- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Outstanding academics recognized with Distinguished Service Awards
Winners of the Distinguished Service Awards were announced June 13. Sponsored by UC ANR and Academic Assembly Council, the Distinguished Service Awards recognize service and academic excellence in UC Cooperative Extension over a significant period of time. The awards highlight the use of innovative methods and the integration of research, extension and leadership by UC ANR academics.
Award categories include outstanding research, outstanding extension, outstanding new academic, outstanding team, outstanding leader and contribution to diversity, equity and inclusion.
We are pleased to congratulate and recognize this year's honorees:
Outstanding Research - Mark Hoddle 
Mark Hoddle has been a UCCE specialist in biological control in UC Riverside Department of Entomology for 25 years. His research program on biocontrol of invasive pests that attack agricultural crops, threaten wilderness areas, and degrade urban landscapes in California has been supported by more than $14.5 million in grants from commodity boards and state and federal agencies and have significant impacts in California, nationally and internationally.
Highlights of his work include the successful biological control of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, a species of palm weevil (Rhynchophorus vulneratus), the Asian citrus psyllid and the Argentine ant, resulting in a massive reduction and elimination of these pests in California and other states and countries.
Hoddle also has developed proactive biocontrol and integrated pest management programs for pests not yet present in California but that are likely to invade, including the spotted lantern fly, the avocado seed moth and the avocado seed weevil.
His outstanding research has led to over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and book chapters. He also has published over 100 extension articles and 40 web pages. His outreach includes interviews for TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and podcasts.
In addition to his academic successes, Hoddle has mentored seven graduate students, more than 40 undergraduate students and nine post-graduate researchers. He also has received several national and international awards throughout his career.
Outstanding Extension - Lyn Brock 
Lyn Brock is the academic coordinator for statewide training for both the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program and CalFresh Healthy Living, University of California. Brock leads the training and professional development efforts for academics and staff that work at the state and county levels for both programs.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the EFNEP and CFHL, UC programs were stymied by the inability to provide in-person education. Through her persistence, innovation and leadership, Brock transitioned more than 140 program staff to virtual delivery in a matter of months so that they could continue to serve the people of California.
She spearheaded novel trainings pertaining to a wide variety of topics that suddenly became relevant, including learner-centered programming, online learning platforms and copyright policies, among others. Under her leadership, 24 evidence-based curricula were adapted for virtual delivery during the pandemic. These programs are still regarded by the programs' federally funded partners as cutting-edge in virtual education.
Brock has produced numerous limited distribution publications and also presented during conferences, trainings and presentations to extend knowledge in her role as training coordinator. Highlights of her extension work include the What's Up Wednesday meetings, virtual staff check-in meetings to facilitate communication between program leadership staff. She also developed training material and trained staff on available virtual platforms to allow them to deliver programs virtually.
Outstanding New Academic - Aparna Gazula 
Aparna Gazula became a UCCE small farms advisor in 2016. Her extension program provides training and technical assistance for nutrient management, pest management, irrigation and food safety to diversified vegetable farmers in Santa Clara, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.
Because a majority of the crops grown by Asian immigrant farmers – including amaranth, bok choy, gai choy, gai lan, a choy, Chinese celery, edible chrysanthemum, yam leaves, garlic chives and pea tips – are considered minor crops, there is little research-based information about them that can be used as the basis for management decisions or to fulfill regulatory requirements.In six years, she has secured more than $1.6 million in grant funding for research, outreach and technical assistance to fill information gaps on pest management, food safety and water and nutrient management.
Many of the socially disadvantaged farmers Gazula works with face language and cultural barriers. To provide targeted extension to non-English speaking farmers, she secured grant funding to hire specialists and educators who are fluent in Cantonese and Spanish. With her team, Gazula provides technical assistance, workshops, and outreach publications in Chinese and Spanish.
She also has led her team in assisting farmers in the region to access pandemic relief funding and state programs to improve soil health and water use efficiency. Gazula and her team helped non-English-speaking farmers submit over 200 applications for relief between April and December 2020. These farmers received $3.1 million in emergency aid, allowing them to maintain vegetable production during the pandemic. With her team she also provided training and technical assistance, in both Cantonese and English, to farmers about the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program and Healthy Soils Program.
Although Gazula is a new academic, she is recognized throughout the region for her expertise and is often called on by community and local government groups to contribute to food and farming initiatives. She has established herself as a leader in supporting the Asian vegetable industry.
Outstanding Team - UC ANR Winter Cover Cropping/Water Use Team
The UC ANR Winter Cover Cropping/Water Use Team is composed of UCCE specialists Daniele Zaccaria, Samuel Sandoval Solis, Amelie Gaudin, Jeff Mitchell and Khaled Bali, UCCE advisor Dan Munk and UC Davis students Alyssa DeVincentis and Anna Gomes.
In direct response to prominent knowledge gaps around implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the team conducted a focused applied research program on water-related impacts of winter cover crops in California's Central Valley from 2016 to 2019.
Their research showed that the benefits of winter cropping in processing tomato and almond production systems offset or compensated for water used during the winter by the cover crops. Contrary to widespread belief, research results showed that cover crops did not use a lot of soil water because evapotranspiration during this period is normally low, crops shade and cool the soil surface, and improve soil aggregation, pore space and soil water infiltration and retention.
This research provided the basis for a series of 11 invited extension education presentations and outreach activities to inform and guide policy implementation of local stakeholder agencies and entities including the Madera Regional Water Management Group, the American Farmland Trust's SJV Conservation Partnership Program, the CA/NV Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, and the East Stanislaus, the Eastern Merced, Fresno, Kings, and Tulare Counties Resource Conservation Districts, as well as the California Irrigation Institute.
Outstanding Leader - Gail Feenstra 
Gail Feenstra, director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, is a distinguished leader and visionary, not only in UC ANR, but across the food systems landscape. Her career has been exemplary in terms of her pioneering success in applied, multidisciplinary research, evaluation, and outreach. In the early 1990s, Feenstra began to parlay her graduate training in nutrition along with her experience in community development and food systems into what was then a very new, poorly studied discipline that she would continue to develop and lead for the next three decades.
This field of work comprises regional food systems that merge the business and livelihood needs of small- and mid-scale farmers with the economic well-being and nutritional health of their local communities. Feenstra developed SAREP's and the nation's understanding of values-based supply chains. She has been a pioneer in the farm-to-school movement and has developed widely adopted tools for farm-to-school evaluation. In recognition of her stature in this field, CDFA selected her to lead a four-year, $60 million evaluation of its Farm to School Grant Program.
Feenstra also has shown tremendous leadership within UC ANR through her role as co-chair of the California Communities and Food Systems Program Team where she has helped shape collaborations within UC ANR. She has worked to bridge interconnected disciplines of nutrition, food, health, community development and agriculture within UC ANR. She also has led efforts to work across program teams, particularly in developing new specialist and advisor position descriptions. Her energy is infectious and her leadership through collaboration is compelling. The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society recently honored Feenstra with its 2022 Richard P. Haynes Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award.
Outstanding Contribution to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - Katherine Soule 
Katherine Soule began her DEI work in 2013, focusing on providing solutions to the challenges that marginalized youth, families and communities face on the Central Coast.
Her work particularly focused on the needs of Latino youth and families, LGBTQ+ youth and adults, neurodivergent people, and individuals living in poverty. Through a timely intervention, Soule's DEI work has helped to increase health equity, improve food security and safety, and promote economic prosperity in marginalized communities.
She implemented a very impactful “Schools as Hubs of Health” program that reached more than 4,000 students annually in more than 150 classrooms and created a college and career readiness pathway that engaged more than 12,000 youth. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to her work with an emphasis on engaged and participatory research, and lifelong commitment to personally unlearning and decolonizing.
Soule also demonstrates DEI leadership by serving on the UC ANR DEI Advisory Council as the inaugural chair and serving on the City of San Luis Obispo's DEI Taskforce.
- Author: Madison Sankovitz, student intern
When California experiences drought due to a lack of rain and snow and the reservoirs don't fill up, people pump water out of the ground to meet their needs. But that practice has its limits, as groundwater aquifers -- underground layers of porous rock -- get depleted, similar to how water squeezes from a sponge.
Many of California's groundwater aquifers, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, are critically overdrafted. They are being depleted faster than they are being recharged by water from the surface percolating through the soil to groundwater. Overdrafting is a concern because California relies on groundwater aquifers as a water storage and supply resource. They must be protected to ensure water security in the future.
To direct surface water back into the aquifers, recharge basins are built, but they are limited in number and volume. Thinking of agricultural fields as potential recharge basins opens the possibility of increasing the number of locations where groundwater aquifers can be recharged.
Alfalfa is a crop that has a unique potential to support this practice because it is widely grown in the San Joaquin Valley and, in many cases, the plants are dormant or semi-dormant during the winter months. University of California researchers Helen Dahlke, Nick Clark and Khaled Bali are investigating how alfalfa copes with additional water in the winter and early spring, when snowmelt runoff occurs, for groundwater recharge.
“We hypothesized that water can be recharged in dormant and early regrowing established alfalfa fields successfully, and with little to no harm to the plants and the productivity as far as the farmer is concerned,” said Clark, a UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor.
The findings have shown great promise for recharging groundwater without negatively impacting alfalfa yield but may diminish quality. “You could do recharge in winter and then turn the water off completely and still get a cutting or two of alfalfa before the summer,” said Bali, a UCCE irrigation water management specialist.
Like Bali, Clark thinks alfalfa growers could use their fields for recharging groundwater while taking steps to limit loss of crop value.
“We did find that the practice of recharging groundwater in alfalfa fields can have a negative impact on the feed quality of the alfalfa when first harvested after the flooding,” Clark said.
“One big recommendation we have is that the alfalfa fields should be in their later years of production so if something disastrous happens, there is not so huge of investment return lost,” said Clark. “There is current research being conducted by UC Cooperative Extension specialists Dan Putnam and Khaled Bali examining practical solutions on the farm level that growers can implement to minimize the risk of damage to alfalfa when also flooding fields for groundwater recharge.”
Clark emphasized that farmers face incredibly complex water-management issues today. The drivers that influence their decisions reach far beyond the farm, so he collaborates with UC Davis professor Helen Dahlke, who studies integrated hydrologic sciences.
“It requires an approach from multiple disciplines to address that complexity,” he said. “Helen brings hydrological expertise, while I can focus on agronomy. So the information we provide is more holistic and relevant on a larger scale, but still practical and applicable for farmers.”
Grower input on the research findings has been critical to their success. “With their feedback, we were able to reform some of the project methodologies to achieve results that were even more relevant to the local conditions,” said Clark.
With the prolonged drought, innovations in groundwater recharge are becoming more crucial. Future research will continue to focus on how growers can use their land in multifaceted ways to improve California's water sustainability far into the future.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When droughts strike California, people who rely on shallow domestic wells for their drinking, cooking and washing water are among the first to feel the pain. Aquifers have become depleted from decades of overuse. Drilling deeper is an option for farmers, but prohibitively expensive for low-income residents in disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley.
A UC scientist believes managed aquifer recharge on agricultural lands close to populations with parched wells is a hopeful solution.
Helen Dahlke, professor in integrated hydrologic sciences at UC Davis, has been evaluating scenarios for flooding agricultural land when excess water is available during the winter in order to recharge groundwater. If relatively clean mountain runoff is used, the water filtering down to the aquifer will address another major groundwater concern: nitrogen and pesticide contamination.
“The recharge has the potential to clean up groundwater,” she said.
Five years ago, UC Cooperative Extension specialist Toby O'Geen developed an interactive map that identifies 3.6 million acres of California farmland with the best potential for replenishing the aquifer based on soil type, land use, topography and other factors. Dahlke and her colleagues analyzed the map and identified nearly 3,000 locations where flooding suitable ag land will recharge water for 288 rural communities, half of which rely mainly on groundwater for drinking water. The research was published by Advancing Earth and Space Science in February 2021.
“If we have the choice to pick a location where recharge could happen, choose those upstream from these communities,” Dahlke said. “Recharge will create a groundwater mound which is like a bubble of water floating in the subsurface. It takes time to reach the groundwater table. That bubble floating higher above the groundwater table might just be enough to provide for a community's water needs.”
Filling reservoirs under the ground
Many climate models for California suggest long-term precipitation amounts will not change, however, the winter rainy season will be shorter and more intense.
“That puts us in a difficult spot,” Dahlke said. “Our reservoirs are built to buffer some rain storms but are mainly built to store the slowly melting snowpack in the spring. In the coming years, all the water will come down earlier, snowmelt likely in March and April and more water in winter from rainfall events.”
She is working with water districts and farmers to consider a change in managing water in reservoirs.
“We want to think about drawing reservoirs empty and putting the water underground during the fall and early winter. Then you have a lot of room to handle the enormous amounts of runoff we expect when we have a warm atmospheric river rain event on snow in the spring,” she said. “However, farmers are hesitant. They like to see water behind the dams.”
Interest in groundwater banking has been lifted with the implementation of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The law requires governments and water agencies to stop overdraft and bring groundwater basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge by 2040. Before SGMA, there were no statewide laws governing groundwater pumping and groundwater was used widely to irrigate farms when surface supplies were cut due to drought.
“For some of the drought years, overdraft was estimated to be as high as 9 million acre-feet a year,” Dahlke said.
Dahlke believes wintertime flooding for groundwater recharge can help water districts meet SGMA rules. “We have to do anything we can to store any surplus water that becomes available to save it for drier times and our aquifers provide a huge storage for that,” she said.
Farming impacts
The Dahlke lab is collaborating with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources farm advisors and specialists and with scientists at other UC campuses to learn about agronomic impacts of flooding a variety of agricultural crops, including almonds, alfalfa and grapes.
In the San Joaquin Valley, UC Cooperative Extension irrigation specialist Khaled Bali led an intermittent groundwater recharge trial on alfalfa. The researchers applied up to 16 inches per week with no significant impact on alfalfa yield.
“You could do groundwater recharge in winter and then turn the water off completely and still get a cutting or two of alfalfa before summer,” he said.
This past winter, Dahlke was prepared to flood 1,000 acres of land with water from the Consumnes River. Even though winter 2020-21 was another drought year, the research will go on. Her team was able to flood a 400-acre vineyard and, in collaboration with scientists from UC Santa Cruz, deploy sensors in the field to measure infiltration rates to better understand whether sediment in the flood water could clog pores in the soil. Her team also collaborates with Ate Visser of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in using isotope and noble gas data to determine the groundwater age and flow.
The Dahlke Lab's groundwater banking project has planned more studies in groundwater basins across the state to close knowledge gaps on suitable locations, technical implementation and long-term operation. They also plan to address operational, economic and legal feasibility of groundwater banking on agricultural land.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Outstanding work recognized with Distinguished Service Awards
Sponsored by UC ANR and Academic Assembly Council, the Distinguished Service Awards (DSA) recognize service and academic excellence in UC Cooperative Extension over a significant period of time. Awards highlight the use of innovative methods and the integration of research, extension and leadership by UC ANR academics. Award categories include outstanding research, outstanding extension, outstanding new academic, outstanding team, and outstanding leader.
Congratulations to the 2020 DSA recipients!
Outstanding Research – Carlos Crisosto
Carlos Crisosto, UC Cooperative Extension postharvest physiology specialist, has demonstrated an exceptional research program with impacts on both the California food industry and consumers through his work on postharvest handling of tree fruits and nuts. His work has had a significant impact – reducing food loss, improving fruit quality and safety, and expanding markets for California agriculture. Highlights of Crisosto's work include his incorporation of consumer perceptions into the measurement of fruit quality, collaborative development and implementation of protocols for fruit ripening, transportation and retail handling, and research into consumer perceptions of different cultivars. His outstanding research has been coupled with an outreach and education program that included extension through site visits, in person workshops, short courses, manuals, popular articles, websites and collaboration. In addition to his academic successes, Crisosto was awarded the Industry Distinguished Service & Achievement Award by the California fig industry in recognition of supporting cultivar development and improving marketing and utilization of dried and fresh figs over his career. The success of Crisosto's program is a testament to the outstanding work in applied research that can be accomplished through UC ANR.
Outstanding Extension – Andrew Sutherland
Andrew Sutherland has shaped his pest management program based on his clientele needs since the beginning of his career at UC ANR in 2012 and has had great success implementing pest management programs in urban areas. He has done an extensive amount of work on bed bug, termite and cockroach control. He has worked with several agencies including structural pest control businesses, public health nurses, multi-family housing managers and UC Master Gardeners to deliver practical information on pest management. One ongoing project that has both a public health and an environmental impact in California is bait station systems for control of subterranean termites. The project is evaluating efficacy and costs associated with bait systems and looking into alternatives to liquid termicides, which have been identified as serious environmental contaminants in CA's surface water systems. His work has benefited urban populations in general, but has also reached under-served communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sutherland has made a major effort to reach out to Hispanic audiences, producing materials in Spanish and hosting public presentations and outreach events in low-income areas of his territory. He has worked with industry leaders collaborating on applied research projects considering economic challenges when designing programs that would be beneficial and relevant to his clientele.
Outstanding New Academic – Mae Culumber
Mae Culumber has been the CE nut crops advisor in Fresno County since June 2016. She has developed an outstanding applied research program in only 4 years, which addresses clientele needs and is in alignment with the ANR Strategic Vision. Her work provides innovative solutions to identify orchard management practices that maximize the efficient use of water and nutrient resources, and promote biochemical and physical soil characteristics that will lead to improvements in soil health and enhanced vigor and productivity of nut crops. Culumber's work primarily focused on innovative efforts that improved food system productivity. She established successful collaborations with advisors and specialists from UC Cooperative Extension, faculty from UC Davis Plant Sciences, and scientists from USDA-ARS Davis and Parlier to examine greenhouse gas emissions, and soil biochemical carbon and nitrogen dynamics in newly established orchards after whole orchard recycling. Her leadership of this basic and applied research team is exceptional for a newer advisor in the Assistant rank. Culumber recognizes and invests in developing useful information, strategies and trainings to impact and improve clientele practices, that also have statewide public value by protecting California's natural resources.
Outstanding Team – AB 589 Water Measurement Training Team
This team of CE specialists and advisors rapidly developed and coordinated a training program that met the needs of UC ANR's farming and ranching clientele, in a cost-effective and timely manner. California Senate Bill 88 requires all water right holders who have previously diverted or intend to divert more than 10 ac-ft per year to measure and report the water they divert to the State. For most ranchers and diverters impacted by SB 88, complying with the reporting requirements is expensive and burdensome. The cost and availability of professionals to design, install and calibrate diversion measurement systems resulted in a grass roots effort by California Cattlemen's Association and California Farm Bureau to seek an educational alternative for surface water diverters. With support from the University of California, Assembly Bill 589 (AB 589) was introduced and carried. It passed through the Assembly and the Senate with no opposition and was signed by Governor Brown. The bill allows diverters that complete the UC course to install and maintain measurement devices to comply with SB 88, saving them time and money. Working with industry (California Cattlemen's Association) and regulators (State Water Resources Control Board), the UC team provided a huge service to farming and ranching clientele, and the state. This is a true testament to UC ANR's ability to work with groups of differing interests in order to reach a common goal. The UC team has conducted 20 workshops since the bill was passed and certified over 1,200 diverters. One letter of reference indicated a cost savings of more than $4,000 on his ranch alone.
The AB 589 Water Measurement Training Team includes:
- Larry Forero, UCCE director and livestock and natural resources advisor, Shasta County
- Khaled Bali, UCCE irrigation water management specialist, Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center
- Allan Fulton, UCCE irrigation and water resources advisor, Tehama County
- Daniele Zaccaria, UCCE associate Cooperative Extension specialist, UC Davis
- Theresa Becchetti, UCCE livestock and natural resources advisor, Stanislaus County
- Josh Davy, UCCE director and livestock and natural resources advisor, Tehama County
- Morgan Doran, UCCE director and livestock and natural resources advisor, UC Cooperative Extension Capitol Corridor
- Julie Finzel, UCCE livestock and natural resources advisor, Kern County
- Cari Koopmann Rivers, former UCCE director, Siskiyou County
- Glenn McGourty, UCCE director and farm advisor, Mendocino County
- Rebecca Ozeran, UCCE livestock advisor, Fresno County
- Devii Rao, UCCE director and livestock and natural resources advisor, San Benito County
- Tracy Schohr, UCCE livestock and natural resource advisor, Plumas-Sierra and Butte counties
- Scott Stoddard, UCCE director and farm advisor, Merced County
- Matthew Shapero, UCCE livestock & natural resource advisor, Ventura & Santa Barbara counties
- Rhonda Smith, UCCE viticulture advisor, Sonoma County
- Laura Snell, UCCE director, Modoc County
- Jeff Stackhouse, UCCE livestock & natural resource advisor, Humboldt & Del Norte counties
- Julé Rizzardo, assistant deputy director, Division of Water Rights, State Water Resources Control Board-Sacramento
- Kyle Ochenduszko, deputy public works director, City of Benicia
- Brian Coats, senior water resource control engineer, SWRCB-Sacramento
- Jeff Yeazell, water resource control engineer, SWRCB-Sacramento
- Chuck Arnold, water resource control engineer, SWRCB-Sacramento
Outstanding Leader – Katherine Soule
Katherine Soule holds a number formal leadership roles in ANR including leading several statewide programs locally, serving as director of UCCE in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties and as Academic Assembly Council president. Soule holds informal leadership roles as a mentor and colleague. Outside of ANR, she leads a national working group, is a local non-profit board member, and leads research and development for a professional organization.When Soule became county director (July 2017), she began strategic planning focused on building relationships with key stakeholders (administrative, clientele, academics, and community partners) and addressing the needs, opportunities, and challenges UCCE faces in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. Her efforts focused on improving fiscal management, increasing understanding of UCCE, and eliminating program inefficiencies.
Soule uses strengths-based leadership and her leadership position to support and communicate the goals of academics' programs and their successes, while ensuring the fiscal resources needed to carry out their visions. She recognizes the strengths and expertise of those she leads and provides others with meaningful opportunities to develop shared visions and long-term objectives. She has supported the development and advancement of several team members, who have completed advanced degrees while working for UCCE, taken higher-level positions, and increased their professional contributions to their respective fields. She is sought throughout the ANR system to provide guidance and support for academics, statewide leaders and other personnel.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UC Agriculture and Natural Resources will receive $865,000 to help farmers in the Colorado River basin and the Salinas Valley integrate digital tools and artificial intelligence into their growing systems. The funds are part of a $10 million Sustainable Agricultural Systems grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture to improve the sustainability of the nation's food supply.
The intensive agricultural industry of the Colorado River basin – which includes the Palo Verde, Coachella and Imperial valleys in California; the Yuma Valley and other areas, such as Wellton-Mohawk Valley in Arizona – produces vegetables in the winter that are shipped across the country. Salinas Valley farms produce vegetables in the summer for markets throughout the nation.
“Vegetables are an essential part of a healthful diet. With this grant, NIFA is recognizing the role that California, Arizona and Colorado play in growing nutritious food for Americans,” said Khaled Bali, UC Cooperative Extension irrigation specialist. “The sustainability of these production systems into the future, particularly in light of challenges like climate change, increased drought and limited access to surface and groundwater, will require sophisticated technology.”
U.S. agriculture industry professionals are world leaders in the use of technology, including automation, drip irrigation, sensors and drones. “What's new is how you can now integrate technology into making decisions,” said Bali, who is leading the digital agriculture education and outreach aspect of the grant.
Bali said new farming tools work like smart thermostats in homes, which have sensors throughout the house and learn family patterns to make conditions perfectly comfortable throughout the day and night.
On the farm, instead of applying the same amount of water and fertilizer over hundreds of acres, sensors, valves and digital management allow small sectors to get treatments based on soil type, size of plants, pest pressure, salinity and disease management.
“This project will lay the foundation for a long-term shift to highly automated mechanized farm management systems – with full implementation likely decades in the future,” Bali said. “The precise application of inputs in agriculture will save water, reduce the percolation of fertilizer below plant roots, reduce the need for manual labor in the industry, increase yields and decrease expenditures, enhancing the industry's economic viability.”
Field demonstrations, training sessions, videos and handouts will bridge the gap between ongoing farming practices and academic and industry state-of-the-art digital technology. These activities are expected to increase the productivity and competitiveness of major crop growers.
The new project will expand the usage of a smartphone and website app called CropManage, a system developed in 2011 by Michael Cahn, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. CropManage allows farmers in the Salinas Valley to input information about their crops and soil, and then automatically receive recommendations about irrigation and fertilization needs that take into account weather conditions reported by the California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS), a network of automated weather stations managed by the California Department of Water Resources.
Currently, CropManage makes about 2,000 recommendations to Salinas Valley farmers each month during the growing season. The new funding will allow for the expansion of CropManage to help farmers manage salinity.
“To minimize salt toxicity to the crop, farmers may need to apply water to leach salinity below the root zone. But we don't want to leach nitrates,” Cahn said. “We want to decouple these processes and do the leaching when there are lower nitrogen levels in the system. Determining timing and water amount is something we will build into CropManage.”
The grant will also provide funding for new training and outreach that will enable more farmers to use the CropManage app.
The overarching $10 million grant awarded to UC Riverside is led by professor Elia Scudiero, an expert in soil, plant and water relationships. He and a team of UC Riverside scientists will develop artificial intelligence data needed for smart farming systems with new statistical and algebraic models that find repeated and generalizable patterns.
Another key piece of the effort will be supplying the agriculture industry with the next generation of growers, managers and scientists. Funds from the NIFA grant will establish a Digital Agriculture Fellowship program to recruit more than 50 data, environmental or agricultural science students over the next five years to develop and learn the technology. Internships with key commercial partners are also a feature of the program.
