruits of his labor are still coming mature. Aside from the 'GEM', he was also fundamental in developing the ‘Lamb Hass' and ‘Luna' varieties and helping to build the world-wide avocado industry. He was a grand man.
- Author: Ben Faber
Avocado Trunk Cankers
This has been a low rainfall year, and often with the low rainfall, cankers will seem to suddenly appear on the woody parts of the tree. There are a number of causes for the white exudate from cankers on the trunk and limbs of avocado. Any wound will cause the tree sap to run and crystalize on the surface. It is a seven carbon sugar of mannoheptulose, or its alcohol form perseitol. It's sweet. So any wound that might be caused by woodpeckers or little kids climbing the trees will damage the bark, and where the damage has occurred, the sugar will form. There are also diseases that can cause a wound that will exude the sugar. Three of these are due to water stress of some form that allows infection to occur. One of these is bacterial – Bacterial Canker. Another is caused by a fungus which in the past was called Dothiorella Canker. We now know it by a different name and a UCR plant pathologist has actually identified seven different species of fungus that invade the wood and can eventually weaken the tree so limbs can break and the tree becomes unthrifty. In the case of very young trees, they can be killed by the fungus. A third cause of sugary cankers is Black Streak, the cause of which was unclear until recently when Dr. Akif Eskalen possibly identified it. It was coming from a similar set of fungi that cause Dothiorella Canker. It makes sense, because in all three of these cases, they most often appear after a low rainfall year, where pressures in irrigation systems are insufficient, where emitters have clogged and where water or salinity stress have occurred. The bacteria and fungi that cause these cankers are widely distributed in most orchards and are just waiting for the stressed tree to appear. The grower just needs to identify where this stress is occurring, correct the problem (clogging, low pressure, poor irrigation design, infrequent scheduling, inadequate leaching, etc.) and if the damage is not too extensive, often these symptoms will disappear with time.
The fourth cause of canker is caused by Phytophthora citricola, a relative of avocado root rot. This is caused by a moist trunk, either from irrigation water hitting the trunk, or on the north side of the tree that doesn't dry out from morning dew. This is a much slower acting disease than root rot, although it can rapidly kill young trees. The cankers occur at about 18 inches from the ground and gradually girdle the tree. The first thing to do before ever seeing this disease is to make sure irrigation water isn't hitting the trunks. If cankers appear, they respond to the same materials used for root rot, but should actually be sprayed right on the canker.
Images
Top: Black Streak can occur on trunks or branches as small, scattered cankers. The name comes from the blackening that occurs around the infected area.
Next: Bacterial Canker causing discrete silver dollar-sized cankers. The exudate running down from the bottom edge results when a knife is poked into it. The cankers tend to run in a line up the trunk or branch.
Next: Citricola crown rot with the cankers girdling the trunk. It appears near the ground.
Bottom: Dothiorella Canker (soon to have a new name) can occur anywhere on the trunk or branches
Bold moves needed for California agriculture to adapt to climate change
University of California report details farming's needs for climate resilience
California should take urgent and bold measures to adapt its $59 billion agriculture sector to climate change as the amount of water available for crops declines, according to a collaborative report by University of California faculty from four campuses.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the report provides a roadmap for more water capture, storage, and distribution systems that are in harmony with climate projections and ecosystems. It further considers how runoff and groundwater can be used repeatedly as it flows generally from mountainsides to coastal lands.
“The availability of water for consumption is decreasing because of climate change, partly due to increased evaporation and transpiration but also because we don't have the system set up to capture and use the larger and more variable flows that are now the norm,” said Kurt Schwabe, a public policy professor at UC Riverside and co-author of the report.
A warmer planet means fewer but larger rain and snowstorms in California. The rising temperatures and shorter winters also result in smaller volumes of water stored in mountain snowpacks that have historically replenished California's reservoirs each spring. And a greater amount of water is getting lost through evaporation.
This means that agriculture, which uses about 80 percent of the water consumed in the state, will need to adjust to a future with less water available for irrigation.
To help reduce the overall impact on agriculture and society from climate change, the report's authors envision a more nimble and responsive system that can capture and store water from big storms before it goes to sea to prevent floods and keep crops growing through the hot, dry summer months.
To do so, California must increase its water storage capacity, but that doesn't necessarily require building more dams and reservoirs, Schwabe said. Great storage capacity now exists in the state's depleted aquifers below the Central Valley and the coastal plains.
“It's really a huge win,” Schwabe said. “We can start taking more of those flood flows, and unexpected overflows, and put them in these groundwater aquifers. We've got plenty of capacity there, and you don't suffer from the evaporation rates that you do with the surface reservoirs.”
Capturing the flows would involve diverting torrents from heavy rains and accelerated snowmelts to farm fields or to habitat lands where controlled flooding would cause no harm, and the water would percolate down to aquifers. Farmers would then have more groundwater to get through drier periods while also reviving wildlife habitats.
Farmers also should take advantage of new crop varieties, so they have more flexibility to deal with different water situations. Changing crops, unlike changing irrigation systems, is a practice that can lead to reduced overall water use.
“It's obviously an economic decision confronting the growers,” Schwabe said.
However, switching from a water-intensive practice such as flood irrigation to something like drip irrigation, doesn't necessarily save much water at the system level, he said. Flood irrigation may be appropriate if it helps recharge aquifers, or the runoff is used again by other farms.
“Sometimes the runoff water appears later in the system for use,” Schwabe said
California also needs to build more flexibility into its water delivery systems. The state's three major aqueducts — the California State Water Project, the Central Valley Project, and the Colorado River Aqueduct — for the most part transport water from north to south. A greater ability to move water from east to west and vice versa would allow for more efficient water use. Farmers who have more water than they need for a particular season could sell to others in need. With prices based on scarcity plus delivery costs, such a marketplace would have incentives for storage and efficient use, Schwabe said.
The report's title is “Cultivating Climate Resilience in California Agriculture: Adaptations to an Increasingly Volatile Water Future.”
In addition to Schwabe, the report's co-authors are Josué Medellín-Azuar at UC Merced, Alvar Escriva-Bou at UCLA, and Amélie Gaudin and Daniel Sumner at UC Davis.
“When I moved to California over 20 years ago, someone told me, “Don't let people tell you there isn't a lot of water in California because there is. The problem is that it's just managed really poorly,” Schwabe said.
That said, Schwabe believes the state is making progress by developing policies that can lead to more efficient and sustainable outcomes, such as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014.
“Today more than ever before we're seeing partnerships across environmental, agricultural, and municipal sectors to address water scarcity issues,” Schwabe said. “And that's a good thing.”
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