- Author: Karen Giovannini
We are pleased to share our 2019 Annual Report available in two formats! We have our print version and are excited to present our story map version!
Special thanks to Michelle Nozzari for putting together the story map version and Deborah Curle for the print version.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Vice President Glenda Humiston introduced alumni regent-designate Debby Stegura to UC Cooperative Extension staff and their community partners and clientele in Sonoma County on Nov. 15.
After visiting Beretta Dairy, Bayer Farm Park and Gardens, Sheppard Elementary and Stuhlmuller Vineyards, Regent Stegura tweeted:
“Blown away by @ucanr tour of @UCCESonoma work—Beretta Dairy, @UCMasterGarden, @Stuhlmullerwine, @California4H. Saw #kincaidfire reach, how to prepare better for future fires. @ucanr work benefits all of CA. Thank you!”
The retired business litigator and UC Davis alumna was joined on the tour by Anne Shaw, secretary and chief of staff to the regents, and Michael Bedard, UC state government relations legislative director.
Stephanie Larson, UCCE director for Sonoma County, led the tour, which first visited Beretta Dairy.
“It's so nice to have a dairy advisor,” Sonoma County dairy farmer Doug Beretta said, crediting Randi Black, UC Cooperative Extension dairy advisor, with providing the technical assistance he needed to apply for a grant to reduce methane emissions.
Black, who joined UC ANR in 2017, helped four local dairies obtain grants totaling $2.5 million and said the projects propose to reduce emissions by 9,327 metric tons of CO2 equivalent over the next 5 years, which is comparable to removing 2,028 passenger vehicles from the road for a year.
Beretta talked about the work he has done at the dairy, based on UC research, to improve water quality. David Lewis, UCCE director for Marin and Napa counties, noted that similar manure management and water-quality work is being implemented by UCCE clientele in his counties.
Discussing the hardships created by low milk prices in the dairy industry, Beretta said he appreciated UCCE's agricultural ombudsman Karen Giovannini guiding producers who want to sell value-added products through the permitting process.
From the dairy, Stegura and the group met with Mimi Enright, UC Master Gardener Program manager for Sonoma County, UC Master Gardener volunteers and Julia Van Soelen Kim, North Bay food systems advisor at Bayer Farm Park and Gardens.
Collaborating with Bayer Farm, the Master Gardeners have been expanding outreach to Spanish-speaking members of the community. In addition to all of the traditional Master Gardener outreach, the Master Gardeners in Sonoma County have been actively promoting firewise landscaping to help Sonoma County residents better prepare for wildfires. Using UC ANR materials is critical, Enright said, to assure people the recommendations are based on scientific research.
After the wildfires in 2017, Van Soelen Kim and Enright launched a citizen science project with community partners to assess produce safety. Within days of the fire, volunteers collected 200 samples of leafy greens from school, backyard and community gardens. With funding from UC ANR and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, they expanded testing to soil and partnered with UC Davis researchers to test eggs laid by backyard poultry, and published guidance for produce safety after urban wildfire.
After the Kincade Fire, when growers and gardeners asked if produce grown outdoors was safe to eat, Enright said UCCE Sonoma County could tell them, based on local research, it was safe to eat if consumers removed outer leaves and washed the produce and that the health benefits of eating fresh produce outweigh any trace contamination.
UCCE has been leading a coalition of community partners and government organizations to educate the community on reducing food waste and increasing food recovery. When PG&E announces public safety power shutoffs, they promote composting food that can't be eaten so it doesn't end up in a landfill.
“This kind of service in communities is not as well-known about UC as the campuses,” Humiston commented to the regent.
Across the street from Bayer Farm, Diego Mariscal, 4-H program assistant, has been collaborating with Sheppard Elementary School. It is one of several schools in the county providing 4-H afterschool clubs and other 4-H programs designed to nurture the next generation of Latino leaders. Last spring, Mariscal worked with families to build a 4-H soccer league for elementary school children. Parents, college and high school students were trained by 4-H to teach children teamwork, soccer skills and healthy eating habits. More than 200 new underserved youth participated in 4-H programs in Sonoma County during the 2018-2019 year.
A few of the soccer players, proudly wearing their green 4-H soccer uniforms, told the group what they liked about 4-H. 4-H All Star Corrianna E., who participates in the 4-H teen program, shared her experience in 4-H and expressed gratitude to the program for helping her overcome her shyness to become a strong public speaker. Corrianna's mother, Naomi Edwards, also shared her experience as 4-H Council President for Sonoma County.
“You want to know what's a good cultural practice? Rhonda Smith has answers backed up by hard science,” Gorman said of the UCCE viticulture advisor.
When new landowners ask Gorman for advice, he refers them to Steven Swain, UCCE environmental horticulture advisor, who advises small parcel land managers in Sonoma County on managing the land for fire and wildlife. “Without UCCE, where would they turn?” Gorman asked, adding that people from private companies may have recommendations that may not be in best interest of the land.
Larson introduced new UC IPM advisor Cindy Kron, who succeeds recent retiree Lucia Varela. Kron is launching an IR-4 project to study pesticides for olives, which isn't a big enough market to interest private investment in research. She's also monitoring pears for brown marmorated stink bug because early detection is key to controlling the pest. Spotted lanternfly isn't in California yet, but grapes are among its favorite hosts so Kron is working with UC Master Gardener volunteers and other community members to watch for the exotic pest.
The Kincade Fire destroyed fences and scorched the rangeland at Stuhlmuller Vineyards, forcing Gorman to sell the cattle. He showed the group where the fire failed to advance at the fire break created by the lush vineyards. As a result of the Kincade Fire, Gorman wasn't able to sell his petite verdot, chardonnay and cabernet grapes to wineries. To prove to the insurance company that smoke damaged the crop, his crew picked 30 tons of grapes for testing.
During and after the devastating fires in the North Bay, Larson, who is also a UCCE livestock and range management advisor, assisted livestock owners to gain access to their burned properties; this ensured their animals got food and water. She also organized resource meetings for landowners affected by fires, helping them apply for funding from government agencies and insurance companies for animal, forage and facility losses.
Larson also said her new grazing database Match.Graze has been well-received by ranchers and landowners in Sonoma and Marin counties who want to use grazing to reduce fire fuels. Land managers and grazers can sign up at ucanr.edu/matchgraze to hire sheep, goats, cattle and horses to manage fire fuels.
The regent tours in Sonoma Country and Fresno County were coordinated by Anne Megaro, government and community relations director. She is planning future tours for regents at UC South Coast Research and Extension Center and other locations in the spring.
- Author: Rhonda J Smith
- Contributor: Akif Eskalen
For the first time many growers are facing the dilemma of what to do with fruit that will not be sold. Although wine inventories have been slowly building over the past few years, 2019 is the first year in which a number of growers are feeling the effects of excess supply due to the large 2018 crop.
Given that yields thus far for most growers have been “average” or better and there is significant unsold inventory of bulk wines, custom crushing uncontracted grapes in 2019 may not be a viable option. Hopefully there will be buyers as the harvest continues but in this market, the prices offered are likely to be less than the cost of production.
Allowing unsold fruit to remain on the vines may seem unthinkable yet with no income from those blocks, it makes sense. This means not dropping clusters by hand and not running a harvester in the vineyard to get the berries off.
From the perspective of a plant pathologist:
clusters that decompose over the winter - either on the vine or on the ground -
are not likely to have a noticeable effect on fungal disease pressure the following year given common vineyard floor management practices.
All common grapevine fungal pathogens exist inside vineyards. For example, fallen petioles, rachises that remain on the vine after mechanical harvest, pruning debris and woody tendrils that cling to trellis wires all support the growth of fungi. These fungi act as sources of inoculum that can infect wounds caused by pruning and suckering, and infect berries at bloom and other green tissue.
The fungi that colonize decaying berries include the same fungi seen growing on damaged berries before harvest including Botrytis cinerea and Cladosporium and Aspergillus species which are associated with Botrytis bunch rot, Cladosporium rot and sour rot respectively. Fungi can infect then colonize the ripening berries when spores enter through the slightest opening in the berry cuticle caused by sunburn or the presence of diffuse, unseen powdery mildew. Berries are an overwintering structures for these fungi and others.
Botrytis cinerea spores are ubiquitous given the fungus can survive on dead tissue as well as infect living tissue. It grows on dead calyptras (flower caps) and stamens after bloom and will infect a young berry through the wounds left when the cap is shed. In various studies, Botrytis sporulation in the lab occurred on petioles and rachises collected on the ground and remnants of rachises collected from canes after pruning.
- Eliminating pruning debris will remove the inoculum formed on decomposing clusters and pieces of canes prior to bud break. Vineyard access to alternate rows is required to incorporate last year's wood and cluster remnants while maintaining resident vegetation or a sown cover crop in the non-tilled rows.
All common grapevine fungal pathogens exist inside vineyards and the relative importance of allowing unsold fruit to remain on the vines should be put into perspective of other vine tissues that are also decomposing. Clusters that remain in the vineyard are not likely to have a noticeable effect on disease the following year if common vineyard floor management practices are followed.
Acknowledgement: Valuable input provided by Dr. Akif Eskalen, Cooperative Extension Plant Pathologist, UC Davis.
- Author: Karen Giovannini
We are pleased to welcome Cindy Kron, PhD as our Area Wide IPM Advisor for Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.
Cindy has conducted research on a variety of insects including:
- two-year vineyard study on the population dynamics of Virginia creeper leafhopper, western grape leafhopper, and variegated leafhopper
- dissertation research projects investigating the biology and behavior of the three-cornered alfalfa hopper and their relationship with vineyards
- the effects of temperature on the developmental rate of the invasive European grapevine moth
- rearing brown marmorated stink bugs for USDA fumigation studies
Between UC Davis and UCCE, Cindy continued her study of the three-cornered alfalfa hopper as a Research Entomologist for USDA in their Crop Disease, Pests, and Genetics research unit. She tested additional cover crop species as feeding and reproductive hosts of the three-cornered alfalfa hopper in addition to testing commercially available biocontrol agents against the different life stages of the treehopper. She collaborated with a UC Davis colleague to create a degree day model that predicts the ideal timing to implement cultural control measures with the greatest impact on treehopper populations.
“My experiences have motivated me to help growers, stakeholders, and the industry solve agricultural pest management problems through applied research by identifying IPM strategies and tactics that are economically feasible and implementable while having the lowest environmental impact.”
When she is not working with insects, Cindy loves wine tasting, gardening, cooking and canning. She's come to the right place for ALL of that.
Welcome to Wine Country, Dr. Cindy Kron!
- Author: Rhonda Smith
- Editor: J. M.
Planting a vineyard with vines that are not infected with common grapevine viruses is essential to the bottom line. It can be challenging enough to keep over 1000 vines per acre relatively free from the normal canopy and trunk diseases such as grapevine powdery mildew and Eutypa dieback. Those diseases are caused by infections that occur naturally after vines are planted and can be controlled with proper farming practices.
Grapevine leafroll virus is an example of a common virus that can be avoided – at least initially – by planting certified vines. It is one of the viruses that cause the leaves of red-berried varieties to turn red in the fall. (The red “fall color” seen in photos of grapevines is not a good sign.) In white-berried varieties visual symptoms are more difficult to identify because the leaves do not turn red. Leafroll disease is widespread throughout the world and prevents the normal ripening process from occurring.
Unknowingly planting vines infected with leafroll virus is possible and very damaging because the virus is spread by mealybugs and scale insects. Starting with infected vines makes a bad situation worse because the incidence of diseased vines in a block quickly increases. Growers invest significant resources to control the insect vectors of leafroll, remove diseased vines and replant with clean stock.
UC Davis Foundation Plant Services
Starting out with “clean” vines is critical. And clean in this context means not infected with grapevine viruses that are known to reduce grape yield or quality. So it is important to plant a vineyard with vines that are far less likely to be infected on the day they are planted. In reality virus-free cannot be guaranteed.
To obtain the cleanest plants possible using normal nursery production practices, most growers purchase certified vines from grapevine nurseries and the source of those vines can be traced back to Foundation Plant Services (FPS) at UC Davis.
Vines are planted into Foundation Blocks at FPS only after undergoing a battery of virus tests – some of which can take two or more years - as prescribed by the CDFA regulations as well as pass other evaluations. The FPS lab continually tests for viruses in the Foundation Blocks; each vine is tested every three years. For nematode transmitted viruses, each Foundation vine is tested every two years.
Protocol 2010
Nearly 10 years ago, FPS began to develop a new Foundation Block that met newly established national standards for grapevine foundation plants in the US. The Russell Ranch Vineyard (RRV) at UC Davis contains Foundation vines which have all been propagated using a technique called microshoot tip culture – in which a 0.19 inch (0.5 mm) or smaller slice of the growing tip of a shoot is used as the starting material for a grapevine. These vines start out in small boxes on growth media. After a vine has grown large enough for tissue to be collected and tested for viruses, it must test negative for over 30 grapevine viruses.
Why so many? Because other countries have grapevine viruses that we don't have in the US, thus creating a testing protocol that includes those viruses helps to insure they are not in US Foundation Blocks. The testing protocol used to establish the RRV is known as “Protocol 2010” and it was made possible by funding in the 2008 Farm Bill that established the National Clean Plant Network (NCPN).
National Clean Plant Network
The purpose of the NCPN is to protect plants of economic value by diagnosing for plant pathogens, curing those plants, and to protect starter plants and make them available to industry. The goal of the NCPN is to sustain national funding for clean planting stock programs of key horticultural crops. There are five Grape Clean Plant Centers and they are located at UC Davis, Florida A&M University, Missouri State University, Cornell University and Washington State University. Clean Plant Centers also exist throughout the US for fruit trees, berries, citrus, hops, sweetpotatoes and roses. UC Davis FPS is also a Clean Plant Center for fruit trees, sweetpotatoes and roses.
“The National Clean Plant Network is an association of clean plant centers, scientists, educators, state and federal regulators, large and small nurseries and growers of specialty crops that work together to ensure that plant propagation material is clean and available.”
For more information on the National Clean Plant Network, visit nationalcleanplantnetwork.org
To learn more about Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis, visit fps.ucdavis.edu