- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Armyworms can be a serious pest in rice. The worms can eat the rice foliate or panicles, and cause yield reductions.
In 2015, a severe outbreak of armyworms caught rice growers by surprise, resulting in yield losses. In a 2018 survey conducted by UC Cooperative Extension, rice growers reported average yield losses in 2015 ranging from 4% to 12%. Since UCCE began a monitoring program in 2016, rice losses to armyworms have been rare, according to Luis Espino, UC Cooperative Extension rice farming systems advisor in Butte and Glenn counties.
To safeguard the rice crop against the pests, UCCE began conducting...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A UC Cooperative Extension specialist says there isn’t enough scientific evidence to warrant consumers making changes to their diets nor to their children’s diets based on recent media reports about levels of arsenic in rice. The issue arose from an analysis by Consumer Reports of white and brown rice from around the world and rice products like rice cereal, rice milk and rice pasta.
“In virtually every (rice) product we tested, we found measurable amounts of total arsenic,” said the article.
However, Carl Winter, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the...
- Author: Iqbal Pittalwala
Imagine if rice – yes, that semiaquatic species that is typically cultivated under partially flooded conditions – could be both flood- and drought-tolerant. Such a rice variety would benefit rice growers and consumers worldwide and would be less vulnerable to weather extremes that may result from global climate change.
Now UC Riverside experiments demonstrate that such rice is already here. Genetics professor Julia Bailey-Serres’ research group reports in a recent issue of
