Posts Tagged: Jeff Dahlberg
The drought may be over, but water concerns haven't been doused
Record winter rainfall during the 2016-17 winter has enabled farms to emerge from survival mode in the short term, but scientists are still working hard to be ready for the next drought, reported Tim Hearden in Capital Press.
Hearden spent a day at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier to learn how researchers at the facility and the UC West Side Research and Extension Center near Five Points are combining technology with management practices to put every drop of irrigation water to work.
“This is one of the few places in the world where you can do drought research on a field level,” said Jeff Dahlberg, director of the 330-acre Kearney facility. “What I'm planning is a world-class drought nursery.”
At the West Side REC, researchers are working with farmers to perfect micro-irrigation efficiency and test drought stress on the area's most prevalent crops.
“We'll grow a tremendous number of cultivars of a crop” and identify “what seem to be the most promising cultivars when you grow them under drought conditions,” said Bob Hutmacher, a cotton specialist and the center's director.
Hearden spoke to Jeff Mitchell, UCCE cropping systems specialist and director of the Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation center (CASI). CASI is encouraging farmers to adopt farming practices that save water, reduce dust and help improve the condition of soil, such as subsurface drip irrigation, overhead irrigation, minimum tillage, cover crops and crop residues.
“This is not done right now in California,” Mitchell said. “In the future, there may be a strong likelihood of certain agricultural sectors adopting these practices.”
Other subsurface irrigation trials are showing dramatic increases in yields. Khaled Bali, an irrigation water management specialist at Kearney, said underground drip systems in alfalfa fields have achieved 20 to 30 percent more yields while in some cases using 20 percent less water.
Kevin Day, a UCCE pomology advisor in Tulare County, is trying subsurface drip in a peach and nectarine orchard after working with the USDA to use it for pomegranates. He's seen as much as a 90 percent reduction in weeds because there's no surface water to feed them.
“Fewer weeds, fewer pesticides,” he said. “We use high-frequency irrigation. We irrigate as the crop needs it. When you do that, you keep the roots deeper, which makes for better aeration.”
Historical tea research may spark new industry in the San Joaquin Valley
Tea that was planted 50 years ago at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center may revive interest in growing the popular beverage in the San Joaquin Valley, reported Dale Yurong on ABC30 Action News. The reporter visited the 330-acre ag research facility Jan. 2 to get a first-hand look at what center director Jeff Dahlberg calls a "beautiful hedge."
In fact, the 13 landscape shrubs represent the best tea cultivars grown at Kearney when Lipton Tea was funding research to determine whether the Valley soils and climate could support production of plants to be used to manufacture instant tea. Today, a new trend is clearly brewing, Yurong said.
"Folks can't get enough tea," he said.
A researcher at UC Davis, who learned of the tea plants from documents stored by the campus' new Global Tea Initiative, was surprised to learn that the 50-year-old tea plants have survived and thrived. UC Davis chemistry professor Jacquelyn Gervay-Hague plans to study the soil where tea is growing to learn about the impact microbes in the rootzone may have on the health attributes of brewed tea.
Dahlberg has looped in the small-scale farm advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Fresno County, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, to research tea production at Kearney.
"I think (tea) does have potential for some high-value tea products," he said. "And I can really envision some small farmers getting involved in this."
Read more about the tea at Kearney here.
Organic symposium proceedings now available
Summaries of presentations from the 2016 Organic Agriculture Research Symposium (OARS) held in Pacific Grove are now available online at http://eorganic.info/node/16778. Many of the workshops and keynote presentations were recorded live and may be viewed via the eOrganic YouTube channel.
The event, which was co-sponsored by the Organic Farming Research Foundation and UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, covered topics ranging from soil health, seeds, plant breeding, and biological control, to biodiversity, economics, and livestock — all with a focus on organic production.
“We are making these presentations available free online to extend the reach of all the valuable information shared at the symposium,” said Jeff Dahlberg, director of the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center. “We're now planning the 2017 symposium and it will build on the cutting edge research shared by scientists this year.”
In the opening address, president of Organics International, André Leu, said organic agriculture offers the promise of a future to produce and distribute food and other farm products in a healthy, economically sound, truly sustainable and fair way. He called the current state of organic agriculture “Organic 3.0.”
“This is a concept we put out a year ago and it is resonating around the world,” Leu said. Organic 1.0 dates back to the 1920s and represents organic farming founders and visionaries, he said. Organic 2.0, beginning in the 1970s, represents the establishment of private standards, public regulations and global recognition. The current stage of organic farming is a time for market reinvention, widespread conversion and performance improvement.
Financial support for the 2016 OARS was provided by the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture Organic Research and Extension Initiative and the Gaia Fund.
"The OARS conference was very successful in bringing national and international scholars and farmers together to present findings about the latest research and how it is advancing organic farming and ranching," said Diana Jerkins, OARF research director. "OFRF will continue to encourage and participate in events such as these to ensure current research, education, and extension efforts are widely disseminated."
Organic Farming Research Foundation is a non-profit foundation that works to foster the improvement and widespread adoption of organic farming systems. OFRF cultivates organic research, education, and federal policies that bring more farmers and acreage into organic production.
The UC Kearney Agricultural REC is one of nine UC Agriculture and Natural Resources research and extension centers across the state of California. Ten acres at the 330-acre center are certified organic and available for organic research.
Invasive superweed Johnsongrass is the target of a new nationwide research effort
A team of researchers has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to find new ways to combat Johnsongrass, one of the most widespread and troublesome agricultural weeds in the world.
“Johnsongrass is a huge problem,” said Jeff Dahlberg, UC Cooperative Extension sorghum specialist and director of the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, Calif. “It impacts many different crops and is very hard to control.”
Dahlberg is part of the team that includes scientists from Virginia, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas and Georgia. Andrew Paterson, director of the Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory at the University of Georgia, Athens, is the lead investigator.
The naturalization of Johnsongrass across much of the U.S. has also allowed the plant to develop attributes — such as cold and drought tolerance, resistance to pathogens and the ability to flourish in low-fertility soils — that make it particularly difficult to control. Adding to the challenge is the adoption of herbicide-resistant crops around the world.
“Herbicide-resistant crops have been associated with a dramatic increase in herbicide-resistant weeds,” Patterson said. “With 21 genetically similar but different types of Johnsongrass known to be resistant to herbicides, it will only become more problematic in the future.”
Over the course of their five-year project, the researchers will work to better understand the weed's capabilities and the genes that make Johnsongrass so resilient. Johnsongrass [Sorghum halepense] is closely related to sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], a healthy gluten-free grain, animal feed and biofuel crop. Lessons learned from the Johnsongrass research may lead to strategies to improve sorghum.
For his part, Dahlberg plans to use the global information system (GIS) to map the locations of Johnsongrass in California to better record its distribution in the state and to help understand how it spread into California by relating it to other populations of johnsongrass in the U.S.
“Ideally, we will use an app to map, identify, manage, and catalog populations that have developed different traits – such as susceptibility to plant disease, ability to host a particular insect, or resistance to herbicides,” he said.
This information may lead to new management strategies that target and curb its growth, providing farmers with more options to combat the invasive plant. The researchers also hope that learning more about the fundamental structures that give Johnsongrass its unusual resilience will pave the way for new genetic tools to improve useful plants, such as sorghum.
Other researchers working on this project are Jacob Barney, Virginia Tech; C. Michael Smith, Kansas State University; Wesley Everman, North Carolina State University; Marnie Rout, University of Texas, Temple; and Clint Magill and Gary Odvody, Texas A&M University.
UC scientists helping farmers reduce water needs
Rain in December raised hopes for an end to the California drought, but storms have stayed away since the New Year began. January 2015 is shaping up to be the driest January since officials began keeping records 137 years ago, according to the National Weather Service.
California's continuing water crisis is leading to decreased and more variable water supplies for San Joaquin Valley farmers, and the region's forage production sector is being hit particularly hard.
“Corn silage and alfalfa have traditionally used lots of water and current and future water restrictions are forcing many farmers to rethink their forage production strategies,” said Jeff Dahlberg, UC Cooperative Extension specialist. “I know of one dairy that had to cut-off their summer irrigations of alfalfa to get their corn silage done.”
To help the agriculture industry make do with less water, a team of UC researchers began a long-term research project last year by growing alfalfa, sorghum and corn under a state-of-the-art center pivot irrigation system. The system, donated by industry partners, is installed at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center near Five Points. Reinke Inc. donated the center pivot, Senninger Irrigation donated nozzles, and Rain for Rent created the infrastructure that gets water and power to the 16-acre research plot.
“We see tremendous possibilities for overhead irrigation in cotton, alfalfa, corn, onions and wheat production,” said Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and the project lead. “There is also great potential for overhead irrigation in California's $5 billion dairy industry for more efficiently producing feed crops like alfalfa, corn and sorghum.”
All aspects of production – including irrigation system performance, crop growth and development, weed control, water application, and economic viability – are being monitored by researchers from UC Cooperative Extension, Fresno State University and UC Davis, plus farmer cooperators and industry partners.
The primary focus of the study is comparing regular irrigation levels with regulated deficit irrigation, a system in which water is withheld at certain times in crop development in order to minimize crop losses even when water is short.
“By controlling the speed of the pivot and by using special water application nozzles that apply precise and different amounts of water, we will get either full irrigation, three-quarters of the full amount or about half of the full irrigation quantity over the course of the season,” Mitchell said.
The researchers will apply small, precise amounts of water during the vegetative growth stage for sorghum and both immediately before and after monthly harvests and during the mid- to late-summer period for alfalfa when San Joaquin Valley productivity typically is reduced under flood irrigation.
“We expect to produce marketable and economic yields for sorghum using 25 percent less water as has been achieved under pivots in Texas and similar increases in crop water productivity for alfalfa,” Mitchell said. “This work will inform and improve future water management strategies in California.”
Overhead irrigation systems, such as center pivot systems, are the most prevalent form of irrigation nationwide; however, they have not been widely adopted in California to date. Recent technological advances in overhead irrigation – which allows integration of irrigation with global positioning systems (GPS) and management of vast acreage from a computer or smart phone – have boosted farmers' interest in converting from gravity-fed surface irrigation systems, which are still used on 5 million acres of California farmland.
The research is funded in part with a grant from the UC California Institute for Water Resources. In addition to Dahlberg and Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension alfalfa specialist Dan Putnam and UCCE advisor in Fresno County Dan Munk are collaborators on the project.
An initiative to improve California water quality, quantity and security is part of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Strategic Vision 2025.
The center pivot system at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center before crops were planted.