- Author: Brad Hanson
Last week I attended the Western Society of Weed Science annual meeting (Spokane, WA). Joe DiTomaso and I were invited to speak in an Education and Regulatory Symposium entitled "Use of New Technology by Weed Science Educators" and I thought I'd share a few thoughts about the session and also my presentation on blogs.
This interesting symposium organized by Marvin Butler from Oregon State University had four speakers plus time for discussion.
First, James Leary from the University of Hawaii at Manoa spoke about "The Virtual Field Day (VFD): Web-based video presentations that extend to a broader audience". He discussed his use of low cost, self edited YouTube...
- Author: Brad Hanson
A few months ago I compiled some statistics on the acreage and value of tree and vine crops in California and put together a simple map of where the main production areas are located. One caveat to this map is that I only had access to land use data layers for the Central Valley counties and some Bay area and Central Coast areas. Therefore, this map does not show orchards and vineyards in Southern California or the Desert growing regions which are very important for some crops in the chart below the map.
These crops all fall under the label of "specialty crops" although some of them have fairly substantial acreage. One of the things I found most interesting in looking at these data compared to a few years ago is the...
- Author: Brad Hanson
Happy New Year!
Today I thought I'd attach a poster presentation from the recent 38th Annual Almond Industry Conference. The attached poster has some information on an ongoing research project in which we are testing thermal disinfestation as an alternative to soil fumigation for management of almond replant disease.
This is not especially a weed research project but has become an interesting area of research because of the high economic and environmental costs of soil fumigation. In second and later generation, trees can be affected by a variety of soil pests including fungal and bacterial pathogens, parasitic nematodes, and other yet-to-be-identified pests that can reduce orchard establishment and early...
- Author: Brad Hanson
Over the last few years, several of my UC Davis, CSU-Fresno, and USDA-ARS collaborators and I have been involved in research related to using steam heat to thermally disinfest soil as an alternative to methyl bromide fumigation. The basic premise of the work is to heat soil to 70C (158F) for about 30 minutes to kill many soil borne pathogens including parasitic nematodes, fungal and bacterial pathogens, and weed propagules (seed and vegetative parts).
It is pretty clear that heat is effective for pest control; however, efficiency (time and fuel) is the biggest sticking point for this to be a viable alternative for a substantial number of growers. Below is a brief...
- Author: Brad Hanson
If you’ve ever taken target practice, you probably know that accuracy and precision are not necessarily the same things – a rifle that always shoots low and to the left of the bull’s-eye is precise but is not accurate. The same idea holds true for herbicide applications. Because the winter/spring weed control season is upon us, it’s time to think about ensuring that spray rigs and operators are set up to make precise and accurate applications. We want to make sure that we are applying pesticides on target and at the right rate (accuracy) and that our application in every pass or field is the same as the last (precision) in order to get good weed control and minimize off-target movement.
The most common causes of poor herbicide...