Posts Tagged: roller crimper
Fresno State weed science students learn about cover crop roller/crimpers March 4, 2022
March 4, 2022
Nearly 100 students in Dr. Anil Shrestha's weed science course at Fresno State University spent time in the field as part of their laboratory sessions to learn about the potential roles that cover crops and roller/crimpers might play in weed management and moreover, improved performance annual crop production paradigms. Although roller/crimpers have been around and used in several places around the world including the South American countries of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, as well as in the Southeast US for decades, the technology is relatively new in California. However, Dr. Shrestha and his MS student, Robert Wilmott, have been evaluating the approach for five years on the CSU Fresno campus with good success and this spring their current study provided a very nice and rich educational opportunity for students to visit and observe.
During the week of February 28 through March 4, three lab sections of Dr. Shrestha's class toured the various cover crop mixes that he and Wilmott have in their study. The students learned about the background of the roller/crimper, its potential use in improved performance production systems that rely on principles of soil health management, and characteristics of the various cover crop treatments that Shrestha and Wilmott are evaluating as part of their ongoing study. Wilmott led each group of students out into the field where they observed the different cover crops and also learned about various weed species that were seen often in bare spots where the cover crops didn't cover the soil.
At the end of the lab, students helped Wilmott and Shrestha by collecting data on the maturity stages of two cover crops, Pacheco triticale and Merced rye, that are part of a multi-site evaluation of two maturity stages for cover crop rolling. Students took data on the percentage of random plants that were at the anthesis or initial flowering stage in the strips where replicated plantings of the two cover crop species were located. Rolling at antheis is one of the roller/crimper timing treatments that Shrestha and Wilmott and a wider group of colleagues in Salinas, Santa Cruz, and Davis are evaluating this spring.
A short video is available for viewing at You Tube describing the students' work in the field at
More background information on cover crop roller/crimpers is also available at the You Tube site
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Fresno State's Valdez-Herrera shines at California Weed Science Society 2022 Annual Meeting
January 20, 2022
Undergraduate student, Jennifer Valdez-Herrera, took home the first prize award in this year's student poster competition of the California Weed Science Society that was held January 19th - 21st at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento, CA. Her poster titled, Potential of roller-crimper technology for weed suppression in annual crops, reported on the first four years of a study that has been conducted on the Fresno State campus under a center pivot irrigation system. The rolled cover crops are followed by strip-tillage planted silage corn. Five mixes, rye, an ultra high diversity mix from Green Cover Seed in Bladen, NE, a multiplex mix from Lockwood Seed and Grain in Chowchilla, CA, a faba bean and Phacelia combination, and a three-way mix of rye, peas, and purple vetch are replicated three times in about 300 foot strips throughout the field. A copy of Valdez-Herrera's poster is provided below and a short 56-second video showing the current stage of growth of the 2021 - 2022 cover crops may be seen at
Capture Jennifer Valdez-Herrera 2022 single photo
Poster Jennifer Valdez 2022
Fresno State's Valdez-Herrera and Wilmott begin Year 5 of cover crop roller crimper study
January 20, 2022
Year 5 of a major cover crop roller crimper study is underway on the Fresno State campus in the school's center pivot field under the monitoring supervision of Dr. Anil Shrestha and his undergraduate student research assistant, Jennifer Valdez-Herrera and graduate student, Robert Wilmott. The project repeats five cover crop mix treatments (rye, an ultra high diversity mix provided by Green Cover Seed of Bladen, NE, a Multiplex mix of Lockwood Seed and Grain in Chowchilla, CA, a two-species mix of faba bean and Phacelia, and a three-way mix of rye, peas, and purple vetch. A short, 49-second video showing Valdez-Herrera and Wilmott and the stage of growth of the cover crops on January 20, 2022 can be viewed at the You Tube link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E42GAg5Fzs
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Fresno State Plant Science researchers begin year 5 of cover crop roller study
November 10, 2021
Fresno State Plant Science researchers begin year 5 of cover crop roller study
New paradigms for crop production are being tested in what has now evolved to be the fifth straight year of research by Fresno State researchers on the use of a roller crimper to kill winter cover crops ahead of spring-planted silage corn.
In a campus field at the northeast corner of the intersection of Bullard and Cedar Avenues, under the direction of Dr. Anil Shrestha, Chair of FSU's Department of Viticulture and Enology, and with Robert Willmott, the project's field director, a series of different winter cover crop species and mixtures have recently been seeded under the University's center pivot irrigation system and will be grown with largely winter rainfall through March of 2022. The cover crops will then be evaluated in terms of the ability to kill them using a roller-crimper implement and without herbicide.
Shrestha and Willmott have been in the trenches with the pioneering evaluations and now have four years of experience with the system under their belts. At first, the whole thing was a novelty with many open questions, but the team's recent successes in killing the cover crops have buoyed them with the confidence and hope that they may well be onto something with the production approach.
Both Fresno State researchers are part of a larger effort that is exploring techniques for growing crops organically with less overall soil disturbance. The "CIG Project," as it has been called, involves several experienced organic vegetable farmers throughout the State who have farm-based studies also underway in Hollister, Guinda, and Meridian, CA. The work being conducted at Fresno State is an important part of this overall effort and has made very interesting progress toward reducing soil disturbance while protecting the soil surface with residues - important principles of soil health management systems.
Tours of the site are available by contacting Dr. Anil Shrestha at ashrestha@mail.fresnostate.edu
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