Agriculture

This is the third post in a blog series focused on improving nitrogen (N) use efficiency in California small grains. This post discusses two hand-held devices that indicate plant N levels in small grains to help optimize fertilizer decisions.

This is one of a series of stories featuring a sampling of UC ANR academics whose work exemplifies the public value UC ANR brings to California. Farmers are already seeing the effects of warmer winter nights and hotter summer days on their crops.

Over the past two seasons I have been involved with testing an experimental herbicide for weed control in alfalfa. There was an initial trial implemented at the Intermountain REC in Tulelake California during the 2019 growing season.

Join the discussion July 23 Public lecture series discussing methods used to assess and improve the health of your home and production soils.

Picture this during National Pollinator Week: five monarch caterpillars and assorted honey bees sharing tropical milkweed. It was love at first bite. Or love at first sip. The 'cats kept munching and the bees kept foraging. Neither species seemed interested in the other.

Following a tip generated by citizen scientists in the Porterville/Tulare area, UC ANR researchers have installed traps to determine the potential for Velvet longhorned beetle, Trichoferus campestris (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), introduction to the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Nitrogen is the nutrient plants require in the largest quantity for better yield and quality. Nitrogen is also an integral constituent of proteins, nucleic acids, chlorophyll, co-enzymes, phytohormones,and secondary metabolites, and its deficiency can negatively affect yield.

From the UC Rice Blog (https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=42838) A new herbicide is available this year for use in California rice: RebelEX, manufactured by Corteva. It is a premix of two other well-known herbicides: Clincher and Granite SC, both from Corteva.

She didn't know it was National Pollinator Week. If she had, she would have paid it no mind. She just knew that this was some fine pollen as she struggled to fit inside the strawberry blossom. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is like that: determined, decisive, and mission-bound.

In Spring 2019, one of the owners from Alves Dairy reached out about applying for an Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP) grant through CDFA.