Strawberry plants suffering from salt toxicity. Symptoms include brown and brittle leaf margins (above, photo by Albert Ulrich, UC) and stunted plant growth (below, photo by Stuart Styles, CalPoly). Strawberry is among the crops that are very sensitive to salinity.
The wildfires in San Diego and Ventura Counties during the fall of 2003 were certainly devastating to many avocado groves adjacent to burning native chaparral.
What a spectacular paper wasp! On a visit last week to the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis, we saw a paper wasp (genus Mischocyttarus) foraging in the fava beans with assorted ladybugs, aphids and ants.
At last, the Laidlaw almonds are in bloom. That would be the almond trees on the grounds of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road at the University of California, Davis. And no one appreciates this more than the bees holed up in the 40 hives behind the facility.
The best key to unlock efficient irrigation practice is to know exactly how much water your crop uses and replace it in a timely fashion that matches your irrigation system capacity and avoids crop stress and water logging.
Vertebrate pests that have caused damage to citrus trees include rodents and small mammals, large mammals, and birds. Citrus orchards provide food and shelter for a number of these pests, and damage may be severe if the pest resides in the orchard.
Western agricultural concerns about weed cost increases center on the growing problem of herbicide resistance. At the recent California Weed Science Society annual meeting in Santa Barbara, Calif.
When people think of mosquitoes, they probably never think of Aedes japonicus. It's an Asian species "generally found in Japan, Korea, the Ryukyu Archipelago (Okinawa and associated islands), Taiwan, South China, and Hong Kong," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Abstract: Agricultural weed management has become entrenched in a single tacticherbicideresistant cropsand needs greater emphasis on integrated practices that are sustainable over the long term.
