- Author: Trina Kleist, UC Davis
Field day offers examples, tips for solving the mystery
A grower applies an herbicide to his tomato plants, or thinks a neighbor's treatment is drifting over her almond trees. A short time later, the leaves start to bleach or shrivel. Was it the herbicide? Or maybe water stress? Soil nutrients? Perhaps an insect?
Figuring out the causes of crop problems takes detective work, and like solving any mystery, it starts with knowing the signs, gathering evidence and asking questions.
The Diagnosing Herbicide Symptoms field day at UC Davis was an opportunity to see, up close, the shriveled cotton,...
- Author: Trina Kleist, UC Davis
One more reason to adopt sustainable cultivation
California wheat farmers could both maintain their yields and improve soil health by growing annual wheat without tilling the soil year after year.
This could be one more encouragement to farmers to adopt a sustainable practice commonly called conservation tillage, no-till or minimum-till cultivation, impacting how we grow a grain that supplies about 20 percent of the calories and protein for people around the world.
A new study, by a team led by Mark Lundy, University of California Cooperative Extension specialist in UC Davis' Department of Plant...
- Author: Emily C. Dooley, UC Davis
The project will also train plant breeders for the future
Wheat products account for roughly 20% of what people eat every day around the globe. As climate changes, wheat crops must adapt to new weather patterns to keep up with demand.
The University of California, Davis, is leading a five-year, $15 million research project to accelerate wheat breeding to meet those new climate realities, as well as to train a new generation of plant breeders.
“Everything is less stable,” said
