Archive Nut, Prune and Olive Programs

So you're out roaming the countryside or cityscape in Solano, Yolo or Sacramento counties at the start of the new year and you encounter a Cabbage White butterfly.

You'd never know by his stunning art work that Christopher Marley once hated insects. (At right: a portion of his spectacular "Coleoptera Mosaic.

This is one part follow up to my previous post on glyphosate resistance and one part test of a tool to imbed articles in the blog. The above frame has a 2008 report that Anil Shrestha, Kurt Hembree, and I wrote for California Agriculture on our glyphosate-resistant hairy fleabane work.

Most of us just finished a whirlwind of olfaction and taste during the holidays, but in the Walter Leal lab at the University of California, Davis, it's a full-time commitment.

We can learn from the ants. Indeed, we can take lessons from the ants, according to ecologist Rob Dunn (right), assistant professor in the Department of Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh.

I thought I'd followup on my post last week about herbicide resistant weeds with a little more detail on our recent (and ongoing) work on glyphosate-resistant horseweed (Conyza canadensis) which is also known as mare's tail.

Red ornaments on a Christmas tree? No, ladybugs (aka ladybird beetles or lady beetles) on Artemisia. Ladybugs are overwintering on our Artemisia (genus belonging to the daisy family, Asteracease). When the rains come, the drops bubble up on the plants and the ladybugs alike.

There's joy on the horizon for beekeepers battling that pesky Varroa mite. They may soon have a "fool-proof" method to silence the parasite, considered the honey bee's worst enemy.

Researchers have a thousand questions about thousand cankers disease (TCD), the newly discovered disease that kills black walnut trees. Chemical ecologist and forest entomologist of Steve Seybold of the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, Calif.

I have gathered some more information after my first blog and here is an update on the maggot issue we are seeing in Santa Maria and parts of Oxnard.