- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
Happy New Year! We are entering "meeting season". The new year brings several opportunities for continuing education, including UC Cooperative Extension grower meetings and the California Plant and Soil Conference. Please see below for more information.
1. UC Cooperative Extension will host the SJC and Delta Field Crops Meeting on Thursday, January 17, 2019 from 8:00am to 12:00pm. The meeting location is the Cabral Agricultural Center in Stockton (2101 E. Earhart Ave., Stockton, CA 95206). Please see this previous post for the agenda or open the attachment below. We will offer continuing education credits for DPR licensing (2), CCA certification (3), and nitrogen management (1.5). Light refreshments will be provided.
2. UC Cooperative Extension will host five meetings for rice growers. The meeting details are as follows:
Richvale: Thursday, January 17, 8:30am, Evangelical Church, 5219 Church St., Richvale
Glenn: Thursday, January 17, 1:30pm, Glenn Pheasant Hall, 1522 Hwy. 45, south of Glenn
Colusa: Friday, January 18, 8:30am, Colusa Casino Resort, 3770 Hwy 45, Colusa
Marysville: Friday, January 18, 1:30pm, Yuba County Government Center, 915 8th St., Marysville
Woodland: Tuesday, January 22, 8:30am, Cracchiolos Banquet Hall, 1320 E. Main Street, Woodland
Time: Doors open at 8:00am, and meetings start at 8:30am at Richvale, Colusa, and Woodland. Doors open at 1:00pm, and meetings start at 1:30 pm at Glenn and Marysville. DPR and CCA continuing education credits will be offered. For the program, please visit the UC Rice Blog.
3. The California Chapter of the American Society of Agronomy will hold its annual Plant and Soil Conference on February 6-7 in Fresno, California. Program information and registration are available from the conference website. Session topics include water management, climate smart agriculture, irrigation efficiency, and pest management. DPR licensing, CCA certification, and nitrogen management continuing education credits will be offered.
SJC and Delta Field Crops Meeting Agenda
- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
UC Cooperative Extension will host the SJC and Delta Field Crops Meeting on Thursday, January 17, 2019 from 8:00am to 12:00pm. The meeting location is the Cabral Agricultural Center in Stockton (2101 E. Earhart Ave., Stockton, CA 95206). Coffee and light refreshments will be provided.
The agenda is attached at the bottom of this post, and is as follows:
8:00am Doors Open and Sign In
8:15am Nitrogen Stabilizers in Silage Corn, Michelle Leinfelder-Miles, UCCE San Joaquin/Delta Counties
8:45am Measuring the Interaction between N Demand and Water Use in Irrigated Corn, Mark Lundy, UC Davis
9:15am Regulatory Update, Tim Pelican, San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner
9:30am Fish Friendly Farming Program for the Delta, Laurel Marcus, California Land Stewardship Institute
9:45am Break
10:00am Agronomic Strategies to Improve Alfalfa Pest Management, Dan Putnam, UC Davis
10:30am Opportunities for Automation and Optimization of Surface Irrigation Systems, Khaled Bali, UCCE, Kearney Research and Extension Center
11:00am Italian Ryegrass Management in California Wheat Cropping Systems, Mariano Galla, UCCE, Glenn/Butte/Tehama Counties
11:30am Managing for Soil Health and Soil Salinity, Michelle Leinfelder-Miles, UCCE, San Joaquin/Delta Counties
12:00pm Evaluations and Adjourn
We have submitted applications for continuing education for pesticide licensing and certified crop advisors. We have also submitted an application for nitrogen management continuing education, which would help to satisfy growers' continuing education requirement for the Irrigated Lands Program. Applications are pending.
Our programs are open to all potential participants. If you require special accommodations, please contact UCCE San Joaquin County at 209-953-6100. Thank you, and hope to see you at the meeting.
2019-1-17 Field Crops Meeting Agenda
- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
Stand counts were made approximately two weeks after planting. The stand was assessed in the center two rows of each four-row plot, counting the plants along a 10-foot length. Bloom was assessed over the week of July 16th. While planting occurred on the same day as in 2017, the days to bloom was 68 in 2018, averaged across varieties, compared to 65 in 2017. This amounts to an approximate accumulation of 1230 growing degree days (GDD) in both years. In general, the temperatures were lower in 2018 compared to 2017. Over the course of the season, there were four days above 100⁰F, compared to a total of 14 days over 100⁰F during the 2017 season. (Temperature data is from the neighboring Staten Island CIMIS station.)
We monitored disease incidence and plant lodging in late September. Disease incidence, particularly Fusarium ear rot, was higher in 2018 compared to the two previous years. A sign of Fusarium ear rot is white fungal mycelium around the kernels. The disease is usually introduced to the ears by corn earworm or by thrips that travel down the corn silks at pollination. Incidence may be reduced in varieties with longer husks that prevent insect infestations. Planting earlier in the season may also reduce incidence, as the crop may reach pollination before insect pests are prevalent. Seed company representatives have indicated that Fusarium ear rot incidence was high in other parts of the state as well.
The table presents mean values for the three replicates. The statistical method used to compare the means is called the Tukey's range test. Varieties were considered statistically different if their P value was less than 0.05, or 5 percent. What this means is that when differences between varieties exist, we are 95% certain that the two varieties are actually different; the results are not due to random chance. Differences between varieties are indicated by different letters following the mean. For example, a variety that has only the letter “a” after the mean yield value is different from a variety that is followed by only the letter “b”, but it is not different from a variety whose mean value is followed by both letters (“ab”). Similarly, a variety whose mean yield is followed by the letters “ab” is not different from a variety whose mean yield is followed by the letters “bc”. Eleven varieties have a letter “a” following their mean yield, which means that those eleven varieties all performed similarly in the trial. In other words, based on this research, we cannot attribute numerical differences to varietal differences. The variety that had the lowest yield in the trial also had the lowest stand count. This may have been the result of the planter settings. Seed inventory records indicate that a standard bag of this variety weighed 54 pounds for 80,000 seeds; whereas, bags of other varieties weighed 39 to 44 pounds for 80,000 seeds. This larger-sized seed may not have dropped consistently from the planter in order to achieve the desired plant stand. Growers should contact the seed company with further questions.
Across varieties, there were also statistical differences in stand count, days to bloom, Fusarium ear rot, head smut, ear height, grain moisture, and bushel weight. The CV, or coefficient of variation, is the standard deviation divided by the mean, or a measure of variability in relation to the mean. For the diseases, the variability among the three replicates was very high.
Special thanks go to the cooperating growers, Steve and Gary Mello, and the participating seed companies. A printable version of these results is available from my website.
Table 1. 2018 UCCE Field Corn Variety Trial Results
Results for each variety are expressed as the average across three replications.
* Data were transformed for analysis. Arithmetic means are presented.
‡ Yield adjusted to 15% moisture.
† Larger seed size and planter settings may have caused lower stand and yield. Contact company representative for more information.
- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
- Author: Mark Lundy
The Delta trial was on a Rindge muck soil, characterized by over 20 percent organic matter in the top foot of soil. Approximately 56,000 acres in the Delta have the Rindge classification (USDA-NRCS). Over the course of the season, the site received approximately 11.5 inches of rain, and the site was not otherwise irrigated. (Precipitation data is from the Staten Island CIMIS station.) The previous crop in the field was triticale during the 2016-17 season.
The results from the 2017-18 Delta trial are summarized in table form for wheat and triticale. The top-yielding wheat varieties were WB 7566 (4.6 tons/ac; 11.7% protein), LCS 12SB0224 (4.5 tons/ac; 11.6% protein), and UC Patwin 515 (4.2 tons/ac; 12.9% protein), and the top-yielding triticale varieties were WB Pacheco (5.9 tons/ac; 11.1% protein), NS Trical 115T (5.2 tons/ac; 9.3% protein), and NS Trical 158EP (4.8 tons/ac; 9.6% protein). Of note, there was volunteer triticale from the previous year that grew in the plot. We ended up only harvesting one replicate (of four) where we rogued the triticale by hand.
Since environmental conditions vary from location to location and year to year, we advise making variety decisions based on aggregated data. For example, the Delta trial had very wet conditions in 2016-17 when California received record-setting rainfall. While conditions in 2017-18 were closer to “normal”, we still suggest reviewing three-year summaries when making variety decisions. The results for the Delta tend to align better with those from the Sacramento Valley compared to the San Joaquin Valley. Thus, the Delta results are incorporated into the three-year summaries for the Sacramento Valley, available for wheat and triticale.
Over the past two years, the UC Davis team has developed web tools that allow us to view some of the trial data in a more interactive way. There are two websites – one with the multi-year summary data and another that summarizes each trial individually. We suggest using these interactive tools on a computer, rather than a phone.
Please let us know if you have questions about the trials or the web tools.
- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
Agenda:
10:00am Field corn variety evaluation – preliminary results, Michelle Leinfelder-Miles, UCCE, SJC/Delta
10:15am Variety traits for the Delta, Seed company representatives
10:30am N stabilizer product trial in silage corn, Michelle Leinfelder-Miles, UCCE, SJC/Delta
10:45am Measuring the interaction between N demand and water use in irrigated corn, Taylor Becker and Mark Lundy, UC Davis
11:00am Viewing of field plots
2018-10-18 Corn Field Meeting Agenda