- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC ANR scientists get $450,000 to study pesticide alternatives
The root maggot, a pest of cole crops, can wipe out an entire field of broccoli or cauliflower by tunneling through the plants’ roots. With a new $302,542 grant from the Department of Pesticide Regulation, Shimat Joseph, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Monterey County, will study ways growers can protect their high-value crops from this persistent pest.
“In the Salinas Valley, cabbage maggot infestation in a field can exceed 90 percent,” said Joseph, who specializes in integrated pest management.
Joseph, who specializes in entomology, will evaluate the susceptibility of broccoli when it is planted next to other various crops such as turnip, lettuce, cauliflower or cabbage, to see if the neighboring crop influences the broccoli field’s attractiveness to cabbage maggots. He will also evaluate different broccoli and cauliflower varieties for their resistance or tolerance to the maggots and will look into the role planting date in determining a plant’s susceptibility to the pest.
Lynn Epstein, professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Davis, received a $153,289 Department of Pesticide Regulation grant to study alternatives to methyl bromide for strawberry nursery fumigation.
California produces more than a billion strawberry runner plants every year, with a total annual value of approximately $60 million. For the past 50 years, fumigating the soil with methyl bromide before planting has been the most effective way to keep soil-borne pathogens, nematodes and weeds from overwhelming strawberry nursery plants. In recent years, though, methyl bromide has become increasingly restricted, with the intention of eventually phasing it out entirely.
Anaerobic soil disinfestation integrates heat from solarization and oxygen deprivation from flooding, according to Epstein.
“We’ll incorporate a relatively inexpensive carbon source into the topsoil, irrigate it to field capacity, and then cover the amended soil with a plastic tarp,” Epstein said. The anaerobic byproducts that build up are toxic to pathogens, but those byproducts will degrade rapidly after the tarp is removed.”
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
As a young community college teacher in his native Bakersfield, Molinar first learned about the mission and role of UC Cooperative Extension in the agricultural industry. He immediately knew what he wanted to do with his life and never let go of his dream.
Molinar had earned a bachelor’s degree in crop science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and then volunteered in rural Honduras with the Peace Corps for two years helping farmers improve practices and techniques.
“This had a huge impact on my life,” Molinar said. “That’s when it all started. I loved helping people.”
He returned to the United States and, after a stint with a chemical company, began teaching classes in crop science, soils, vegetable crops, beekeeping and organic gardening at Bakersfield Community College. With advice from UC Cooperative Extension colleagues, he set his sights on a career as a farm advisor.
Molinar returned to school for a master’s degree while working for a weed abatement firm in Bakersfield. He never tired of his UCCE job search and in 1986 was selected to be the environmental horticulture advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Alameda County. Nine years later he transferred to Fresno County.
“This has been a job I have thoroughly enjoyed,” Molinar said. “I’ve been able to work out in the field, directly with farmers and live in Reedley, the ‘fruit capital of the world.’”
Throughout his tenure in Fresno, a large fraction of his time and efforts were devoted to helping the county’s 1,300 Southeast Asian refugee farmers, a job that was facilitated with the language and culture skills of his assistant Michael Yang, an immigrant himself from Laos.
Molinar has accumulated a litany of awards during this 27-year UCCE career for “meritorious service,” “distinguished service,” “lifetime achievement,” “IPM innovator,” and “leadership,” but the honor he most cherishes, he said, was being presented a Hmong name by the Hmong Farmers of Fresno in 2011.
Molinar’s Hmong name is Vam Meej, which means “giving prosperity.”
Among Molinar’s first goals in working with Southeast Asian farmers was teaching them modern production practices that hadn’t been used in their homelands, such as pest control using integrated pest management techniques. IPM involves nurturing beneficial insects.
“When we introduced good bugs and bad bugs, they all laughed at us,” Molinar said. “They thought all bugs were bad. We’ve been teaching about this concept for years now and we’re not laughed at any more.”
Molinar has helped Southeast Asian farmers navigate rules and regulations established by government agencies, such as the San Joaquin Valley Air Quality District and the California Department of Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
For example, Molinar and Yang helped farmer Zia Thea Xiong, a Southeast Asian immigrant and father of 12, when Cal OSHA issued a $750 citation for insufficient toilet facilities. Molinar and Yang took pictures at the farm and accompanied the Xiong to Sacramento to appeal Xiong’s citation, which was reversed.
“We’ve helped farmers comply with workers’ compensation insurance, the injury and illness prevention training plan, and acquiring the 16 or so different posters they have to display,” Molinar said.
He also worked with Southeast Asian farmers to open new markets for their produce, taking them on market tours in San Francisco and Los Angeles. More recently, he has been collaborating with other agencies to pave the way for placing Southeast Asian farmer-grown vegetables into upscale markets like Whole Foods.
In recent years, food safety has been an increasingly important arena for extension activities with small-scale producers. In this case, the farmers do not have to cope with government regulation, but with retail and wholesale fruit and vegetable outlets that require growers to provide written food safety plans. With the director of the small farm program, Molinar developed a template the farmers can use to write a comprehensive plan by simply filling in information specific to their operations.
Molinar has maintained a one-acre demonstration and research plot at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center since 1995, where he conducted cherry tomato and mini watermelon variety trials, research projects comparing irrigation techniques, and experiments involving integrated pest management of weeds, insects and vegetable diseases. Crops that were grown for demonstration or research purposes over the years were nopales (cactus pads), capers, jujube trees, a wide variety of Southeast Asian vegetables and 50 kinds of Hmong medicinal herbs. The herbs, many which had not been documented as having been grown in California before, were submitted to the UC Herbarium at UC Davis to be pressed, dried and archived.
In the early 2000s, the Molinar and Yang transitioned the one-acre research and demonstration plot to organic production. Molinar also worked with the Kearney research advisory committee to set aside 10 acres at the field station for larger organic studies.
Molinar has reached out to Hispanic and African American and organic small scale farmers in Fresno. Every other year he teamed up with Manuel Jimenez, UCCE advisor in Tulare County, to offer a “Conferencia para agricultores,” a conference on agricultural production conducted entirely in Spanish. He gave presentations at the Fresno farm of Will Scott, a leader in the African-American Farmers of California.
Though he retires June 30, with emeritus status, he said, he will continue to serve the family farmers who have been his clientele in Fresno County. He is also interested in taking up some small-scale farming himself. An Allis Chalmers garden tractor is already parked in the Molinar backyard and he is negotiating with landowners to secure a half-acre to one-acre site where he can grow food to be direct marketed to people in the Reedley community.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
For more than a quarter century, Johnson conducted experiments with peach trees growing in the lysimeter, which allowed him to calculate precisely how much water evaporates from the soil and transpires from the tree on an hour-by-hour basis. Results of this research helped growers properly manage their irrigation strategies to improve fruit quality and yield.
A native of Utah, Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Utah. He earned a Ph.D. at Cornell in 1982 and that year moved his family to the San Joaquin Valley to begin a 31-year stint as UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Pomology at UC Davis, based at the Kearney facility in Parlier, Calif.
Using the lysimeter, Johnson discovered that some common fruit tree irrigation strategies being used in the San Joaquin Valley were significantly impacting fruit quality and yield.
“We found that growers should not cut back on water after harvest, if they can help it,” Johnson said. “Anytime we cut back on water applications, we developed some sort of problem – diseases, sunburn, mites and fruit disorders in the subsequent crops, like doubling and deep sutures.”
Despite the importance of the irrigation research, Johnson had perhaps his greatest impact on growers’ practices from his research on nitrogen fertilization. Many growers, he said, were over fertilizing their stone fruit orchards.
“We did a survey and found the average rate of nitrogen fertilization was 150 pounds per acre,” Johnson said.
However, much of that fertilizer stimulated vegetative growth, which shaded the fruit and prevented the desired reddening; and required more pruning in the winter, labor that added to the expense of growing fruit. In addition, the high fertilizer rates caused more problems with fruit quality, insect pests and diseases.
“I started working on this right at the beginning and harped on this same thing my whole career,” Johnson said. “Today, farmers are using about a half or a third of the fertilizer they did decades ago.”
Johnson also worked on understanding fruit trees’ need for other nutrients, such as zinc and calcium.
“It was pretty common for growers to apply zinc every year,” Johnson said. “From research we conducted at Kearney, we learned that orchards don’t need zinc every year. We also compared materials and found the cheapest zinc products work just as well as expensive ones. We’ve saved growers a lot of money with these results.”
Calcium research also helped farmers’ bottom line.
“Save your money,” Johnson said. “Peach trees don’t need calcium. It doesn’t help anything.”
Over the years, Johnson contributed to 70 peer-reviewed journal articles. He was an active contributor to the International Horticulture Society’s meeting proceedings, titled Acta Horticulturae, having authored or co-authored 30 articles.
Johnson worked closely with his colleagues Ted DeJong, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, and Kevin Day, UCCE farm advisor in Tulare County, on these and many other orchard research topics, including rootstocks, pruning, training systems, thinning, girdling, irrigation and fertilization. In 2011, Johnson took a sabbatical leave to organize and aggregate all the research findings on a comprehensive website called The Fruit Report.
“Everything is there on the website for growers establishing and managing fresh market peach, plum and nectarine orchards,” Johnson said.
Johnson has already sold his home in California and plans to move immediately back to Utah, where two of his children have settled with their families. The Johnsons will volunteer, travel, garden and, in a year, embark on a humanitarian mission with their church. Johnson has been honored with emeritus status and, though will be living out of the area, has plans to continue work on orchard fertilization management.
“There’s a great deal of interest today in reducing the potential for nitrogen to percolate down to the groundwater,” Johnson said. “You can get some nitrogen into a peach tree by spraying it on the leaves. It doesn’t get to the soil so there is less of a possibility of groundwater contamination. There may be some interest in this idea in the future, particularly in areas where the soil is very sandy or the orchard is near a stream.”
Though Johnson said he had some misgivings about working off campus when he first took the job with the University of California, he leaves with no regrets.
“I loved working at Kearney,” Johnson said. “To me, it turned out to be the ideal job.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It’s official.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology has been renamed the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Carolyn de la Pena, UC Davis interim vice provost for undergraduate education, relayed the message May 28 to interim dean Mary Delany of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The faculty of the Department of Entomology and Department of Nematology had earlier proposed the consolidation of the two departments in response to a recommendation by the college for the elimination of the Department of Nematology. In the interim following consolidation, the name, “UC Davis Department of Entomology,” was used until university administrators approved the new name.
Of the 27 faculty members in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, five are nematologists.
Michael Parrella, professor of entomology, serves as the department chair, and nematologist Edwin Lewis, professor of both entomology and nematology and former interim chair of the UC Davis Department of Nematology, is the department’s vice chair. Professor Steve Nadler served as the last chair of the Department of Nematology.
“We are pleased that the name change to the Department of Entomology and Nematology has been approved,” Parrella said. “This 'officially' recognizes the importance of the discipline of Nematology to the research, teaching and outreach components of the university and we look forward to developing a strategic and academic plan that will guide this new department into the future. “
Said Nadler: “Since approval of the consolidation of our departments nearly two years ago, our nematologists and entomologists have been working together and finding common ground to build upon prior successes. As the state economy improves and the university grows, I believe our newly named department will be successful in adding faculty positions that rebuild core research areas that were lost through faculty retirements.”
The department is headquartered in Briggs Hall, but faculty members are also housed in Briggs, Hutchison, Robbins and Storer halls; the Academic Surge building; and at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Parlier. The nematology administrative office was housed in Hutchison.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology began as an offshoot of the UC Berkeley Department of Entomology, while the UC Davis nematologists were closely linked with UC Riverside nematologists.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology traces its roots back to Oct. 30 1907 when UC Berkeley professor C. W. Woodworth spoke to the State Farmers' Institute in Davisville (now Davis) on the "Whitefly Situation in California." This was a forerunner to the Farmers' Short Courses (three-to-six-week courses) launched in the fall of 1908.
UC Davis established a two-year non-degree program in entomology in 1913 and its first degree in entomology in 1923-24 when Stanley Freeborn moved from Berkeley to Davis to head up this new and expanding program. The Davis campus began its administrative independence from Berkeley under Provost Freeborn (later chancellor) in 1952. R. M. Bohart became vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 1957, and the following year, the College of Agriculture instituted the rotating-chair system. In the spring of 1960, entomology settled into its new quarters in Robbins Hall, and in 1971, moved into the newly built Briggs Hall, intended for biological sciences faculty and staff.
The history of the UC Davis Department of Nematology began in 1954 with the establishment of the Statewide Department of Plant Nematology, comprised of the UC Riverside and UC Davis nematologists. The University of California was the first academic institution to recognize nematology as a field of science separate from plant pathology, entomology or parasitology.
In 1962, research competency at the two sites broadened sufficiently for the university to approve of a name change from the Statewide Department of Plant Nematology to the Department of Nematology. In 1962, J. D. Radewald was appointed as a Cooperative Extension Specialist at UC Riverside. In 1965, statewide University administration embarked on a decentralization program, giving the individual campuses greater autonomy.
From 1965 onwards, the two nematology departments evolved independently. In 1969, D. E. Johnson was appointed as a Cooperative Extension Specialist at the San Joaquin Valley Research and Extension Center at Parlier.
UC Davis entomology and nematology faculty have received worldwide recognition for their research, teaching and public service.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, considered the top news and job-information source for college and university faculty members, administrators, and students, ranked the UC Davis Department of Entomology as the No. 1 in the country in 2007. Factors considered were remarkable performances in faculty scholarly productivity, scientific citations per faculty, percentage of faculty with a journal publication, number of journal publications per faculty, and grantsmanship, among other factors. The rankings have not been updated since 2007.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
California legislators have enacted the state's first conservation banking law, based on a pioneering program launched here 18 years ago. The new law provides a regulatory framework for the first time, adopting several reforms proposed by a comprehensive study appearing in the April-June 2013 issue of UC’s California Agriculture journal.
Conservation banks enable farmers, ranchers and other landowners to receive income for managing their lands to benefit wildlife. California established the nation's first conservation banking program in 1995, but it was by executive order only.
“For the first time, Senate Bill 1148 provides statutory procedures for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to evaluate and approve proposed conservation banks.This new law could become a model for other states,” says David Bunn, lead author of the article and researcher for the Wildlife Health Center at UC Davis. "It also authorizes new fees that will make it possible to fund more dedicated staff to carry out the program. However, further reforms are needed, for instance to set minimum conservation standards, enabling wildlife agencies to prioritize potential sites within a region.”
Bunn’s article reports the first evaluation of the 18-year old California Conservation Banking Program. Although the bellwether program fostered 29 conservation banks, new approvals have dropped in recent years; most were approved before 2006 and none has been approved since 2009.
“This is partly because the lack of clear standards and procedures caused negotiations over potential new banks to drag on for five or more years,” says Bunn. The economic recession also contributed to the dwindling use of the program, he adds, because banks provide credits to developers who need to mitigate environmental impacts — and since 2009 there has been little new residential or commercial development.
The new law became effective in January. California is recognized as a world leader in implementing biodiversity offsets as a means to conserve species. Modeled on the federal wetlands mitigation bank program, California’s program fosters establishment of conservation banks to protect species and their habitats in perpetuity. The owner, or management firm owning the bank, is authorized by wildlife agencies to sell credits to developers to mitigate impacts of their proposed developments on wildlife.
In contrast to the regulatory approach that penalizes landowners for harming protected species, conservation banking creates a market incentive for landowners to conserve wildlife. These banks are publicly or privately owned lands managed to provide habitat for species of concern. The owner, or management firm owning the bank, is authorized by wildlife agencies to sell credits to developers to mitigate impacts of their proposed development projects on wildlife.
Developers have to mitigate with habitat similar to the species’ habitat they are negatively impacting, and they have to buy credits in the Bank Service Area designated for the particular species.
Bunn and colleagues first identified the factors limiting the program’s potential, and then surveyed the state’s wildlife agency conservation bank staff and practitioners to identify needed reforms. Three key actions proposed were enactment of standards in critical areas such as prioritizing potential sites, addition of experienced program-dedicated staff, and establishment of a regional approach to planning and monitoring.
The research article, and the entire April-June 2013 issue, can be downloaded at http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.edu.
For more information on the new conservation banking law, visit http://www.dfg.ca.gov/habcon/conplan/mitbank.
Also in this issue:
For switchgrass cultivated as biofuel in California, invasiveness limited by several steps. Weedy traits bred out of food crops are bred into biofuel crops, but switchgrass invasiveness in California is limited by climate.
Buffers between grazing sheep and leafy crops augment food safety. Pathogenic bacteria were occasionally recovered from sheep feces and soil samples collected near fields with grazing sheep.
Stinkwort is rapidly expanding its range in California. Understanding stinkwort’s basic biology is key to predicting where the weed will invade as well as to developing effective controls.