Posts Tagged: irrigation
Avocado growers to get irrigation tools, strategies from UC ANR’s Montazar
CDFA grant supports research to optimize water use for iconic California crop
California growers, who account for more than 90% of avocado production in the U.S., will soon be getting some help in weathering the extreme fluctuations of climate change.
Ali Montazar, a University of California Cooperative Extension irrigation and water management advisor, recently received a grant to develop tools and strategies that optimize growers' irrigation practices across Southern California – the state's avocado belt. California avocados are valued at more than $411 million, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
“This region faces uncertain water supplies, mandatory reductions of water use, and the rising cost of water – while efficient use of irrigation water is one of the highest conservation priorities,” Montazar said. “Water is the most critically important input to avocado production.”
At the California Avocado Commission's suggestion, Orange County was added to the study to better capture the range of climates and cropping systems across the region, Montazar said.
He hopes to develop “crop coefficients” that avocado growers can use to determine the optimal irrigation for their crop based on a host of factors: soil type and salinity, canopy features, row orientation, slopes, soil and water management practices, and more.
“Growers are unclear on how much water the crop actually needs under those conditions,” Montazar said.
He will incorporate data from the actual water use in the experimental orchards – including information from the newest soil moisture and canopy temperature sensors – to help ensure growers do not under- or overwater their crops. Overirrigating contributes to a devastating disease, avocado root rot, caused by the plant pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi.
Another component of the grant supports outreach in disseminating these resources and best practices to the broader agricultural community.
“Developing and adopting these tools and information may have a significant impact on water quality and quantity issues and bolster the economic sustainability of avocado production not only in the well-established production region of Southern California, but also in Kern and Tulare counties where new avocado plantings are growing,” Montazar said.
Preliminary findings and recommendations are expected at the end of 2022.
/h2>UC Davis to lead groundwater and irrigated agriculture sustainability study
Effort Will Develop Ways to Minimize Risk from Climate Extremes for Southwest Growers
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, have been awarded a $10 million grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture to find ways to sustain irrigated agriculture while improving groundwater quantity and quality in the Southwest under a changing climate.
Isaya Kisekka, associate professor of agrohydrology and irrigation at UC Davis, is leading a team of more than two dozen climate, plant and soil scientists; hydrologists; engineers; economists, educators and extension specialists from UC Davis and other institutions in California, Arizona and New Mexico. They will develop climate change adaptation management strategies that ensure sustainability of groundwater and irrigated agriculture.
Kisekka says the project team in California will work with Groundwater Sustainability Agencies to develop tools and data to enhance water management at both the farm and groundwater basin scales to improve crop production and achieve sustainability goals under the state's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which provides a statewide framework to help protect groundwater resources over the long-term. The research team will also work with grower coalitions to achieve the groundwater quality goals of the Central Valley Salt and Nitrate Management Plan.
“For farmers, the biggest challenge threatening their business is water,” Kisekka said. “Our project is going to develop climate-smart adaptation management practices to help growers achieve their production goals while addressing the co-benefits for the environment and human health. We are going to develop cutting edge tools to manage groundwater quantity and quality as well as study how policies impact behaviors such as water use in agriculture.”
The practices, models and tools developed will be used by growers or their advisors, policymakers, irrigation districts, coalitions and groundwater sustainability agencies to address climate change extremes such as drought or floods.
Growing dependence on groundwater
Growers have increasingly depended on groundwater during multi-year droughts and heat stress. Part of the five-year project includes looking into aquifer systems in California's Central Valley, central Arizona and the lower Rio Grande basin in New Mexico. These regions have all experienced unprecedented overdraft, which happens when more water is pumped from a groundwater basin than is replaced from sources, including rainfall.
“For a long time, a lot of farmers would use groundwater as an insurance policy whenever there was a drought,” Kisekka said. “The negative consequences of that became obvious: groundwater levels declined, we had subsidence which causes land to sink, we had deterioration in water quality and so on. What are growers going to do when we have another drought like we are now? We have to think more broadly.”
Kisekka says they will also come up with management practices to improve soil health, develop alternative water supplies and reduce water demand so the region can continue to produce various agriculture commodities, such as vegetables, grapes and almonds.
“We grow crops in California that we cannot shift to another part of the country because they won't grow well there,” Kisekka said. “We can't grow almonds in the Southeast where they have a lot of water because they require a certain climate. We want to ensure food and nutritional security of the United States by sustaining irrigated agriculture in the Southwest.”
Project researchers will also establish innovative education and extension programs to teach students of all backgrounds and ages, as well as the public, about the importance of water in agriculture.
“Part of this is to develop educational curriculums from elementary to high school to college, where instructors can pull our modules on water management or sustainable agricultural systems and teach that in their classes,” Kisekka said.
While the depletion of groundwater supplies, among other factors, puts major pressure on agricultural operations in the southwestern region, Kisekka hopes the management practices and tools that will be developed during this project will help improve production and resource sustainability and help make California and the country more resilient to climate change. UC Davis will establish the Agricultural Water Center of Excellence as part of the grant. This unique Center of Excellence will also have capacity to support agricultural water research, education and extension activities at collaborating institutions with potential impact at local, state, national and international levels.
“We hope at the end of the day we can still grow food in California and the Southwest in general without drying out our groundwater aquifers,” he said. “We have to learn to adapt to climate change. We may not be able to stop it in the short term, but we should be able to adapt.”
Researchers from University of California, Berkeley, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, Stanford University, CSU Fresno, University of Arizona, New Mexico State University, USDA Agricultural Research Service (Sustainable Agricultural Water Systems Research: Davis, CA and Water Management and Conservation Research: Maricopa, AZ) and USDA Climate Hub are also participating in the project.
Growers refine date palm irrigation with UC ANR research
California's $86 million date industry produces more than half of the nation's dates. Most of the fruit is grown in the arid Coachella Valley. Despite efforts by growers to conserve water, data was lacking on date palms' actual water use to refine the best irrigation management for the crop until a recent research project led by Ali Montazar, UC Cooperative Extension irrigation and water management advisor for Imperial and Riverside counties.
“California dates are grown in the hottest and most arid climate in North America and require substantial amounts of water in order to bring a successful crop to fruition,” Albert Keck, Coachella Valley date grower and chairman of the California Date Commission, wrote in a letter of support for this project. “In addition, there is scant modern research specifically and technically focused on growing dates in North America.”
Montazar said there is a lack of irrigation management information on date palms worldwide.
“The information developed in this study is expected to have a worldwide impact,” he said.
To determine the evapotranspiration rate and crop coefficients for California date palms, Montazar teamed up with scientists at UC Davis, California Department of Water Resources, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and USDA Salinity Laboratory.
The experiment was carried out in six date orchards in the Coachella and Imperial valleys. The sites represent various soil types and conditions, irrigation management practices, canopy characteristics, and the most common date cultivars in the region.
“The findings of the project indicate that there is considerable variability in date palm consumptive water use, both spatially and temporally,” Montazar said. In other words, the amount of water the trees use varies considerably depending on each site's growing conditions.
He estimated the water needs for date palms planted in different soil types in the low desert region.
“Growers will be able to use the science-based information and tools developed by this project to determine their date palm water needs and optimize the efficiency of water and fertilizer use in their groves,” Montazar said.
The peer-reviewed article “Determination of Actual Evapotranspiration and Crop Coefficients of California Date Palms Using the Residual of Energy Balance Approach” is published in the journal MDPI Water at https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/8/2253.
“With a large quantity of new date plantings in the region, coupled with increasingly limited water resources in the Colorado River Basin Watershed, the knowledge anticipated to be developed by this research project has the potential to yield large dividends through not only improved water use efficiency, but also best management practices and crop quality,” said Keck of the California Date Commission.
Although the research focused on Coachella Valley dates, Montazar said the results are likely to be useful to growers who have orchards with similar varieties, irrigation practices, and canopy and soil features in other locations.
Montazar's co-authors are Robert Krueger of the USDA-ARS National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Citrus and Dates; Dennis Corwin of USDA-ARS U.S. Salinity Laboratory; Alireza Pourreza UC Cooperative Extension specialist based at UC Davis Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering; Cayle Little of California Department of Water Resources; Sonia Rios, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Riverside County; and Richard L. Snyder UC Cooperative Extension specialist emeritus in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources.
The date palm irrigation project was funded by the CDFA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program.
Drip irrigation continues to yield benefits
Considered among the most important agricultural innovations in the world, drip irrigation has been researched for decades. UC Cooperative Extension weed management advisor Aliasghar Montazar has taken a close look at its application in organic spinach cultivation, reported Matthew Grassi in Growing Produce.
Not only does drip irrigation use less water than irrigation with sprinklers, the slow emission of water near plant roots also diminishes the crops' susceptibility to disease. Growers believe that ongoing issues with downy mildew is at least partially caused by moisture that sprinklers leave in the plant canopy.
“Being certified organic, there is really nothing they can use as fungicide; so it is a big problem,” Montazar said. “So, we said ‘Let's try drip (irrigation) in spinach.'”
Early results are promising. Montazar has analyzed enough field data from the plots to directly correlate a four- to five-times reduction in downy mildew disease in plots grown with drip irrigation compared to sprinkler-irrigated plots.
“The other thing to note is there is a nice savings on energy as well,” Montazar said. “Another grower reported he saved $200 an acre on energy savings from getting off the sprinklers. Because with drip, there is less pressure needed, so it consumes less energy (to pump water).”
UC ANR publishes nitrogen management advice for fruit, nuts and other crops
California growers can download a new series of publications summarizing efficient nitrogen management practices from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. The publications are designed to assist growers in complying with state regulations for tracking and reporting nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops, in an effort to prevent nitrogen from leaching into groundwater.
The science-based publications are associated with a series of trainings for growers and Certified Crop Advisers to develop efficient nitrogen management practices, an effort coordinated by UC ANR's California Institute for Water Resources.
“Our role is to provide farmers, agricultural consultants and policymakers the best science possible for making decisions on managing and protecting California groundwater,” said Doug Parker, director of the water institute.
The free publications, created from training materials, lessons learned from the training sessions and from additional UC research, can be downloaded at http://ucanr.edu/nmgmtpublications.
The following publications are now available for download:
· Principles of Nitrogen Cycling and Management
· Irrigation and Nitrogen Management
· Nitrogen Management for Nut Crops
· Nitrogen Management for Deciduous Fruit and Grapes
· Nitrogen Management for Citrus and Avocado
· Nitrogen Management for Cool-Season Vegetables
· Nitrogen Management for Strawberry Production
· Nitrogen Management for Processing Tomato
· Nitrogen Management for Corn on California Dairies
The publications were authored by Parker of California Institute for Water Resources; Patrick Brown, professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences; Allan Fulton, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, Tehama County; Tim Hartz, UC Cooperative Extension specialist emeritus, UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences; Dan Munk, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, Fresno County; Daniel Geisseler, UC Cooperative Extension specialist, UC Davis Department of Land, Air & Water Resources; Michael Cahn, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties; Richard Smith, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties; Marsha Campbell, UC Cooperative Extension advisor emeritus, Stanislaus County; Sat Darshan Khalsa, UC Davis project scientist; and Saiful Muhammad, UC Davis graduate student.
Developed in 2014, the training program has been offered at 11 different locations around the state, most recently in Fresno. More than 1,000 Certified Crop Advisers have taken the training.
The nitrogen management training curriculum was developed by a group of UC ANR faculty, specialists and advisors. The first day focuses on the nitrogen cycle in crop production systems, nitrogen sources, irrigation and nitrogen management, and nitrogen budgeting. The second morning covers annual and permanent crops and nitrogen planning practices.
For more information on the nitrogen management training materials, visit http://ciwr.ucanr.edu/NitrogenManagement.
The Nitrogen Management Training and Certification Program is a joint effort between the California Department of Food and Agriculture, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, California Association of Pest Control Advisers' Certified Crop Adviser Program and the Regional Water Boards.