Posts Tagged: Gary Bender
SIX-WEEK AVOCADO PRODUCTION COURSE BEGINS IN MAY
Dr. Gary Bender, UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) Farm Advisor Emeritus, is the lead instructor for a six-week course entitled “Avocado Production for New Growers.” Co-instructor, Sonia Rios, current subtropical Farm Advisor, Riverside/San Diego Counties will also be teaching in the course. The course is designed for new avocado growers, as well as those interested in learning more about avocado production best practices and meeting fellow growers.
The six-week course consists of six, two-hour sessions and will be held in Fallbrook, CA this year. The fee for the course is $105 and includes two avocado books, an IPM book and a post-harvest handbook. Final dates and the location will be announced soon. The always fills up, so please register A.S.A.P.
Topics include:
- Introduction to Agriculture in San Diego County, History of Avocado Production in California
- Botany, Flowering, Varieties, Harvest Dates, Rootstocks
- Irrigation Systems, Irrigation Scheduling, Salinity Management
- Fertilization, Organic Production
- Weed, Insect and Mite Control, Disease Control
- Ag Waiver Water School Training (Dr. Loretta Bates)
- Canopy Management, Tree Spacing, Frost Management
- Field trip to High Density Trial grove and a commercial grove
For more information, contact Erin Thompson at 858.822.7919 or enthompson@ucanr.edu.
Avocado Production Class for New Growers 2016
6 weekly classes and a Saturday Field Trip to the UC Cooperative Extension High Density Trial
2:00 – 4:00 pm, Wednesday afternoons located at the San Diego County Farm Bureau, 1670 E. Valley Parkway, Escondido CA 92027
Instructor: Gary Bender Ph,D., Farm Advisor Emeritus, UC Cooperative Extension
Classes Start April 27, 2016
Cost is $105.00 per person, which includes Dr. Bender's Avocado Production in California Books 1 & 2, ANR Publication IPM for Avocados, and The International Avocado Quality pocketbook
NEW! Schedule of Classes: (No refunds for classes missed)
- April 27, Introduction to Agriculture in San Diego County, History of Avocado Production in California
- May 4, Botany, Flowering, Varieties, Harvest Dates, Rootstocks
- May 11, Irrigation Systems, Irrigation Scheduling, Salinity Management
- May 18, Fertilization, Organic Production
- June 1, Canopy Management, Tree Spacing, disease and root rot control
- June 8, Avocado Insects and Mites, Polyphagour Shothole Borer and Fusarium Disease Speakers Mark Hoddel Ph.D., UCCE Entomology Specialist and Akif Eskalen Ph.D., UCCE Subtropical Plant Pathologist
- June 11, 9:00 AM, Saturday Field Trip to High Density Trial and a Commercial Grove, Valley Center CA Speaker Niamh Quinn UCCE Area Vertebrate Pest Advisor, demonstrating trap and bait station setting techniques.
To register follow click on the link http://ucanr.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=17727
Please Contact Quang Tong for questions at qtong@ucanr.edu or 858-534-0947 for regeestration questions
Please contact Subtropical Horticulture Farm Advisor Sonia Rios for any other questions regarding the class or material being covered at sirios@ucanr.edu or 951-683-6491 ext. 224
High-density planting of avocados boosts yield
Gary Bender, an advisor with UC ANR Cooperative Extension in San Diego County, believes that increasing per-acre yield will help farmers stay in business.
“We've been growing avocados wrong all these years and we're finally starting to figure it out," Bender said.
He planted trees 10 feet apart in a research trial, instead of the standard 20 feet spacing. Instead of letting the trees grow tall, the standard practice, he pruned them regularly to keep the trees short and fat.
The study was a huge success, yielding nearly 13,000 pounds of Haas avocados per acre, McClurg reported. Usually farms in the area yield between 6,000 to 7,000 pounds per acre.
Drought is forcing changes in California ag
It takes 74 gallons of water to produce one pound of avocados — and drought-stricken California produces 95 percent of the avocados grown in the United States, wrote reporter Padma Nagappan.
Bender has been working with several farmers to experiment with high-density avocado planting, in which the trees are pruned to grow up rather than out. Growing more trees on less land will reduce water costs.
“The only way you can compete with cheaper imports and the high cost of water is if you go high-density and get more production per acre," said a San Diego area farmer.
An article in Growing Produce said the state has issued curtailments to some farmers who hold surface water rights. Because water rights law is so complex and because this is the first time many growers have had to navigate the finer details of water rights, Brenna Aegerter, University of California Cooperative Extension advisor in San Joaquin County, suggests that growers consult a professional for targeted advice.
Because of reduction in surface water availability, many growers are turning to groundwater to irrigate their crops. However, groundwater presents its own set of challenges, Aegerter says.
“There's a shallow water table but it's not good quality,” Aegerter says. “It's salty water. I think right now the main concern is what the water quality is going to be — whether it's going to be salty, and whether that will affect the crops.”
In the Westlands Water District, growers are using a combination of increased reliance on groundwater and fallowing for their water management plans, according to Tom Turini, UCCE advisor in Fresno County.
“The groundwater is lower quality than the district water — with levels of total dissolved salts and toxic ions varying from well to well — but generally higher than ideal, ” Turini says.
/span>Gary Bender Retiring
After a 30-year career as the farm advisor of subtropical fruit crops in San Diego County, I've decided to retire to do some other things, including some fishing. According to my wife, that seems to mean some painting, re-tiling the floor, re-landscaping and cabinet work. I'm not sure we are speaking the same language!
First, I'd like to thank all of the really great growers in this county. When I first started I knew a lot about dry root rot of citrus (since that was my research topic in college) and quite a bit about avocado root rot. And I had a pretty good background in diseases and other problems that bother plants. But not much else! I learned a lot about irrigation, frost protection, gopher control etc. from growers and the extension specialists. I even learned how to turn on wind machines and light orchard heaters at 3:00 am from grower John Hankey in Pauma Valley.
Prior to being a farm advisor, I spent four years in grad school at UC Riverside under Dr. John Menge. And he was a great mentor. He understood how important field research was for growers to be successful and he encouraged me to go into extension work.
Prior to getting my Ph.D. in plant pathology I worked one year for the Riverside County Ag Dept, four years for the Orange County Ag Dept as a plant pathology technician and 3 years as a staff research associate at UC Riverside in Entomology, Nematology and Plant Pathology. Oddly enough, it was the Riverside County job that changed the course of my career. I was a floating “problem solver” that basically diagnosed diseases and other problems for growers and homeowners and I got to drive to the calls in a really fast car turned in by the retired sheriff. And I did such a good job I got a “promotion” to being in charge of all the fruit fly trapping from Indio out to Blythe. And this happened in the summer! That's when I decided it might be in my best interest to go back to grad school under Dr. Menge and work on the cause of a citrus trunk disease.
I have worked on a lot of projects over the years with the professors, specialists and other farm advisors. Just a few highlights from over the years:
Dr. Mary Lu Arpaia and I started an avocado rootstock trial in 1986 that evaluated the yield of some of our new rootstocks in “clean” soil (without Phytophthora cinnamomi root rot). It turned out to be a very important trial because it showed that the G755 series (our most resistant rootstock to root rot) was actually very poor at producing fruit when it was grafted to Hass. From there Dr. Arpaia and I and the other farm advisors all worked on irrigation trials and fertilizer trials in order to establish some basic information on the water and NPK requirements for Hass avocados.
I conducted a reclaimed water trial with the City of Escondido from 1991 to 1996 and the results showed that, because of the high salt content in their reclaimed water, yields were reduced by 40% compared to district water. But that set the stage for a current trial by Dr. David Crowley with the City of Escondido in which reverse osmosis will be used to separate the brine out and have it go out to the ocean in their outfall. The less saline reclaimed water will then be piped to the backside of Escondido to be used for agriculture. I think, with our high water prices that may be the future in our county.
Ben Faber and I conducted avocado pruning trials in the late 90's and early 2000's, which showed mixed results, but taught us some lessons. Pruning should be done early in the year, and not in the summer because that's when fruiting wood is forming for the following spring. These results will be described again in a future article.
At the same time, Ramiro Lobo and I started blueberry variety trials and eventually irrigation trials. This work, along with work by advisors Faber and Mark Gaskell, set the stage for a new crop in California: low chill early season blueberries. Unfortunately, this is definitely not a low water-using crop. In fact, in a Valley Center trial, we got our best yields when we irrigated with 40% more water than avocados (on an acre basis).
For the last five years I have worked on IPM techniques to control the Diaprepes citrus root weevil along coastal San Diego and Orange counties (in conjunction with Jim Bethke, Joe Morse and Loretta Bates). We used a special landscape cloth under the lemon trees to block the adults from emerging from the soil and it also blocked the young weevils that had just hatched on the leaves from entering the soil. Blocking the entrance and exit turned out to be a great IPM technique for controlling this pest. We also imported parasites from Florida and released them, and the parasites established. These releases have apparently slowed down the spread of this invasive pest because we do not see that they are spreading away from the original quarantine zone. Without the parasites, I doubt that our citrus along the coast would be surviving today, based on all of the sick and dying lemon trees we saw at the beginning of this project.
Currently I have a project with the California Avocado Commission which is taking a look at two pruning styles for a high density planting of Hass and Lamb Hass. Connected to this project are classes for new avocado growers. I will continue this project at least for the next three years as an emeritus farm advisor. Why? Because I think high density has the potential to increase yield per acre substantially, and it's just so darn interesting!
Now, I'm going to do some fishing, and a little house painting.
Gary