- Author: Pamela S Kan-Rice
Growers invited to discuss young almonds, pistachios, walnuts, olives and citrus orchards starting May 9
To help growers manage irrigation and nutrients for young and immature orchards, UC Cooperative Extension is offering workshops in Modesto, Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield.
The workshops will feature presentations by various experts and researchers focusing on best irrigation and nutrient management practices tailored specifically for young orchards in the San Joaquin Valley. They will cover almonds, pistachios, walnuts, olives and citrus.
“Attendees will gain insights into the irrigation and nutrient needs of young orchards, which are different from those applicable to mature orchards, and learn strategies for adjusting these practices as orchards mature,” said Moneim Mohamed, UC Cooperative Extension irrigation and soils advisor for Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties. “This knowledge aims to ensure healthier tree development, better resource use and more resilient orchards in the face of climate change.”
Growers, certified crop advisers and other agricultural professionals are encouraged to attend. Workshop attendees may request one-on-one assistance from a UCCE farm advisor.
Speakers include UCCE advisors Mohamed, Mae Culumber, Tobias Oker, and Cameron Zuber, UCCE specialist Giulia Marino, Andre Daccache of UC Davis, Charles Hillyer and Shawn Ashkan of Fresno State.
The Young Orchard Irrigation and Nutrient Management workshops will be held in four locations:
May 9 (8 a.m.–12:30 p.m.)
UC Cooperative Extension, Room HI, 3800 Cornucopia Way
Register at https://ucanr.edu/orchardsmodesto
Merced
May 14 (8 a.m.–12:30 p.m.)
UC Cooperative Extension, 2145 Wardrobe Avenue
Register at https://ucanr.edu/orcharsmerced
Fresno
May 22 (8 a.m.–12:30 p.m.)
Fresno State, 5370 N. Chestnut M/S OF 18
Register at https://ucanr.edu/orchardsfresno
Bakersfield
June 5 (8 a.m.–12:30 p.m.)
UC Cooperative Extension, 1031 South Mount Vernon Avenue
Register at https://ucanr.edu/orchardsbakersfield
Workshops are free and include coffee breaks, lunch, workshop materials along with the presentations. Registration is required.
These workshops are supported by a grant from California Department of Food and Agriculture and sponsored by Almond Board of California, California Pistachio Research Board, WiseConn Engineering and Irrometer Company, Inc.
- Author: Ben Faber
Senior Public Information Officer
- UC Riverside,Plant materials that would otherwise become trash may be the key to solving two big problems: diminishing freshwater supplies for farms and diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics.
On average, agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater use. In California, which produces nearly half of all U.S.-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables, that number rises to 80%.
The United Nations estimates food production will need to double by 2050. However, water supplies will not increase accordingly. Instead, due to climate change and drought, water resources are quickly shrinking.
One solution to the increasing need for farm water is to use treated municipal wastewater. There are roughly 16,000 wastewater treatment plants in the U.S., each of them capable of processing up to 10 million gallons every day.
“It's a huge amount of processed water that's mostly clean and can be used again, but there's a problem,” said Ananda Bhattacharjee, assistant project scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Salinity Laboratory, based at UC Riverside.
“This water can contain chemicals of emerging concern, like antibiotics, that are difficult to detect and treat without advanced and expensive instrumentation,” he said. “These instruments also require trained laboratory personnel to operate and maintain.”
Once exposed to the antibiotics in the water supply, soil bacteria immediately start developing resistance to the drugs because they want to survive. “Bacteria are amazing biological sensors,” he said. As the bacteria develop resistance, antibiotics stop working.
Once crops are irrigated with contaminated reclaimed water, plants that get harvested and come to our dinner tables may contain residual antibiotics, resistance genes, and resistant bacteria.
To correct this issue, Bhattacharjee is leading a new, $1 million project testing a low-cost technology to make the reclaimed water safer for agricultural re-use. Funded by the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, the project will test how effectively biochar made from various types of discarded plant materials can “polish” the water.
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance made by burning organic material. Burning any organic matter, even wood chips, in limited-oxygen environments retains the mass of the burned substance. The remaining, charred substance is highly absorbent.
“It's like activated charcoal used in HEPA filters and HVAC systems. Biochar works on the same principal; it adsorbs chemicals present in reclaimed water and allows only clean water to pass through,” Bhattacharjee said.
Based on this principle, Daniel Ashworth, a soil scientist at the Salinity Laboratory, first built a bench-scale filtration system with biochar for the removal of antibiotics in synthetic wastewater. The results were very promising, with antibiotics removal efficiency of up to 98%.
“Encouraged by Dr. Ashworth's experiments, we will be designing the larger-scale biochar-based polishing systems for removing residual antibiotics in reclaimed water,” Bhattacharjee said.
Using biochar polishers could potentially remove the need to detect the antibiotics in reclaimed water, assisting treatment plants that do not have advanced detection or treatment technologies, and cannot afford them.
Affordability is one of the best features of the biochar system. “As engineers, we try to keep it simple. If we can build something for a dime, we don't want to have to spend a dollar,” Bhattacharjee said.
For this project, scientists from UC Riverside, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, US Salinity Laboratory, and the University of California's Agriculture and Natural Resources are teaming up to test biochar made from multiple kinds of plant materials left over from agricultural field production.
To start, they'll collect treated sewage sludge and plant materials such as pistachio shells and date palm leaves which would otherwise be thrown away. These materials will be turned into biochar for designing filtration systems that reclaimed water can pass through.
Ultimately, the team would like to develop a database of different, inexpensive biochar materials that can all be used for removing harmful compounds from reclaimed water for agricultural reuse, especially crop irrigation.
If the costs remain low and effectiveness remains high, the research team hopes growers will install biochar-based reclaimed water polishing systems on their farms. “That is the major goal of the project, taking this from bench scale to full field scale,” Bhattacharjee said.
Right now, the whole ecology of fields is changing due to residual antibiotics in irrigation systems. The reclaimed water gets into the soil, earthworms feed on organic matter in the soil, and they develop antibiotic resistance in their guts. Then they may release this resistance through their feces, making additional changes to soil microflora, which keeps the cycle of resistance going.
“We are slowly spiking our own agricultural fields with this resistance,” Bhattacharjee said. “Demonstrating this issue was our first project, Bacteria Wars: episode one. Now we have a technique to remove the antibiotics and resistant bacteria, reducing the antimicrobial resistance spread in agriculture. This is our episode two: Researchers Strike Back.”
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- Author: Patty Guerra, UC Merced
Water is among the most precious resources on the planet. Some areas don't get enough; some get too much. And climate change is driving both of those circumstances to ever-growing extremes.
Two UC Merced experts in civil and environmental engineering took part in a recent report by the Environmental Defense Fund examining the issue and potential solutions. Associate Professor of Extension Tapan Pathak and Professor Josué Medellín-Azuara co-authored the report, "Scarcity and Excess: Tackling Water-Related Risks to Agriculture in the United States," and wrote the section pertaining to California.
In addition to climate change, disruptive human interventions such as groundwater over-extraction, sprawling drainage networks and misaligned governance are driving up water-related agricultural costs, particularly in midwestern and western states, the researchers found.
The problem is magnified in California, which hosts the largest and the most diverse agricultural landscape in the U.S., Pathak and Medellín-Azuara wrote, with gross revenues from farms and ranches exceeding $50 billion.
"Due to the favorable Mediterranean climate, unique regional microclimate zones, a highly engineered and developed water supply system, and a close connection between producers and research and cooperative extension institutions, California's agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities, some of which are produced nowhere else in the nation," the UC Merced researchers wrote.
But the state's varying climate and water needs pose a challenge. Though most of the precipitation falls in the northern part of California, the southern two-thirds of the state account for 85% of its water demand. And all of those crops must be watered in the summer, when there is little, if any, rainfall.
Some of the water comes from snowpack developed through winter storms and stored in reservoirs as it melts. Much of it comes from the Colorado River.
"Substantially less water is captured and stored during periods of drought, imperiling California's water supply and putting agricultural water needs at risk," Pathak and Medellín-Azuara wrote.
Climate change, with increasing periods of drought between excessively wet winters, magnifies that risk.
"Further, the rate of increases in the minimum temperatures in the Sierra Nevada is almost three-fold faster than maximum temperatures, resulting in potential decrease in the snowpack, earlier snowmelt, and more water in liquid form as opposed to snow," the researchers wrote. "According to the California Department of Water Resources, by 2100, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is projected to experience a 48% to 65% decline from the historical average."
Climate change is also expected to affect the availability of water from the Colorado River.
Climate extremes such as heat waves, drought and flooding - giving rises to increased weeds, pests and disease - are already significantly impacting agriculture and the broader economy, Pathak and Medellín-Azuara wrote.
The state's drought from 2012 to 2016 led to about 540,000 acres of fallow farmland in 2015, costing the state's economy $2.7 billion in gross revenue and 21,000 jobs. With the lack of precipitation, farmers increasingly pumped groundwater to irrigate crops, depleting those resources.
The report goes on to recommend policies, programs and tools be developed for agricultural resilience, including:
- Changing land use and crop management practices to support a transition to an agriculture footprint that can be sustained by the available water supplies.
- Increasing farmer and water manager access to important data and innovative technological tools to support their efforts.
- Reimagining built infrastructure and better using natural infrastructure so regions are better equipped to handle weather extremes.
- Developing policy and funding mechanisms to support mitigation and adaptation to water-related risks, avoid maladaptation and ensure food and water security.
"California's innovative agriculture needs to rapidly adapt to more volatile water availability, climate-driven higher water demands, and regulation protecting groundwater reserves, communities and ecosystems," Medellín-Azuara said. "The early adoption of more sustainable practices in agriculture will likely pay off dividends both in the short and long terms."
Added Pathak, "California faces significant challenges related to climate change, but it also presents opportunities for innovations, collaborations and sustained growth. To make agriculture resilient to climate risks, we need to engage in holistic solutions that integrates environmental, social, economic and policy considerations."
- Author: Laura Elisa Garza Diaz
Frost Protection Regulation - Laura Garza (1)
- Author: John M Harper
It has been many years since UC Cooperative Extension aka Farm Advisors have done an educational interest survey and updated our client contact database. There have been a lot of changes in our staff and many new farmers and ranchers have come into our counties so the time is right to update old information and let others, that are not familiar with our programs, join our clientele/supporter contact list.
We've also decided to go to a more modern program for informing the public and our supporters about the educational and research programs we offer in Mendocino and Lake Counties. The name of the program we'll be using is called Constant Contact.
We've learned from the Covid restrictions how to offer some of our educational programs through webinars, zoom conferences and social media. We realize not everyone likes some of these formats, or have poor Internet connection speeds. We are offering our traditional public workshops and field days again. We want to make sure you get our information through your preferred delivery methods. For some of you who may not be familiar with our programs, a few questions below will help you to know the specific areas we can provide information and research on and will insure you only get what you're interested in.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to fill out our survey. Personal information provided to us is confidential and will never be shared with anyone. If, after filling out our survey and receiving information from us, you no longer want to be contacted by us you may at any time asked to be removed from our contact database. All participants who submit a survey are eligible to enter a random drawing to win one of three Amazon $100 e-gift cards. We will be drawing for winners from everyone who opted in for the drawing and complete our survey.
The survey is on-line at: https://surveys.ucanr.edu/survey.cfm?surveynumber=7082
Please also share the link with others who would be interested in our programs. Thanks!!!