Posts Tagged: Matt Fidelibus
'Great Day' morning program features UC Kearney Ag REC
The popular morning television program "Great Day," which airs daily on KMPH Channel 26 in Fresno, featured the work of scientists at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in six live segments during the five-hour program this morning.
Reporter Clayton Clark and photographer Ryan Hudgins arrived at the Kearney greenhouse at 4:30 a.m. to interview the scientists helping California farmers feed the nation and world sustainably.
See clips of the interviews in the one-minute video below:
Segments included:
- An overview of research and extension activities at Kearney by director Jeff Dahlberg.
- UC blueberry and blackberry research that has made these commodities important crops in the San Joaquin Valley with Manuel Jimenez, UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor in Tulare County.
- Beneficial insects, pests and invasive species that are part of research by Kent Daane, UCCE specialist in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy Management at UC Berkeley. Daane shared a handful of leaf-footed bugs with the reporter.
- How global information systems are changing the way farmers and researchers are looking at farmings systems with Kris Lynn-Patterson, coordinator of the GIS program at Kearney.
- Just like people, plants get sick. UC plant pathologist Themis Michailides explained research efforts to cure plant diseases.
- Uncommon wine varieties that might lead to new fine wines ideally suited to be produced in the Valley's warm climate, with Matt Fidelibus, UCCE specialist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis.
- The very real threat of West Nile virus in mosquitoes in the valley, with medical entomologist Anton Cornel.
UC researchers screen promising new winegrapes at Kearney
The research aims to give vintners blending varieties that will make San Joaquin Valley wines with familiar names more interesting. Vintners may use up to a quarter of their grape volume to impart distinctive color, flavor and structure to a varietal wine without calling it a blend. Grapes being studied at Kearney may one day add a certain flavor note - such as cherry, tannin, black pepper or citrus - to fine San Joaquin Valley wine.
"High levels of color and tannin cannot compensate for a variety whose yield is far below the economic threshold," Wolpert said.
At another stop on the Grape Day tour, UC Cooperative Extension viticulture farm advisor Mark Battany demonstrated the "Paso Panel." Battany developed the tool - composed of an inexpensive, lightweight solar panel and digital meter mounted on an aluminum frame - to help farmers fine tune their irrigation scheduling.
The Paso Panel allows farmers and researchers to quickly and easily calculate the amount of canopy shade in a vineyard or a vineyard row. The data can be combined with climate data to calculate crop water needs.
Measuring soil moisture and using plant-based monitoring systems are other ways to determine plant water needs, but Battany said currently climate-based methods are underused.
"A lot of farmers guess when they need to irrigate," Battany said. "People tend to guess on the conservative side, and put on more water than necessary."
New York-based USDA-ARS plant breeder Peter Cousins was also at the field day to explain his grape root stock variety trials planted at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Cousins and his staff screen 3,000 to 4,000 seedlings a year. The best prospects are sent to California, where 140 experimental root stocks are growing.
"Here at Kearney, the vines grow so vigorously, we can get more than 100 cuttings per plant," said Cousins. "This is their last stop, where we determine whether you can grow them in a field and make wood that propagates vines."
Posters for Kearney Grape Day, August 16, 2011
Peter Cousins of the USDA-ARS in Geneva, N.Y., will be referring to these charts during his presentation at Kearney Grape Day. The title of Cousins' presentation is "The development of new grape rootstocks for the San Joaquin Valley."
Nematode poster (pdf)
Rootstock selections poster (pdf)
Kearney Grape Day 2011: Scientist to lead tour through the inside of grapevines
USDA plant biologist Andrew McElrone is using high resolution computed tomography – a type of cat scan similar to the medical imaging diagnostic system – to cruise through plant veins and vessels to better understand grapevines’ water transport system.
The research is conducted on live and dry grapevines at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Like in medicine, each cat scan produces numerous digital slices of grapevine, which are stacked on top of each other using special engineering software to reconstruct the system.
“We can then spin the images around into various orientations, moving through individual vessels,” McElrone said.
Grape Day registration begins at 7:30 a.m. Aug. 16 at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, 9240 S. Riverbend Ave., Parlier, Calif. Field tours are conducted from 8 to 9:30 a.m. and classroom presentations will be from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.
Registration is $10 per person. Advance registration is offered online.
Field tour topics are:
- New wine grape varieties for the San Joaquin Valley by UC Cooperative Extension viticulture specialist James Wolpert, UC Davis
- The development of new grape rootstocks for the San Joaquin Valley by geneticist Peter Cousins, USDA-ARS, Geneva, N.Y.
- Using the ‘Paso Panel’ to aid in irrigation scheduling by viticulture farm advisor Mark Battany, UC Cooperative Extension, San Luis Obispo County
Classroom presentations:
- Understanding water use of grapevines by plant biologist Andrew McElrone, USDA-ARS, Davis, Calif.
- Trapping and baiting for gopher control in vineyards by vertebrate IPM advisor Roger Baldwin, Kearney, Parlier, Calif.
- Critical weed free periods in vineyard development by vegetation management farm advisor Kurt Hembree, UC Cooperative Extension in Fresno County
- Fruitfulness of DOV raisin cultivars by UC Cooperative Extension viticulture specialist Matthew Fidelibus, UC Davis and Kearney.
For more information, contact event coordinator Matt Fidelibus, mwf@uckac.edu, (559) 646-6500.
In a presentation that harkens back to the old Disneyland ride "Adventure Thru Inner Space," a USDA scientist takes participants on a tour inside of grapevines.
Farmers tell their stories with social media
Frustration at being the targets of technologically savvy environmental and animal rights groups has inspired farmers to get involved with social media communications outlets like Facebook and Twitter, according to an Associated Press article by Julianna Barbassa.
"There is so much negative publicity out there, and no one was getting our message out," Denair dairy farmer Ray Prock Jr. told Barbassa. Prock writes blog posts and tweets regularly on everything from emergency drills for handling manure spills to lactose intolerance. On his blog, Prock said he took up the pen because he is tired of having someone else tell his story.
Besides giving them a voice, farmers are finding that social media can help them build community and share valuable information. One source of information is the Facebook and Twitter pages developed by UC viticulture specialist Matt Fidelibus and UC Cooperative Extension viticulture advisor Steve Vasquez. Last week, for example, Fidelibus' Twitter followers learned that swarms of small flying insects in a Parlier vineyard resembled leaf hoppers but turned out to be false chinch bugs.The AP article said the duo started using social media as a way to get important information to grape growers quickly — if the risk of powdery mildew on grapevines was high for a particular region, farmers could react in time, for example. In fact, Fidelibus tweeted on July 1, "Parlier Grape Powdery Mildew RAI threshold on 07/01/10 is 70. For additional SJV locations visit http://ow.ly/2603J."
A tool like Facebook, Barbassa wrote, also allows farmers to share photos or video. They can post an image of something problematic and get advice from experts like Fidelibus or each other immediately.
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A photo gallery on the San Joaquin Valley Viticulture Facebook page.