Posts Tagged: Rice

Brim-DeForest receives $1 million UCCE Presidential Chair for California Grown Rice

The $1 million UC Cooperative Extension Presidential Chair for California Grown Rice has been awarded to Whitney Brim-DeForest, UCCE rice advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Placer, Sacramento and Butte counties.

Brim-DeForest said she will use the funds generated from the endowed chair to hire a full-time technician to monitor a research study at UC Davis on weedy rice. Weedy rice is the same species as cultivated rice and it produces rice, however the grain falls off the plant before harvest.

She is part of a team of UC scientists that includes UCCE advisors Luis Espino and Michelle Lindfelder-Miles, and UCCE specialists Bruce Linquist and Kassim Al-Khatib who are conducting the five-year demonstration project to help farmers manage the problem.

“We don't know where weedy rice came from,” Brim-DeForest said. “It's a weed in every major rice growing area around the world. We were among the last areas to see it.”

In the UC Davis experiment, the scientists plan to demonstrate two potential weedy rice management strategies: rotate the rice crop with sorghum and create a “stale seed bed,” in which the field is irrigated and plants allowed to germinate, and then killed with an herbicide before the desired rice is planted.

“We want to demonstrate this in the field,” Brim-DeForest said. “In theory, it works. We want to show growers how long it will take to get weedy rice out of their fields.”

Half the funds for the endowed chair was provided by UC President Janet Napolitano; the other half was donated by the California Rice Research Board.

“The establishment of this endowed chair strengthens the long-standing public-private research partnership UC Cooperative Extension has had with the California rice industry,” said UC Agriculture and Natural Resources associate vice president Tu Tran, when the endowment was announced in 2016. “Continued research advancements will help the rice industry maintain its reputation for supplying a premium product for domestic and world markets.”

The chair appointment will be for a five-year term, and then reviewed and renewed or offered to another specialist or advisor working on California rice.

Brim-DeForest joined UCCE in 2016 after serving as a graduate student researcher in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, working at the California Rice Experiment Station in Biggs. She managed the UC Davis Weed Science field and greenhouse trials, and worked with industry and academic scientists to design field and greenhouse trials for weed management in rice.

 

Register for 37th Rice Technical Working Group Conference Feb. 19-22

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources is hosting a four-day Rice Technical Working Group Conference Feb. 19-22 in Long Beach. The conference will provide participants with the latest information and research from experts on plant breeding and genetics, rice culture, weed control, economics and marketing, and many other topics

“California is very excited to host the 2018 RTWG (Rice Technical Working Group) conference, which brings together over 300 researchers from all over the U.S. and the world to discuss the latest developments in rice research,” said Bruce Linquist, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and conference chair.

Keynote presenters are Ken Cassman, emeritus professor of agronomy at the University of Nebraska; John Eadie, professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology at UC Davis; and Susan McCouch, professor of plant breeding and genetics, plant biology, biological statistics and computational biology at Cornell University.

The conference will be at the Westin Long Beach at 333 East Ocean Blvd. Registration is $475, $300 for students. Registration includes conference attendance, the welcome reception, the industry luncheon, the awards luncheons, and technical sessions. Current registration prices valid until the day of the conference. Register at http://ucanr.edu/sites/2018RTWG/Registration.

California Department of Pesticide Regulation credits are pending.

Visit our website to see the latest information and to view the full conference agenda http://ucanr.edu/sites/2018RTWG/.  

For more information, contact Lauren McNees at (530) 750-1257 or anrprogramsupport@ucanr.edu.

Rice variety trials at the Rice Research Station in Biggs, Calif. (Photo: Evett Kilmartin)

California Grown Rice Endowed Chair open for applications

Applications are being accepted through Jan. 31, 2018, from individuals who wish to be considered for the UC Cooperative Extension Presidential Chair for California Grown Rice.

Through a funding partnership between the California Rice Research Board and the UC Presidential Endowment program, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources has established a $1 million UC Cooperative Extension Presidential Chair for California Grown Rice. The endowed chair will provide a UCCE scientist a dedicated source of funds to support scholarly activities focused on improvement of California rice production and quality. The chair will be awarded by UC ANR to a distinguished UC Cooperative Extension specialist or advisor currently working in the area of California-grown rice research.

Through a competitive selection process, a chair will be selected to hold a five-year term. 

Application and selection details, including timeline and submission guidelines, are available at http://ucanr.edu/sites/anrstaff/files/275834.pdf.

UC ANR invites legislators to Ag Day at the Capitol

Ag Day at the Capitol was held in Sacramento on March 22. On Monday, March 20, Lucas Frerichs, Tyler Ash, Pam Kan-Rice and Meredith Turner of UC State Government Relations, visited the offices of all 120 legislators and the governor and lieutenant governor to invite them to visit the UC ANR booth at Ag Day. They handed out bags of UC-developed "Tango" mandarins, explaining that the seedless, easy-to-peel citrus variety is one of many California crops developed with UC ANR research.

We'll have more coverage of Ag Day at the Capitol in the next ANR Report.

To see Twitter coverage of Ag Day at the Capitol, look for the hashtags #CalAgDay and #growCAtogether.

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