Calag Archive

Triticale (a wheat-rye hybrid) must compete for acreage mainly with barley and wheat. Assuming no price differential among the cereal feed grains, the yields and production costs for triticale must be equivalent or more favorable before a substantial triticale production can be anticipated in California. The results presented here indicate that, under most conditions, triticale does not yield better than other feed grains. Production costs are expected to be similar for triticale, barley, and wheat except in areas where more irrigations are required for late maturing triticale varieties.

In this study, the insolvent cotton farmers from the East San Joaquin Valley were all in their middle years (35 to 64), but 64% were over 45 years of age. They had a larger number of dependents than average for farms in this area, and a higher level of education than the average farm operator in California. Also, on the average, they had spent more years in farming than had farmers in the state as a whole. Most were part-owners or tenants in an area in which 64 per cent of the farm operators owned their farms, but their farms were larger than the average farm in the study area. Once insolvent, very few of the “straight” bankrupts returned to farming as farm operators, and their bankruptcies had a marked impact on the flow of income in communities around which they centered.

Today's nitrogen fertilization practices for row-crop production (especially vegetables) in the Santa Ana Drainage Basin leave various amounts of NO₃-N in drainage water. In nine sites selected for this study, the average NO₃-N concentrations in the drainage water in the unsaturated zone (that portion of the soil profile from the root systems to the 50-ft depth or water table) were all above the 10 ppm NO₃-N public standard for drinking water. Six sites had average NO₃-N concentrations more than five times greater than this standard, whereas, two sites had NO₃-N concentrations more than 10 times greater. The amount of NO₃-N in drainage water was affected by N inputs, removal of N when crops are harvested, drainage volume, and gains and losses of NO₃.

An increasing realization of the low efficiency of animals as protein producers, in comparison with plants, has stimulated a new awareness of the need for developing our plant protein resources. According to recent statistics, the world's population consumes about 70 million tons of protein annually. Of these, 35 million tons come from cereals, 25 million tons come from animals and 10 million tons from legumes. To produce the 25 million tons of animal protein, however, 135 million tons of plant protein must be fed to the animals. Seeds have, historically, served as the major source of plant proteins. To cover the existing protein shortage in the world today, novel sources of plant protein are being investigated. One such source, which already has a modest commercial utilization in California, consists of the leaves and stems of suitable plants.

Hybrid vigor is evident in crosses between two parents when the hybrid offspring exceed either parent, or the average of the two parents, in expression of a character. Hybrid vigor is important in many economic plants, and has been previously reported for earliness and certain fruit characters in muskmelon.

The purpose of plant breeding is to combine in a single individual or variety a desirable level of expression of all important traits. This can be difficult to achieve because the various desirable traits are often distributed among different plant types. Population improvement can be accomplished by simultaneous incorporation of several types into a composite population, followed by selection for maximum expression of the various traits within the offspring. Evaluation and selection of parent materials to combine into such a population to permit this accumulation of traits, therefore, becomes important.