Podcasts about extension center

On this week's MyAgLife in Almonds episode, Kearney Ag Research and Extension Center's Houston Wilson discusses a new pheromone lure and trap system to help almond growers monitor and manage the destructive leaffooted bug more efficiently. Check out the full conversation on the most recent episode of UC ANR's Growing the Valley podcast.Supporting the People who Support AgricultureThank you to this month's sponsors who makes it possible to get you your daily news. Please feel free to visit their website.2025 Crop Consultant Conference - https://myaglife.com/crop-consultant-conference/

In this episode, we sit down with horticulturist Dr. Eric Thomas Stafne to discuss fruit and nut crop production. As an Extension and Research Professor at Mississippi State University and the Coastal Research and Extension Center, Dr. Stafne is both an educator and researcher focused on understanding and optimizing crops such as blueberries, blackberries, grapes, and muscadines. Dr. Stafne's professional background began in urban forestry, which blossomed into a fascination with horticulture – specifically fruit crops. With over 17 years of experience in this field, his knowledge surrounding fruit and nut crops has led him to some fascinating discoveries… Join the conversation now to hear Dr. Stafne talk about: The fruit crops that he specifically deals with. The easiest fruit crop one can grow, and why. How climate conditions affect fruit and nut growth. You can find out more about Dr. Stafne and his work by clicking here! Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3bO8R6q

In this insightful episode, we're joined by Dr. Andrew King, ornamental specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Research and assistant professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. King gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the Texas Superstar® Trials, explaining how this influential program evaluates and elevates standout plants that thrive in Texas conditions—impacting growers, landscapers, and gardeners statewide. We dive into the key traits researchers look for in potential superstars, from heat and drought tolerance to visual appeal and marketability. Dr. King also discusses his work in additional ornamental plant trials, shedding light on how these efforts complement the Superstar program and broaden the understanding of performance in diverse environments. Listeners will hear about some exciting new plants emerging from recent trials, what makes them promising for Texas landscapes, and the current research Dr. King is leading that could shape the future of ornamental plant selection and production. As climate conditions evolve, Dr. King shares his perspective on the biggest opportunities and challenges ahead for ornamental research—including sustainability, water use, and the importance of regionally adapted selections. Guest Bio: Andrew King, Ph.D., is the ornamental specialist for Texas A&M AgriLife Research and an assistant professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University. Based at the AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton, Dr. King supports greenhouse and nursery operations across the state, with 75% of his role dedicated to research and 25% to extension outreach. A fourth-generation horticulturist with nearly 30 years of industry experience, he blends academic expertise with practical insights from his family's 110-year-old nursery business. Special Thanks: This episode is brought to you by the Federation of Employers and Workers of America (FEWA). FEWA is committed to supporting ethical employment practices and workforce solutions in agriculture and beyond. To learn more, visit https://fewaglobal.org/.  

This NDSU Ag Minute features Mike Ostlie, Director at the Carrington Research Extension Center. Ostlie highlights some of the research to take place at the center during the 2025 growing season. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode we have three experts joining us to talk about biosecurity. From UC Davis and University of California Ag and Natural Resources, we have Dr. Gaby Maier and Dr. Lais Costa sharing their expertise. We are also fortunate to have Dr. Julia Herman from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association share her national perspectives on the importance of biosecurity.Episode Resources: To watch the Beef Cattle Herd Health UCCE Webinars mentioned by Dr. Maier visit https://ucanr.edu/sites/Rangelands/CattleHealth.Find BQA Resources on biosecurity at: https://www.bqa.org/resources/biosecurity-resources.As Dr. Herman mentions, for more resources check out https://www.securebeef.org.Want to learn more about biosecurity? Attend the Cattle Biosecurity Workshop on Saturday, March 1 at the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center. The workshop will cover an array of topics including, creating a line of separation, cleaning and disinfecting vehicles and equipment, proper use of personal protective equipment, writing standard operating procedures for personnel and visitors, and much more. To view the flyer with registration instructions click here or contact Dr. Maier. Text us your comments, feedback and episode ideas!

Winegrowing regions in Washington State have many unique challenges from salty soils, to low organic matter, to nematodes. Devin Rippner, Research Viticulture Soil Scientist with USDA-ARS and his colleagues at Washington State University are developing a research vineyard to study soil health building practices. They are testing a variety of management strategies including adjusting irrigation volume to correct for salt build-up, mowing for weed management, compost applications and synthetic fertilizers, and different cover crops. The team is tracking the cost of each practice and will ultimately evaluate wine quality in the coming years. Taking a deeper dive into the future of soil sampling, Devin explains X-ray CT imagery. He has used this technology to evaluate the structure and organic matter from soil columns and aggregates. X-ray CT imagery has also been used to evaluate the impact grape seeds have on tannin flavor profiles. Resources:         80: (Rebroadcast) The Goldilocks Principle & Powdery Mildew Management 90: Nematode Management for Washington Grapes A workflow for segmenting soil and plant X-ray CT images with deep learning in Google's Colaboratory Devin Rippner, USDA ARS Functional Soil Health Healthy Soils Playlist Red Wine Fermentation Alters Grape Seed Morphology and Internal Porosity Soil Health in Washington Vineyards Vineyard soil texture and pH effects on Meloidogyne hapla and Mesocriconema xenoplax Washington Soil Health Initiative Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript [00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: Wine growing regions in Washington State have many unique challenges from salty soils to low organic matter to nematodes. [00:00:13] Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director. [00:00:23] In today's podcast, Craig McMillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with longtime SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery, speaks with Devin Rippner, Research Viticulture Soil Scientist with USDA ARS. [00:00:41] Devin and his colleagues at Washington State University are developing a research vineyard to study soil health building practices. [00:00:49] They are testing a variety of management strategies, including adjusting irrigation volume to correct for salt buildup, mowing for weed management, Compost applications and synthetic fertilizers and different cover crops. The team is tracking the cost of each practice and will ultimately evaluate wine quality in the coming years. [00:01:08] Taking a deeper dive into the future of soil sampling. Devin explains X ray CT imagery. He has used this technology to evaluate the structure in organic matter from soil columns and soil aggregates. X ray CT imagery has also been used to evaluate the impact that grape seeds have on tannin flavor profiles. [00:01:28] Now let's listen in. [00:01:29] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Devin Rippner. He is a research soil scientist with the USDA agricultural research service. He's based out of Prosser, Washington, and he's also an adjunct in the department of crop and soil sciences with Washington state university. [00:01:46] Devin, thanks for being here. [00:01:48] Devin Rippner: Absolutely. Pleasure to be here, Craig. [00:01:50] Craig Macmillan: You are on the leadership team of the Washington State Soil Health Initiative. I think it's a pretty cool little program. Tell us what it is and what it's all about. [00:01:59] Devin Rippner: Yeah, absolutely. So the Washington State Legislature allocated funding to study soil health and soil health building practices in a variety of agricultural systems and so to access that money a number of groups put in competitive proposals at the Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center, we put in a proposal to study soil health in wine grape systems. [00:02:24] Originally, we actually had it in juice grapes as well, but we were not able to get enough funding for both. Juice grapes are actually a big product out of Washington. [00:02:32] Craig Macmillan: I did not know that. That's interesting. What varieties? [00:02:34] Devin Rippner: Mostly Concord? [00:02:36] I'm less familiar with it. It's something I would, I would like to work in cause they have different constraints than wine grapes. [00:02:41] Ours is focused on wine grapes, but there are systems looking at tree fruit, at potatoes, at small crane cropping systems. There are a variety of systems that are being evaluated. [00:02:54] Craig Macmillan: I looked at a flyer that kind of outlined some of the ideas and issues around , the Wine Grape part. Can you tell us a little bit about that? [00:03:01] Devin Rippner: we have fairly unique soils. We have pretty alkaline soils here in Washington. We're on the arid side of the Cascades. So think Reno rather than like Seattle. we tend to accumulate salts. We also have very coarse textured soils. So a lot of sands to sandy loams or loamy sands. Very little clay. [00:03:23] We have typically under 10 percent clay in a lot of the grape growing regions of washington. we also have low organic matter, because it doesn't rain much here. There has never been a chance for a lot of plants to grow. And so we just have never really built up organic matter. So we typically have about, let's say, maybe 1 percent to 2 percent organic matter in our soils. [00:03:44] That's about half a percent carbon to 1 percent carbon, which is typically it's pretty low for a lot of soils. [00:03:50] Craig Macmillan: It is. [00:03:51] Devin Rippner: those are some of, some of the like unique challenges around soil health. There's also problems with pests. Haven't had too much of an issue with Phylloxera. That's changing. [00:04:01] There are a variety of nematode pests that cause problems in grapes here. When you plant a vineyard into an old vineyard, you're basically putting baby vines into a place that might have a bunch of pests that aren't a big deal for really mature vines. [00:04:14] But as soon as you put a baby in that environment, it does not thrive. [00:04:18] Finding ways to deal with nematode pests, things like that over time , is really important. So those are kind of the things that we are, we are looking at, at our site. [00:04:27] Craig Macmillan: What kind of practices are you investigating to address these things? I hadn't really thought of that about it till now, but nematode is a good one. that's a tough pest. [00:04:37] Devin Rippner: funny thing is this is a long term site, right? So, so our practices for those will really come later. I had a nematologist that worked for me. And she evaluated our soils for for the pathogenic nematodes for wine grapes, and we don't really have them but the thing is they build over time, right? [00:04:52] Just because there might be a few in that soil But when they start colonizing the grape roots over time, they can become problematic We functionally have a rootstock trial at the end of all of our experimental rows and, and rootstocks have been found to be very effective at preventing nematode problems or decreasing the severity of nematode problems. [00:05:13] We will be able to kind of look at that with our rootstock trial. [00:05:17] Craig Macmillan: Do you have any of the GRN stocks in that? [00:05:19] Devin Rippner: We don't, so we have own rooted vines and then we have Telekey 5c 1103p 110r. Let's see then I think St. George [00:05:30] I'm trying to remember what, what the last one is. It's escaping me right now. I apologize. [00:05:34] Craig Macmillan: Well, no, it's all right. Some of the more common root stocks, basically the ones that are very popular. [00:05:39] Devin Rippner: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:41] The reality is that a lot of the like vitis rupestris, vitis riparia, , they are less prone to nematode parasitism. Than Vinifera. , that's the reality of it. [00:05:50] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. Less susceptible. I think it's probably the best way to put it. Nothing's bulletproof when it comes to this, this problem. [00:05:57] Devin Rippner: And Michelle Moyer in Washington has been doing a lot of work with this, with Inga Zasada, who's a USDA scientist. And their, their results are really cool. They're finding that when you try to fumigate, it helps for a little while, but the rebound is bad, and it's just easier to just use rootstocks. [00:06:15] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about, you said salinity can be an issue [00:06:19] Devin Rippner: Yeah, [00:06:20] Craig Macmillan: So here's the, the back and forth on that. You would think that a, a coser, your textured soil salinity would be less of an issue, but you don't get the rain to take advantage of that. Is that , the issue here? [00:06:30] Devin Rippner: 100%. That's exactly it. We build up layers called caliche layers, which are evidence of a lack of water moving downward. [00:06:38] So it's, it's really evidence of water moving down and then back up due to evaporation. We get big buildups of carbonates in our soils and carbonates are a type of salt. [00:06:48] So as you apply other chemicals, Salts, a salty irrigation water , we tend to build up salts in our soils. A lot of our irrigation water comes from the Yakima River or other rivers in the area, columbia River. But there are places where people are on deeper wells and they are seeing salt accumulation in their vineyards. [00:07:06] And it's, it's really challenging to deal with. [00:07:09] Craig Macmillan: Do you have any strategies that you're looking at? Anything you're trying out? [00:07:13] Devin Rippner: at our site over time, we're going to look at higher irrigation volumes versus lower irrigation volumes and seeing if that will change the accumulation of salt at our site. , that's kind of the main experiment around that with our soil health vineyard. [00:07:27] Craig Macmillan: Obviously you're doing this with some pretty salty irrigation water and you're comparing that to less salty water. At one site, you're only gonna have one type of water, right? [00:07:36] Devin Rippner: Right. That's not something that we'll be able to do, but one of the interesting things is we are applying compost and. Our compost can be pretty salty. [00:07:45] So we'll, we'll be getting compost. That'll be kind of four decisiemen per meter. I I'm sorry to use those units and so that, so that is salty. [00:07:54] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, it's salty. [00:07:55] Devin Rippner: Young grapevines, if they grew only in that, they would really struggle. It's over the, the two deciSiemen per meter kind of threshold for grapevines. That's something where we're, you know, we are using clean irrigation water, but some of our amendments coming in can be saltier. [00:08:10] When we have kind of a, a low and high irrigation treatment, we can evaluate the salt accumulation in the root zone. From that particular amendment, right? [00:08:19] Craig Macmillan: What about other types of fertilizer? Are there organic fertilizers or something like that that might be less of a salt contributor than let's say a traditional nitrate based fertilizer? [00:08:28] Devin Rippner: As it turns out, at least for us, we don't apply. a massive amount of nitrogen to our grapevines, so we're often applying between 20 and say 60 pounds of N per year which is not a lot compared to say corn or, tree fruit or, or hops or things like that. [00:08:45] And so we, we don't, Exactly. Expect to see a buildup of, of those salts over time. Honestly, some of the organic amendments end up being saltier than our fertilizer. [00:08:55] That's something when we do a high and low for irrigation, we will be able to look at the accumulation of, of nitrates and things like that. [00:09:02] Cause in our arid environment, you do get accumulations of nitrate, which is kind of funny. [00:09:06] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, that's interesting. You also mentioned the soil pH, alkalinity. What, what's going on there? How bad is it in different spots? What can you do about it? I, I'm fascinated by this because like when you look at viticulture, you have like a lot of knobs on the mixing board, right? You got a lot of sliders and, Soil , you can't slide it very well. It's like very hard to make changes to soil over time. [00:09:33] Devin Rippner: it is. [00:09:33] Craig Macmillan: very slow and very difficult. So I'm very interested in , this issue here. [00:09:39] Devin Rippner: It's funny at our site, the soil pH isn't too bad. It's about 8. Across the board, from the, from the top that so, so we've been measuring from the top of the soil down to about 90 centimeters. About three feet. We do see a pH tick up in our sub soil, but still it's, it's around the eights. [00:09:56] We actually have a lot of carbonates in our soil. There's only more organic carbon in the top six inches of our soil. And from that point on, most of our carbon is in the form of carbonates. [00:10:06] Which is kind of unique. And so once you get down to like 60 to 90 centimeters, so two to three feet in the soil, functionally, 90 percent of the soil carbon is carbon from carbonate. [00:10:16] So dealing with that in the region there's wide variation, so people that are planting into old wheat ground where they've used a lot of ammonium based fertilizers or urea, the pH can be in the fives. And then I, I mean, I've measured soil pH is up to about 9. 8 around here. So, so quite high. [00:10:35] Those soils are hard to deal with. So these are carbonate buffered systems. So to try to lower the pH, you basically have to get rid of all the carbonates. And that is not really feasible. We do see in some of the vineyards that we work in. And again, a lot of this data is preliminary. [00:10:51] I'm trying to get stuff out right now. Getting the vineyard set up has been a massive undertaking. And I've been lucky to work with a great team to, to get it done, but it has taken a lot of my time. [00:11:01] Um, but we, we do see seasonal fluctuations with irrigation. So soils might start off with a pH around eight drop over the course of the growing season into the sixes and then as they dry down for winter time. So we cut irrigation. The pH will start to rise back up as the carbonates move from the subsoil to the surface. [00:11:21] Craig Macmillan: Interesting. Interesting. Let's talk about your vineyard. If I understand correctly, you have a research vineyard there in Prosser that you are building from scratch or have built from scratch. Is that true? [00:11:30] Devin Rippner: Yes. . It is a new vineyard to study soil health building practices. We just finished our second season. And we were very lucky. Vina Matos which is a company out of Portugal. They mechanically planted it for us. [00:11:45] Scientist, so it's, it was, yeah, it was a bit of an undertaking. Even now I've gotten a lot better on a tractor than I was. And, you know, I like to run, like, I'd like to do x ray stuff. And then I'm out there on a tractor, like, yeah, doing stuff. It's a unique challenge. [00:11:59] So we do have a vineyard manager Dr. Liz Gillespie is the vineyard manager. , she honestly does most of the tracker work. I only sub in when she's down with an illness or something like that. [00:12:09] It's been a team effort for the last couple of years. [00:12:12] Craig Macmillan: What are you doing in there? You've talked about a couple of topics, but, and how big is this, this vineyard? [00:12:17] Devin Rippner: It's not that big. It's about 4. 1 acres. , [00:12:20] Craig Macmillan: that's, you know, for research, that's good. [00:12:22] Devin Rippner: yeah, yeah, it is good. We functionally have a business as usual. So we call it our Washington 2021 standard. So it's kind of what growers just do. So that's spraying undervined for weed control and then just let resident vegetation pop up where it may and mow it down. [00:12:39] Most people don't spray or till , their tractor rows. They just. Kind of let it go. We don't get that much rain. You end up selecting for annual grasses it's actually a pretty good weed composition for a tractor row. So then we start building from there. [00:12:52] One of our treatments is what if you just mowed everywhere, right? The goal is to select for annual grasses everywhere over time. [00:12:59] And then we have another treatment where we're mowing everywhere. But we're applying compost for fertilization. Our other treatments get synthetic fertilizers for fertilization, and then we have our compost treatment where we're mowing. [00:13:12] Then we have an undervined cover crop, so that's like our cover crop treatment. [00:13:16] We're curious about undervine legume cover crops. So we have a short subterranean clover that , we've seated in to hopefully eventually start adding nitrogen to the system and, and hopefully we'll be able to back off on more of the synthetic fertilizers over time in that system, but we'll let the vines guide us, right? [00:13:35] Craig Macmillan: What species of clover is that? [00:13:37] Devin Rippner: I'm not sure the exact, so it would be like Dalkey. [00:13:39] it's a clover that basically has low flowers and shoots seed downward. And so , that allows it to replant itself really effectively. [00:13:47] The flowers tend to be below the foliage. So we won't have to worry about mowing them down too badly. , they stay low. And so that's why we selected that. just to try to keep the flowers low and keep foliage away from our vines. [00:14:01] Craig Macmillan: Anything else? [00:14:03] Devin Rippner: Yeah, so then we have our aspirational treatment, which is kind of a mix of the subterranean clover cover crop. And then we have compost fertilization and then kind of breaking the full factorial. We're actually changing what's in , , the tractor row. We're planting an intermediate wheatgrass. [00:14:20] We started with crusted wheatgrass. It's so funny with these experiments. , we seeded in crusted wheatgrass a couple of times and just did not take it's not very effective for competing against other weeds, and it's not very good with traffic. And so now , we're seeding in intermediate wheatgrass. [00:14:35] , it is more traffic tolerant and is more weed tolerant. So we're hoping that we'll be able to outcompete all the other annual grasses and just have kind of a perennial grass cover crop. [00:14:46] Craig Macmillan: Is it on these courses? So is this camp is compaction less of a problem? I would think. [00:14:53] Devin Rippner: We do have some compaction. That we've seen out there. Certainly mechanical planting can cause some extra compaction. It, it takes a lot of force to, you know, rip a giant hole in the ground to drop the vines into. And so we do see some compaction from that. [00:15:06] We have taken bulk density cores from all over the vineyard. And we're hoping to see changes over time in that compaction. So we've done bulk density course from under vine and then in the tractor row. And so we're hoping that over time, these various practices will alter the bulk density, hopefully lower the bulk density in the tractor row. [00:15:27] Craig Macmillan: And then I'm assuming that you're also keeping track of costs for these things. [00:15:32] Devin Rippner: yes, we have been keeping track of costs. We are keeping track of the hourly labor , for mowing. Honestly, we've, we've purchased some undervine mowers and , we have really struggled to find a good solution for our young vines. [00:15:45] We're going to, Purchase another one soon. The biggest thing is that if you have a swing arm on it, it's got to be gentle enough that it, it'll push out of the way , with a bamboo stake in the ground. [00:15:55] And a lot of the existing swing arm mowers for orchards and vineyards it takes a lot of force to move that swing arm. [00:16:03] It's been a real challenge for us. So, so we ended up having people go out with weed eaters, which is super expensive and is actually something that some vineyards do either biodynamic vineyards in the area that they'll send people out with weed eaters to go control the weeds under vine. [00:16:17] I don't want this to be just like a hyper specialized science experiment. If we're sending people out with weed eaters, it sounds a little bit ridiculous, but there are folks in the industry that do it. So it's not. It's not that ridiculous. [00:16:28] Craig Macmillan: It's not that ridiculous. It's legitimate. [00:16:31] Whatever tool that you can make work, depending on the size of your vineyard and depending on what your conditions are. But yeah, you're in row mode. That's going to be an issue until these vines are mature to no doubt about that. I hope you still have a vineyard after knocking down these bamboo stakes. [00:16:44] You don't have like real results yet. You've only just gotten started. [00:16:47] Devin Rippner: We've only just gotten started you know, some of the results that we got were prior to our planting, there were no differences among our treatment blocks for our treatments across the site. So that's nice kind of starting at a, a pretty even baseline. [00:17:03] We're going to track the changes over time. Honestly. I hate to speculate, we don't have the data for it yet, but we've been applying, our synthetic fertilizers based on our like compost mineralization rate. And one of the things that's pretty obvious when you walk out there is that weed competition is brutal for young vines. [00:17:23] So where we're spraying with herbicide under the vines, there's less weed competition. Those vines are just bigger., [00:17:28] we're going to up the amount of fertilizer that we apply next year to try to, like, get around that. And it's one of the challenges at our site is that for long term research, we have to manage our vineyard in a way that kind of limits how many comparisons that we can make. Functionally, two out of our three rows are buffers. It just eats up an enormous amount of space and I'm, I'm hesitant to start putting other treatments into those areas. Like, oh, what if we vary the fertilizer rate to see what the effect is with relation to mowing, right? [00:18:01] So can we get over the weed pressure by, Applying more fertilizer. One of my main takeaways is that a lot of the recommendations that you might get for like, for conventional management won't necessarily work if you're trying to change your system [00:18:16] That's where, you know, growers are going to have to play around and understand that if they're mowing under vine, there is going to be more weed pressure and those weeds take up nitrogen. [00:18:27] You may have to fertilize more. I mean, that, that's just a consequence of, of weed competition. [00:18:32] Craig Macmillan: yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. And in irrigation water too, [00:18:37] Devin Rippner: Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. They use a lot of water. There's no doubt about it. [00:18:42] Craig Macmillan: Which actually brings me back to the clover. I planted crimson clover in my yard once and I irrigated it and it was really pretty and I actually put two and a half foot, three foot high risers off of my lawn sprinklers to get a sprinkler high enough that I could keep growing it. And I was able to grow it up to about three feet tall and it was gorgeous. It was absolutely amazing. But it does make me wonder if, what's a subterranean clover? It's a low growing clover, but how much effect does irrigation have on it in terms of making it taller or taller? [00:19:13] Devin Rippner: That's a good question. I haven't looked into it that much. I consulted with some colleagues here. Who've done work with a variety of cover crops, and they were the ones that recommended the subterranean clover. It has a short stature and part of it is because of how it flowers and seeds, it can't get that tall because it's, it pushes its seeds into the ground. [00:19:32] And so there's no real benefit for it getting taller because then it will be farther away from where it needs to put its seeds. [00:19:39] That's a real concern. I mean, I've learned so much by , having a vineyard gophers, voles, rats, mice, they can be problematic. Right. And if you have a tall cover crop, that's getting into your vines, like that's an easy pathway up. [00:19:52] Keeping the, those undervine weeds and cover crops short is really important. [00:19:58] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. It's also really important for the success of your predators. [00:20:01] Your barn nows and whatnot. They can't really do much when things are tall. So keep going, keep good luck. You're in it. You're in it now, Devon, [00:20:09] Devin Rippner: Oh, yeah. No, that's what it feels like. I feel like I jumped into the deep end of a pool, but didn't realize it was so deep. And so, yeah, I'm learning. [00:20:17] Craig Macmillan: Because prior to a few years back, cause you were, you were at Davis and you were at the Oakville station. Is that right? For a little while. [00:20:24] Devin Rippner: I pulled some samples from Oakville, but no, I was mostly on main campus. I'm a soil chemist by training. Grapevines are relatively new for me. I worked for Andrew McElrone, who , does some great work a lot of my previous work did not involve grapes, and it was mainly, like, tomatoes or other annual crops, and often, like, pretty lab based stuff. [00:20:47] And so this has been a real deep dive for me to do something different. [00:20:53] Craig Macmillan: which is an excellent transition to some of your work which you did at other crops, but you also did some other interesting things related to vines and to soil. And that is x ray CT imagery. You were the first person to introduce me to this concept. I I had no idea I guess I should say X ray micro CT imagery. What, what are the exact terminology? What is it? What can it do? What can we learn? [00:21:20] Devin Rippner: Thanks for bringing this up. Let me just try to keep it simple and I'll build out from there. Just like a doctor's office where you can get an X ray you can actually X ray soils. And plants and look inside of them. X ray computed tomography is where instead of just taking one x ray, maybe you take 1000 x rays as the sample is slowly moving. And what you end up with is the ability to make a three D reconstruction of that sample. Where you're able to look inside of it. [00:21:50] Materials that absorb x rays look different than materials that don't absorb x rays. And so you're able to start Teasing apart structures that are inside of plants and soils [00:22:01] There's different levels to that. Humans have X ray computed tomography done on them, right? You can go in and have that procedure done to look inside of you. It's very much like an MRI there are some tools that it. look at very big volumes. And then there are some tools that look at very small volumes. [00:22:19] That's where there's the x ray microcomputed tomography is looking at very small volumes. And a lot of times those instruments they're low often located. With synchrotrons. So a synchrotron is a particle accelerator that moves electrons at about the speed of light. And then as they're going at the speed of light, , it bends them, it shifts the path of the electrons. [00:22:43] And in doing so , Theory of relativity says that when you have a big shift , in the direction of these electrons they must lose energy. And so they lose energy as the brightest light that we know of in the known universe. And so some of that light are x rays and those x rays are very tunable, and there's a lot of them. [00:23:03] And so we can basically focus on a really tiny area. And still have a lot of x rays. That lets us look at really small things and still have like good contrast and be able to image them relatively quickly. This field is advancing quickly. I know it sounds pretty crazy to talk about x raying soils and plants and things like that. [00:23:23] But the reality is these x rays can also be used to identify elements. And so you can do elemental speciation. So you can be like, Oh, all of the phosphorus there is as phosphate rather than some other form or it's calcium phosphate, not magnesium phosphate. That's called x ray adsorption, near edge structures. [00:23:42] That's how people do that. A long time ago, these instruments used to be unique. You do like a tomography and then you do like these Zains do elemental information, but those things are converging. Now it's possible to do like x ray CT and also do elemental analysis and speciation on the same sample. [00:24:01] in 100 years, that may be how we do our soil testing is you literally have one of these instruments on the back of a tractor. You pull a soil core. You do a quick scan and you say, here's our structure. We can also see the organic matter inside of the soil column. And then by inference from the outer edge of the soil column, we can get What elements are there and what form they're in and then make predictions on their availability. [00:24:27] Were very far from that, but that's like the vision that I have in my head is that at some point, , these will be sensors that people can just use in the field. Will they use an enormous amount of energy? Absolutely. Technology has, shifted in my lifetime and a lot of things that have seemed absurd in the past are now commonplace. [00:24:47] Craig Macmillan: What kinds of things, and it can be other crops as well, but in particular, there was one you did with, I think, grape seeds. Those are the things that can do what, what have you actually. Zapped [00:24:59] Devin Rippner: Yeah. [00:24:59] Craig Macmillan: a better word. [00:25:01] Devin Rippner: You know. [00:25:01] Craig Macmillan: mind here. Okay. So [00:25:03] Devin Rippner: Yeah. So I work with a lot of folks at different national labs. So the Pacific Northwest National Lab is a lab I work at a lot. And we've done a lot of imaging of soil cores and they're big soil cores. So three inches by 12 inch soil cores and to look at soil structure and we're working on segmenting out organic matter from them. [00:25:22] That's something that was not previously possible, but with modern neural networks and deep learning, we can actually train. Neural networks to identify specific compounds in the soil and identify them. We've done it with soil columns. I've done some work with soil aggregates. [00:25:38] So we can look at very small things as well. I've looked at grape seeds, so we had a little study where working with some folks at Davis they pulled out grape seeds, before, during and after fermentation, functionally, and we looked at how the structures of the seeds were changing. [00:25:58] The idea here is that grapeseeds provide a lot of tannins and they're not necessarily like the best tannins for wine, but they do provide a lot of tannins. [00:26:07] People have always wondered like, why do grapeseeds kind of supply a constant amount of tannins during the fermentation process? And as it turns out, it's because the structure of the seeds is changing during fermentation, [00:26:18] They start cracking. And so the internal structures become more accessible during fermentation. [00:26:23] And so that's what we were seeing using x ray tomography is these internal changes that were happening inside of the grape seeds that could potentially promote tannin extraction. [00:26:32] Craig Macmillan: That is fascinating. That explains a lot. I'm just thinking through, Tannin management. The date currently is in the beginning of November 2024. So we're just wrapping up a harvest here in the Paso Robles, central coast area. And so I've been thinking a lot about tannin management last couple of months on behalf of my friends who make wine, not myself. That's not entirely true. Is there a practical application to that in terms of like timing or conditions or things that would contribute to the, the cracking breakdown of these seeds that you identified? [00:27:05] Devin Rippner: We weren't able to go like that in depth and it's some, it's an area that I would like to build on. But the idea is that. The fermentation is a pretty harsh environment. You have a massive change in pH. Microbes are working hard. You have the production of ethanol, which allows the extraction of different compounds. [00:27:24] The seeds are seemingly being modified during fermentation. There needs to be more work done in this area in terms of seed tanning management. We now have kind of a, the more physical. Explanation for why those cannons are coming out of the seeds. [00:27:39] If you are able to pull your seeds earlier from fermentation, I mean, that's like a ridiculous thing to say, but you know, [00:27:45] Craig Macmillan: no, I mean, winemakers are very clever there's a lot of techniques that have become more prominent, I think, in the last 10, 15 years in terms of things like pressing off early, so getting your extraction fast and then finishing out the fermentation off of skins, off of seeds, you know, that's one way that you can do it really using seed maturity as a major variable in your pick decision is another one that I've seen people really draw to. [00:28:09] I remember people crunching on seeds and going, yeah, that's mature. Now I'm seeing people reject a pick date based on that. [00:28:17] Like we were going to wait for these seeds to mature fully before we pull because of, because of these issues with a seed tannin. So just knowing that I think is fascinating. [00:28:28] And if we can put some time and pH things on that, that would be really cool. Are you going to be using this technology with the with the research plot for anything? [00:28:36] Devin Rippner: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we [00:28:39] already have started that. We've already started down that route. Shortly after planting we collected soil cores from, , the vine row. And then from where the, the planter tires were functionally running just to look at changes in bulk density. So like kind of how compressed the soil is and then trying to get at changes in porosity. [00:28:58] We looked at these cores relative to , a field next door. That has had very relatively little disturbance in the past, like 4 to 10 years. It's kind of variable but has had less disturbance than say, like, right after planting a vineyard mechanically. Some of the things we see are you know, when you mechanically plant a vineyard, the bulk density , in the vine row is much lower than where the tractor tires are running that intrinsically makes sense. [00:29:26] And they're kind of both different than a place that's been no till or low disturbance for four to 10 years. Some of the things that are most interesting, and, and again, this is preliminary, it's got to go through peer review. . But when we look at the CT scans, you can actually see where worms have been moving, [00:29:45] In these, like, low till and no till plots or this field that has just not really been disturbed. [00:29:51] , so worms are actually making sizable holes in the ground, and those holes contribute to the porosity in these, like, low disturbance soils compared to these very disturbed soils. And that was a really interesting thing to visually see. You can see the worm castings in the scan. [00:30:10] I don't know if you've ever seen worm castings before, but they kind of, they're these little, like, kind of football shaped Things that are all clumped together our soils don't really aggregate. [00:30:20] We don't have enough organic matter and we don't have enough clay. And so that's like driving force behind aggregation in our soil seemingly is worm castings. For me, that was just mind blowing. [00:30:31] I was not expecting to see that. I think I was expecting to see a lot of roots or like root channels and they're there, but the worms are like following these roots and root channels around. [00:30:41] I'm a very visual person. And so when I do CT stuff, it's like, Oh, wow. Like I can see it with my eyes. If I can't see it with my eyes, it's hard for me to believe. But when I see it with my eyes, , it's believable. [00:30:52] Craig Macmillan: We've done a number of interviews recently around so the microbiome and just soil biology kind of in general, , is that gonna be part of your analysis as some of these projects go forward? [00:31:03] Devin Rippner: Yeah, absolutely. So we've done something called phospholipid fatty acid analysis. [00:31:09] So that gives us an idea of kind of, The microbial consortium that's there right when we sample phospholipids don't really stick around in soils. They're quickly degraded. We would like to do some sequencing challenges. We don't have a microbiologist on the team. And, and so we would, we would have to pay for the sequencing. [00:31:28] And even then sequencing is really interesting because, you could be like, oh, we did say 16 S-R-R-N-A sequencing. And that's like, that's a particular like region or a particular type of sequencing that is, that only picks up on say bacteria. [00:31:47] Whereas if you want to see fungi, maybe you need to do something called ITS sequencing. And so unless you do like all of the sequencing, you can get an idea of what's happening to the bacterial communities or the fungal communities. But unless you do all of them, it's really hard to get a more holistic picture. [00:32:05] And then, a lot of the sequencing that we do or is done we're missing things. If the regions analyzed aren't big enough, like we can be blind to specific things that we know are there. And so things like my understanding is that fungal mycorrhizae can actually be hard to detect by sequencing. [00:32:21] And so even if you visually see them in the roots by staining, you may not pick them up by sequencing. It is a challenge. Now, I, you know, I think that certainly studying the microbiome and understanding its relationship , with vine performance and soil health is, is crucial and is really, you know, one of the things that it's kind of the Holy grail [00:32:41] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. [00:32:43] Devin Rippner: We're trying to get there. [00:32:44] Craig Macmillan: We're trying to get there. That is definitely the message, but it also, there's definitely the potential. I think that there's a lot of people working on this. I think we're going to get there. It's, genomics is so big. I've talked to people that are like, at some point we, we, we will probably be able to get down to species, so we will know the bad actors from the good actors, we'll get a sense of what the real ecology is. [00:33:05] That's a decade plus away still, but we're going there. Right? We're we're gonna figure it out. We're gonna figure it out at some point. We're gonna get there. [00:33:14] Devin Rippner: Yeah, I agree. And there's, there are some techniques. There's some really cool techniques. So Jennifer Petridge at Lawrence Livermore lab does a lot Carbon 13 labeling of root exudates. So she basically gives plants, she treats them with carbon 13, enriched CO2. And then she looks at how much of the carbon 13 is then incorporated into the DNA of microbes to try to get at how well associated they are with plants. [00:33:41] I think that work is just incredible. And there's some folks at Davis that are, are working that in that area as well. That's kind of the stuff that gets me really excited to seeing when people are trying to really tie it into what's feeding on root carbon, , who's getting these exudates, things like that. [00:33:59] , that to me is one of the, One of the ways that we'll be able to, like, get at these questions is to, to start differentiating, the bulk soil microbiome from like the, the real rhizosphere associated microbiome. [00:34:11] Craig Macmillan: so you got a lot going on. You got , you got a bunch of different things happening. What's the path ahead look like for you? [00:34:17] Devin Rippner: Sure. So, and with with the soil health vineyard. I mean, I'm very excited to keep that going. We'll do another large sampling event in 2027 or 2028. We'll start making wine from our grapes. Not next year, but the year after that. So we'll be excited to see how our different management strategies influence our wine. [00:34:40] The wines that come out of the vineyard, or the wines made, made from the grapes that come out of the vineyard. So those are some of the things , I'm most excited about with regard to the vineyard. [00:34:50] Otherwise, I have a lot of data that I need to process and get out. That's something that's next. [00:34:56] I, I'm collaborating with some folks from the University of Illinois in Berkeley lab to look at changes to the Moro plots in Illinois over time. So that's the oldest agricultural experiment in the United States. The plots there have been in experimental treatments for 149 years. [00:35:15] And the reason I'm involved is because vineyards can be very long lived things, right? I mean, there are vines in California 100 years old. [00:35:23] This is one of the few experiments to me that's like comparable to what we see in vineyards. And so I'm really curious about, you know, how do, how do management practices influence soil structure, microbiome, the metagenome, the metabolome, things like that, on these century long timelines. [00:35:43] That to me is like some of the really interesting questions. If you have a vineyard for, for a century, or if you want a vineyard for a century, what do you need to do? How do you make that work? Knowing that it's going to take 20 years to have your vineyard be profitable. [00:35:57] I mean, you're already on a different timescale than annual crops, right? yeah. And so it's just like, how, how do we make our, our vineyards as sustainable and long lived as possible? Because , that, that initial investment is huge. It is so much money. [00:36:13] Craig Macmillan: I think that's really great. I think coming up with findings on other crops, but with practices that could be transferable is really great. You know, we don't need to be in our little grape silo. All the time. And in fact some of the soil microbiome stuff have been with interviews with people that had no connection to vineyards whatsoever. And it was great. The things that they were learning, they were absolutely transferable to this crop as well. That hasn't gotten that kind of attention. Grapevines are tough little suckers, really from an evolutionary standpoint, they're pretty rugged and so we can kind of get away with a lot just because of that. [00:36:48] And now I think the margin for error is less and less, especially when we get into tougher and tougher sites like you're talking about and different conditions, especially if you've farmed it for a while and things have changed. Being able to look at other, other systems and see what's there. [00:37:03] What is one thing that you would tell growers around this topic of research? [00:37:09] Devin Rippner: vineyard is very informed by grower practices. We have a grower board that like helps us make decisions. A message that I will say is like science is science and science is often pretty, you know, Like straight laced and rigid because it must be. know, We're going to find things and those results hopefully will be interesting. [00:37:27] But it's not the be all and end all . of science and research. Growers continuing to try innovative things push the boundaries of what they think is possible is really how we get progress. And I am hopeful , once this vineyard is more established to start going back out and working with growers. [00:37:48] When I first started in Prosser, I sampled from probably 40 different vineyards around the state just to get an idea of what the soil properties were like. And we've done some, some experiments with that. Some of our results are that permanganate oxidize oxidizable carbon. So this POC C classically it's been called active carbon. [00:38:08] There's some new research that suggests that it's, that's maybe a misnomer and it's really, often plant derived carbon. [00:38:15] It seems like there are some effects from that, that suppress disease. And I think that , that's an area where growers can really kind of play around and see if there's , waste from their vineyard and applying it to their vines trying to look at what that does to their, POC C values and also try, just getting in trying to look at some of the past issues that those vines may have and see if there's any decreases. [00:38:41] A lot of observational science is really important. I like hearing from growers that, yeah, I did this thing and it looks like it made a difference. There's a lot of value in that and, and I don't discount like grower knowledge in any way, shape, or form. Like it is deep knowledge growers know things that I don't, and I find that out all the time. [00:39:02] I value those observations. They they give me guidance on how I want to do my work. And we do try to incorporate that stuff into the soil health vineyard. Over time we are going to have to figure out like, You know, can we sustain funding for a vineyard for, say, 50 years if all we're doing is like a cover crop, some compost, and then a mix? [00:39:23] That seems like it's maybe not the most sustainable thing. Science requires that type of stuff, but it's just not that sustainable. So finding ways to make use of our, border rows and stuff like that is going to be important. And a lot of the research that we do is going to be informed by grower observations. [00:39:39] Craig Macmillan: Yep. Yep. Exactly. Where can people find out more about you and your work? [00:39:44] Devin Rippner: Sure. So you can look me up online. Devin Rippner a lot of stuff will pop up. There's a USDA website that has a listing of my publications and things like that. I also have a personal website. So those are some places to, to check out my work. [00:40:00] I try to make sure that my stuff is open access and usable. So, like the deep learning code, the image segmentation code that I co developed for X ray ct work is now being applied to like other types of imaging on. So people are using it at hops and a variety of other things on. [00:40:18] So that code is online. Like you can find it it's associated with my papers. You can play around with it and try it with your own stuff. Mhm. And, and, and that's a big thing for me is like open data. I, I love sharing a lot of the, the data that I have and the code that I have so that people can, repeat what I did. [00:40:35] Look me up online and yeah, you'll be, you can find that, find those resources. [00:40:40] Craig Macmillan: we will have links to a lot of that on the show page. So please visit the show page and check this stuff out. I was really happy to hear you use the word repeatability. [00:40:49] Devin Rippner: Yeah, [00:40:50] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. And I also was really, it's hard. it's very, very hard and it's often overlooked. You know, the, , the scientific methods we know today was all built around the idea of repeatability. That's how you demonstrate whether something's real, real, or if it's only real under certain conditions, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's really great. I'm glad you're doing that. [00:41:08] Well, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. This is a Devin Rippner. He is a research soil scientist with USDA agricultural research service and an adjunct position with the crop and soil science department at Washington state university. Really fun conversation, Devin, lots to think about. I will be following this closely. Or annually, probably [00:41:31] Devin Rippner: Cool. [00:41:31] Yeah. [00:41:32] Craig Macmillan: these things are slow. I'm not going to be checking every week. But I just think it's really cool project and is real inspiration. And I would love to see the same kind of thing replicated in other places. [00:41:41] Devin Rippner: Great. Thanks Craig. That was really fun. [00:41:43] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. [00:41:49] If you enjoyed this podcast, Vineyard Team has a couple of in field tailgate meetings coming up this year that you won't want to miss. [00:41:56] The first is on February 20th in Paso Robles, and it is a dry farming grower around table. Now you don't need to be a dry farmer to enjoy this event. There'll be a number of different growers here talking about their experiences, trials, challenges, and successes. [00:42:13] The second event is on March 12th, and it is Grazing as a Sustainable Practice for Vineyards, taking place in Los Olivos, and we hope to have some adorable sheep on site. [00:42:24] Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Dev lots of research articles, plus, sustainable wine growing podcast episodes, 80. The Goldilocks principle and powdery mildew management, 90 nematode management for Washington grapes, plus a whole healthy soils playlist. [00:42:42] Now for the fine print, the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the USDA ARS. As such, the views, thoughts, and opinions. Presented by the speaker do not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Agriculture or the Agricultural Research Service of any product or service to the exclusion of others that may be suitable. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. [00:43:14] If you liked this show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing, and leaving us a review. You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam.org/podcast. And you can reach us at podcast@vineyardteam. org. [00:43:28] Until next time, this is Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team.   Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

In this episode, Dr. Kranthi Mandadi, Professor of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Weslaco, Texas, joins host Matt Kasson to discuss his basic and translational research of fastidious (unculturable) plant pathogens including the causal agents of citrus greening disease (HLB) and zebra chip disease. He talks about his lab's innovative approaches to combatting plant diseases throughout the southern U.S. and his Texas-sized ambitions to develop solutions through public-private partnerships with industry. He also discusses the challenges of working with obligate unculturable plant pathogens and the need to balance basic science pursuits with high-risk / high-reward research. Show Notes Texas A & M University Plant Pathology and Microbiology Faculty Profile: https://plantpathology.tamu.edu/people/mandadi-kranthi/ Mandadi Lab webpage: https://agrilife.org/mandadilab/group/ 2024 APS Syngenta Award Profile​: https://www.apsnet.org/members/give-awards/awards/Syngenta/Pages/2024-Syngenta_Mandadi.aspx Farm Progress article on Dr. Mandadi: https://www.farmprogress.com/fruit/scientists-shift-from-defense-to-offense-to-fight-citrus-greening Dr. Kranthi Mandadi's Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rWVhJ94AAAAJ&hl=en ‪ This episode is produced by Association Briefings (https://associationbriefings.com). Special Guest: Kranthi Mandadi.

On Creature Comforts, Kevin Farrell is joined by Dr. Troy Majure, veterinarian at the Animal Medical Center in Jackson and Libby Hartfield retired director of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.On Creature Comforts today, we welcome Dr. Holley Muraco from Mississippi State University's Coastal Research and Extension Center. She is an internationally recognized research scientist with special interest in aquatic mammals. So stay tuned to learn about her work with dolphins, manatees, otters, and moreTo submit your own question for the show, email us at animals@mpbonline.org or send us a message with the Talk To Us feature in the MPB Public Media App. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you are dealing with vine mealybug in your vineyard, you are not alone. Kent Daane, Cooperative Extension Specialist at the University of California Berkley studies different types of mealybug populations across the globe. Kent covers organic and conventional strategies, ways to increase the presence of generalist and specialist natural predators, and the importance of establishing refugia for beneficials. His latest work focuses on area-wide management tactics. Looking to the European Grapevine Moth eradication program as an example, Kent sees an opportunity to decrease vine mealybug populations through neighborhood driven monitoring, trapping, coordinated sprays, and mating disruption. Resources:         119: Vine Mealybug 101: Species Identification, Lifecycle, and Scouting to Create an IPM Program 130: The Biological Control of Vine Mealybug Using Mealybug Destroyers and Anagyrus Wasps Biology and management of mealybugs in vineyards Ecology and management of grapevine leafroll disease Impacts of Argentine ants on mealybugs and their natural enemies in California's coastal vineyards Insecticides for a mealybug and a carpenter moth on vine trunks, 2023 In-season drip and foliar insecticides for a mealybug in grapes, 2023 In-Season Drip and Foliar Insecticides for a Mealybug in Grapes, 2021 Kent Daane Mealybug transmission of grapevine leafroll viruses: an analysis of virus–vector specificity Sustainable Control tools for Vine Mealybug UCCE Napa Viticulture Extension Leaf Hopper site Vineyard managers and researchers seek sustainable solutions for mealybugs, a changing pest complex Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript [00:00:00] Craig Macmillan: Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with Vineyard Team. Our guest today is Kent Daane. He is a Cooperative Extension Specialist with the University of California, Berkeley, and he works primarily out of the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center. And today we're going to talk about a number of topics. Thanks for being on the podcast, Kent. [00:00:17] Kent Daane: Craig, thanks. I'm happy to be here. [00:00:20] Craig Macmillan: Let's dive in on one pest that everybody's interested in, continuing to be interested in, and you may have some new insights or newer insights on this. Let's start with mealybug management. Kind of what's the state of the art in that topic right now? [00:00:33] Kent Daane: Yeah, that's been the number one question I've been getting for many, many years now. It is an invasive pest. We know it came in, probably being brought in by a grower down in Coachella Valley. It has since spread into the San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast area where you are, Napa Sonoma, and it's been found now in Oregon. Just like Napa, Oregon has attempted an eradication program. And probably just like Napa, most likely it's not going to work. It's a very, very difficult insect to kill 100%. I mean, I can come up with all kinds of different programs, soft programs, hard programs, expensive programs, inexpensive programs, where I can suppress that insect pest. It's very difficult to remove it from a vineyard. And that becomes important when you think about the kinds of damage we're worried about in Central Coast wine grapes. Pretty much anywhere where they're looking at grape quality. But especially in the cooler regions. So, this insect, this mealybug, is one of many mealybug species. that is a vector of grape leaf roll associated viruses. And this is the primary reason it grows to such high pest status. So for the most part, the growers can knock its levels down far enough that it's not in the grape clusters or it's rarely found in the grape clusters. That's more of an issue for table grape growers. It's a cosmetic pest. When you look at some of the Regions in the San Joaquin Valley where they're growing a lot of table grapes Kern, Tulare, Kings, Fresno, counties, there's enough heat accumulation and these grapes are harvested early enough in the season that they can still build up their Brix. They can still get a very good grape to market. Even when there's some vinely bug on the vine, they just don't tend to be as impacted by this leaf roll pathogen as our wine grapes. When you get into regions like San Luis Obispo, Napa, Monterey, Oregon, where they really are trying to hold those grapes on the vine for a longer period of time, trying to build up the bricks levels. That's where this. pathogen causes so much damage. [00:03:06] Craig Macmillan: most of our growers are already going to be familiar with this, but what kind of damage does the vine mealybug cause? It's so, so terrible. [00:03:12] Kent Daane: So the vine mealybug, besides being a vector of this pathogen, is also a direct pest of the grapevine. It can feed on the roots, on the trunk, on the leaves, and in the fruit. When this first hit California, we were working on it primarily as a San Joaquin Valley pest. growers that were putting on, you know, the products of the day dimethylate, lanate. If they were missing , the, target window where that pest was exposed, we would see thousands and thousands of mealybugs, not just per vine, but sometimes a thousand millibugs per leaf. It was causing defoliation. It was causing the berries to raisin on the vine. In South Africa, populations were getting so heavy. It was killing the vines themselves. How many people out there 20, 30 years ago were spraying so many neonics as we're saying today? We weren't doing that. now really, we were spraying for leaf hoppers as our number one pests followed by mites in case there was a flare up. It changed what we were doing in terms of pest management. In fact there's a group of us working internationally. Not just on the vine mealybug, but other mealybug species, because we've seen vine mealybug, grape mealybug, citrus mealybug, all becoming more problematic over the last decade. And we're, asking that question, why? What has gone on? And one of the thoughts we've got, not yet shown, but one idea is that we just sprayed so many of these, these newer chemicals that the mealybugs are developing resistance, The natural enemies are not, and we're seeing an escape of some of these mealybug species in now a, to them, a pesticide lessened environment. [00:05:10] Craig Macmillan: speaking of biological control, so this is an invasive pest, came from outside the U. S. That's the kinda the classical biological control problem. the pest comes, but its natural enemies don't come with it. there are some natural enemies of vine mealybug in the United States. [00:05:24] Kent Daane: Yes, they are, and I don't want to go too deep in the weeds on this, but this is new, very exciting to me. I did an importation program, that's a classic biocontrol program, where we go to the pests, origin, we look for natural enemies and we bring those back to the United States. Growers can't do that. It's got to go into quarantine. We have to study those natural enemies. Sometimes for years to make sure that they're not going to do any harm. The classic example people think about is I've got a problem with rats. And so I bring in a weasel, the weasel kills all the rats, and then starts going after my chickens. We don't do that anymore. Classic biocontrol is now much more modern. We've got all kinds of protective barriers against making a mistake. In fact, I think that we've gone a little bit too far. I think we're overly cautious. Bringing this back to the Vine melaybug, I imported material from Europe, from Israel, from Egypt, and from South Africa. We were finding mostly the same species in most of these different regions. The two most important species at that time were called Anagyrus pseudococci, which is The well known parasitoid that you can purchase from insectaries. The other one is Coxydoxinoides peregrinus, no common name on these insects. Both are established in California. When I did this work, we noticed a difference between the anagyrus near species Pseudococci that we were getting in Sicily and Spain with the material that we were getting that had already been established from Israel and what we're finding in northern Italy. Working with a taxonomist, Sergei Trapitsin he found some significant differences between these. And later on after both were imported in the United States determined that these were two species, one still Anagyrus pseudocoxi and one Anagyrus vladimiri. So sometimes you'll see insectaries selling Anagyrus vladimiri and you think, Oh, I want that. That's different. It is different, but both are established in California. We're actually going to do a followup study. now in collaboration with this international group to find out what we've got in California. I suspect we've got both. Now, why is this exciting? Because at the time we were doing this work, we felt like the parasites were different, and we felt that these different groups that we were importing, maybe one had co evolved with the citrus mealybug, And the other with the vine mealybug. And we had already done some work with the vine mealybug, molecular work, looking at its relationship to each other around the world. and their names are, scientific names would be citrus mealybug, planococcus citri. Vine mealybug, we knew as planococcus ficus, which means, Ficus tree, fig tree. And we were showing that this group was, they had an outlier and ours was the outlier. And then working with this international group, they said, look, back in the fifties, there was a planococcus vitis. And I think what you've got, what we've got on vines, is the vine mealybug. But not in Iran and Iraq at that time. And, and maybe in that Mediterranean region Israel, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Turkey the Mesopotamian region, I think is what it is. Maybe there are some parasites there that we didn't have. Certainly, my colleague in Egypt and more parasites than we were finding in Europe. We just weren't able to get them all to establish in colony in quarantine. So it opens up the window that, that maybe there's something still out there. At this point in time, I say in all the countries where vine mealybug is reported as a problem, that's most of Europe Mexico, South America South Africa. We have the best of those parasites. We just want to delve deeper into what are we seeing in Turkey? How does that match up with what we know is in Egypt? And I do have colleagues in Iran. It's just harder for me to go there. [00:10:09] Craig Macmillan: right, of course. so this makes me think, is it possible that we have mixed populations of these mealybugs in California on the same plant, so it's different areas? [00:10:17] Kent Daane: So that's the project we're working on with this international group. What we decided to do in a three part approach is to first find out what everyone's got. The assumption is that in South America, In the United States, North America, we have got single invasion events. Our guess is that it arrived in the U S in Coachella and Mexico at the same time. We're pretty sure that the population they have in Peru is from California Yeah, they were bringing nursery wood in and lo and behold, they found vine mealybug. We went down to look at a nomatode problem to be honest with some UC California researchers. And we found that they had some mite problems at the same mites that we've got in North American California. So they were probably not being very cautious in what they were importing. So we're assuming that South America's got this California group which came from Israel. We know Israel and Egypt have something very similar, but it's different than most of Europe. South Africa is similar to Portugal and Spain, which makes sense with the trade routes that were going on in the 1960s. What we're guessing is that The European groups, there probably are, there's reported failures of vine mealybug mating disruption in some European areas. And we think that probably is this other mealybug that is probably in Turkey. So it's all very exciting to me, kind of delving deeper into the weeds on this. But the first part of this international group, again, a great group of people, Europe, South America our first part is what do we all have? Our second part is what we're doing a grower survey that we actually sent to the vineyard team and they spread out to some growers as well. What are, what are growers using to control the mealybug? Because maybe with some of the, we find out what it is and maybe growers are working harder to control our vine mealybug than say that the fig millebug which appears to be what they've got in most of Europe. Remember when I started the foreign exploration when I was in Spain growers would tell me yeah we've got the vine millebug but it really is not much of a pest. Citrus millebug on vines is more of a pest. Well they probably have that fig mealybug but [00:13:01] Craig Macmillan: Ah, [00:13:01] Kent Daane: You know, taxonomically, it looked to us like the vine mealybug.And I hope I'm not throwing all these things out and it's confusing. So, second part, that is, the survey. What do you have and what are you using to control it? And if it matches up that, yeah, what we've got is the one that's more difficult, that fills in a lot of boxes. Third and fourth part are now looking at the natural controls. What parasites are you getting coming off of this? What parasites are in your region? And how do they respond to the pheromones that we know are out there? So if they're not, if they're responding to both citrus and vine, maybe that's an indication that it's this other group. If they're not responding at all, or weakly, yeah, we've, we've got three or more distinct species. And we can't tell them apart, but maybe the parasites can. [00:13:56] Craig Macmillan: this is kind of a practical question. hoW do you monitor parasitic wasps? They're tiny. They live in refugia. They then come out and plant their eggs in their host. that seems like a really hard thing to do. [00:14:10] Kent Daane: That's an absolute fantastic question. So let's look at that most common parasite, Antigyrus Pseudococci slash Vladimiri. So what we found over the years is that it does a great job on mealybugs that are exposed in the fruit, on the leaves, on the cane. By the end of the season, if you're not putting on a lot of contact chemicals, you're getting greater than 40 percent parasitism. Very easy to see, [00:14:43] Craig Macmillan: Right. [00:14:43] Kent Daane: doesn't do very well against the mealybugs under the bark, because it's got this searching behavior where it's got to get on top of the mealybug, determine how big it is, do I want to put a an egg that's not fertilized in that, which would be a male, and they need smaller mealybugs for that. Do I want to put an egg which is fertilized? In that, that will become a female parasite that needs larger host. [00:15:09] Craig Macmillan: the same insect, the same parasite has the ability to do either. [00:15:13] Kent Daane: Yes. [00:15:15] Craig Macmillan: Wow. [00:15:15] Kent Daane: again, this is really a neat subject and I hope I don't bore the audience too much. But, a lot of these parasites that become important for mealybugs they have this little sac, so you've got your oviduct going to your ovarioles, in the female. And right around the oviduct area, before it splits into the two ovarioles, you've got this little sac called the spermatheca. unlike humans, where the sperm goes in and Seeks out the eggs and fertilizes it. The sperm go in and the female parasite stores them in the spermatheca. And then as the eggs are mature and ready to go down, oviduct and get ready to be oviposited into the mealybug, the female decides to fertilize the egg or not fertilize it. And if it's fertilized, it becomes a female. If it's not fertilized, it becomes a male. And that allows her to determine what the host size is, because the females are bigger than the males. And so she will walk up and down. and size that mealybug and say that this, this mealybug is a good enough size that this is worthy for me to put a fertilized egg in and that will become a female. Or a second in store mealybug, she'll say, this really isn't that good of a mealybug host. So I'm going to put An unfertilized egg, and that will become a male. And that was, going back to this Anagyrus Vladimiri versus Pseudococci, that was the most important difference that we found in this Sicilian and Spanish group of Anagyrus, was that they would oviposit and put females in smaller hosts than the male. earlier parasite which probably evolved on the citrus mealybug. So going back to this question because I do go off on different tangents. How do you sample for these things? So it's really easy to find a mummified mealybug on a leaf. But remember what we're doing. We're spraying now a lot of Movento and we're spraying a lot of the Neonics regardless of its Admire, Platinum, or generic derivative. They're all good materials. and maybe you're putting on an IGR like a plot, again, all good materials, Assail, all good materials. What they tend to do is work really good against the mealy bug, which is exposed on the leaves. Our systemic materials are really good at going out to the leaves. Our contact materials, our IGRs, the neonics, that are contacts kill the mealybug that's exposed. All of these materials do less of a good job with the mealybug underneath the bark. we're not getting a true indication of what these parasites can do because we're killing the host that's the best location for them to attack. So that means to really find out what's going on, you got to strip bark oftentimes. So now you're looking at parasitism in that region of the vine that the parasite doesn't like to be. Now, if we add to this, this other good parasite, which is the coccidoxoenoides peregrinus, we really liked to bring this in because it attacks the very, very small stages of the mealybug, the first and the second instar. It's sometimes a small third, but really it's focused on the second instar. [00:19:05] Craig Macmillan: Got it. [00:19:06] Kent Daane: It's in California. You can find it, but it's really hard to find out what impact it's got because it will parasitize the mealybug and will cause the parasitized mealybug to die. to feel sick and to seek out some area for protection because the anagyrus if you see that mealybug parasitized on the leaf causes that mealybug to kind of glue itself down to the leaf You have to flip that thing to get it off the leaf. A mummy is a dead mealybug which sticks to the leaf. The coccydox anoides causes the mealybug to find a place of protection because it doesn't stick it to the leaf. So it often times goes to the trunk, or goes to the stem, and eventually falls off the vine, and will pupate down into the ground. And so to sample for that one, you have to collect them as first or second instars live, bring them back to the insectary, and rear them out to the parasite, which is just really a lot of work hard to do. so these things are far more difficult to do. Sample four, then going out and counting, you know, aphid parasites, which are just out there as little brown mummified aphids. [00:20:29] Craig Macmillan: it sounds like this would play a role in my timing of my insecticide applications, whether it's Spirotetramat or Neonic or One of the programs that I think is common is to have spirotetramat on top and have a myothiamethoxam soil applied. Does that sound right? [00:20:47] Kent Daane: Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, they're both good products and they're doing what they're supposed to do. they're killing the mealybug. And when the timing is right, they're getting out there before the mealybug. So as the mealybug is going out towards the leaves. You know, they're probably doing a better job than the parasite will do on its own. Now, if you are an organic grower and you can't use those materials, then timing does become a little bit more critical because you're putting on, oftentimes, organic materials every 10 to 14 days because they've got a shorter residual. So on those you may want to, you know, work your timing around to avoid to give it a window of opportunity some of these natural enemies. There you're looking on the leaf, you're looking for mummified mealybugs. You know, are, do I have some of these good natural enemies in the field? You're looking for the mealybug destroyer, or one of the other beetles. Green lancelings are also doing a pretty good job. So you're monitoring those. And maybe you're deciding, I've got a lot of good activity maybe I should wait to put on pyganic or one of the other materials, which is broad spectrum give the other parasites a chance, a cycle, to see what their impact's going to be on that millibug population. Or maybe you're going to leave every fifth row unsprayed to let the parasites come back in and then hit that row later. So you've got a chance for those natural enemies to move the just sprayed vines. [00:22:22] Craig Macmillan: That was going to be my next question is what is the refugee situation for these parasites? Do they come into the vineyard, do their thing and then leave? Do they come in when there is host and then they hang out in the vineyard for the rest of the season? Do we know? I'm just thinking about ways that I can preserve, conserve those parasites as much as possible so that they're there when I need them. [00:22:45] Kent Daane: That's a great question, Craig. And let's break this apart into two different areas. Let's talk about First, the generalist predators that I just mentioned, the green lacewings, a good mealybug predator against the smaller mealybug stages. A lot of the things we do to enhance natural enemies will enhance generalist predators. So that's where your cover crops come in. That's where your pollen and nectar come in. You'll increase generalist predators. Ladybird beetles, green lacewings, minute pyre bugs, those can all attack and kill. That same group of cover cropping that brings in the gentleness predator may have little impact on the specialized parasitoids. Things like the anagyrus and the coccidocsinoides, what they want is the mealybugs. And not all mealybugs will do. They really want the mealybugs that are better hosts for them. So, they tend to get everything they need out of that pest population. They can host feed. They can stick their ovipositor into a mealybug, turn around and feed on some of that exudate, some of what's being bled. The mealybug creates honeydew. That honeydew, instead of trying to plant a cover crop for honeydew, that honeydew serves as a food to increase the longevity of those parasitoids. And as the mealybug density goes down, the parasite numbers should go down as well. Now there are different kinds of food sprays that we hope to look at that oftentimes do help increase both generalists and perhaps specialist natural enemies. [00:24:46] Craig Macmillan: Hm. [00:24:46] Kent Daane: The number one thing you do to to enhance beneficial insect numbers is to watch the broad spectrum insecticide sprays or to time them where you're not spraying, you know, all 100 acres at the same time, but you're leaving a refugia so they can move back in. [00:25:08] Craig Macmillan: Interesting. So, I might be looking at something and saying, okay, I am going to have to take some action here. I'm hitting an action threshold but not pull the trigger on the whole thing. leave one area for a little bit, and then can you come back and treat that later, so that you're preserving some of these folks, and then they can come back on the other side, and find a balance between the chemical and the biological. Mm [00:25:31] Kent Daane: Right. A balance, a delay might just be 10 days, might be 20 days. We don't want to miss our spray window, but remember, Most of the natural enemies are winged as adults, whereas the female mealybug is never winged. Fairly slow, fairly thestle. So that allows for those beneficials to come back in. And if you're a large grower this just happens over over the course because you can't spray 100 acres in a day. [00:26:07] Craig Macmillan: Right. Right. Fascinating. Are growers starting to adopt, in your experience with the folks that you work with, are growers starting to adopt these kinds of timings and techniques and methods? [00:26:19] Kent Daane: I think growers are constantly adopting, improving, changing one of the common misconceptions when I talk to students or people who just don't don't know how to farm or farmers is that farmers really don't want to spray. Spraying costs money. it is an added expenditure, added time, added worry. So they'd much rather, you know, go back 50 years when we didn't have all these invasive insects from Vine mealybug to Virginia Creeper growers are always seeking out how to improve the insecticide materials they've got, how to reduce the insecticide applications they have to make. And that does include natural enemies, mating disruption. What it comes down to is just costs. So oftentimes there's a trade off. If you're going to use mating disruption, you may not be doing three applications of an insecticide for vine mealybug. Maybe it's one insecticide plus vine mealybug mating disruption. If you're organic and you're releasing beneficial insects and spraying every other week. Maybe you don't have the cost for mating disruption. So these are all decisions that individual growers have to make. Obviously we've got some growers in some regions can spend 300 per acre for mealybug control. Other growers simply cannot do that because of the value of, their product at the very end. [00:28:03] Craig Macmillan: Right. This is kind of a natural lead in to something I wanted to touch on, and that is the Virginia Creeper leafhopper that's found on the North Coast. That also an invasive, correct? Came in from outside. [00:28:15] Kent Daane: It is invasive to some extent. It is not invasive like the vine mealybug is from. The Mediterranean region Virginia creeper most likely is, is North American. But yes, it was never really a California leafhopper pest. It was, no England, Canada. Pest that then went into Washington, then went into Oregon, that then came into California. interestingly, the, leafhopper that I worked on for so many years the variegated grape leafhopper probably North American, probably had a different avenue, probably came up from the south, from Mexico, Texas, to Arizona, to California. So Some of our invasives are close relatives. [00:29:07] Craig Macmillan: Interesting. what's the difference in damage that's caused by the Virginia creep leaf hopper and the the variegated leaf hopper. [00:29:17] Kent Daane: So they're, they're very similar. I think that the grape leafhopper is the one we've been dealing with for the longest time and has been relatively mild compared to the other two. The variegated grape leafhopper When it first came into the San Joaquin Valley, it could defoliate vines. It had three to four generations per year. [00:29:42] Craig Macmillan: Oh, wow. [00:29:43] Kent Daane: It seemed to be much more damaging than the grape leafhopper. Virginia creeper leafhopper, now in northern California, making its way south. So it's gotten to the middle of the state. It's in Napa, Sonoma, Sacramento. I have not seen it. Heard it reported in the Fresno area. Oh, it has been reported in Fresno. But I'm not saying it causes much damage here. We really don't get many leaf hopper reports for damage here, except for organic growers. And that's because all the sprays for vine mealybug. Most of those vine mealybug sprays are very good against the leaf hoppers. Where I have seen it as a pest. It's been mostly in wine grapes. Mostly in the cooler regions of the state. Mostly controlled by conventional insecticides. There are programs organic materials registered for Virginia creeper that I think have done a fairly good job. But it, it does get out of hand. And I think for all these leaf hoppers with organic materials, what happens is that The organic products tend to not work well , against the leaf operant in the egg stage or the leaf operant in the adult stage. So timing is very important. You want to get those materials on. when egg hatch is nearly complete and when you've got mostly first and second instars out there. That's because most of our organic products tend to impact these pests by either being a desiccant like the soaps that dry it out or a suffocant like the oils that clog the spiracles. And so the the, adults just fly away from that tractor rig as it's coming down. The eggs are protected inside the leaf itself, in their little clusters for the Virginia Creeper. And the larger insects can, they're just more mobile. So it's hard to kill them. So timing becomes relatively critical with these insects. I've not worked directly with Virginia creeper other than hosting Houston Wilson did his graduate work in my lab and really focused on, on the parasites of this insect. Lucia Varela, now retired, did focus on looking at the different insecticides and she's got a nice summary article which is on Monica Cooper's website. It talks about the different insecticides, U C cooperative extension Napa County. And she's got a website that goes into materials for organic growers for Virginia creeper leaf hopper. I think that's where I saw. that information posted. And what Houston did was he just looked at and tried to improve the Enneagrus. So we get those two confused. The Lilybug parasite is Anagyrus. The Leafhopper parasite is Enneagrus. The two names sound pretty similar, but one is an inserted family and one is a Mimerit. Or a fairy fly, fairy winged fly. They're some of the smallest insects known. So, [00:33:03] Craig Macmillan: Wow. So, we are continuing to look at these new parasites, how they're performing, we're learning a lot more about them, and we're learning a lot more about timing of different kinds of sprays around their life cycle. [00:33:17] Kent Daane: Yeah, what Houston was trying to do was to understand why parasitism against the Virginia creeper leafhopper was against all the leafhoppers. Why parasitism was relatively low. So I was working with Danny Gonzales and Sergei Tripitsin, And just mentioning to the taxonomist, Sergei, that it seemed like there were differences amongst these Enneagris samples that we were releasing. And I had happened to save all of the material that had died. So I sent that to Sergei, and Sergei looked at these things closely and then said, look, we've got a complex of parasites. And he named Enneagris erythronureae. After the species that was most commonly attacking variegated grape leafhopper, which is Erythronere variabilis. There was another one, and he called a Negris tryptocova, which was named after his wife's father's family and he said that was the better looking one of the group. And there was one that just didn't do that much. And he named that after me, a Negris Dana. And so that one we thought was the one attacking the western grape leaf hopper most commonly. And it was being found more commonly in the riparian zone. So that's 20 years ago, fast forward to our new invasive leaf hopper, the Virginia creeper leaf hopper, which is again coming down from Canada to Washington to Oregon to California. Well, it ends up that the Enneagris deni is very important attacking that leaf hopper. So Houston was working out the relationship of these three parasites against these three leaf hoppers and trying to understand if he could manipulate their numbers to improve biocontrol. He looked at hedgerows, he looked at augmentative releases or inoculative releases, and we're still curious to see if that can't be improved even. [00:35:30] Craig Macmillan: That's fantastic. Another topic that I wanted to touch on, because it's a really cool idea, and I think we'll have applications across a lot of things eventually, and that is area wide pest management strategies. And I know that you've done a lot of work in this area from the beginning, really, of kind of the concept. What is an area wide pest management strategy? Management program. What does it look like? What can it what is its goal? How does it operate? What kind of success we've seen so far? [00:35:59] Kent Daane: Yeah, that's a fantastic question. It's a topic I'm really excited about and let's think about it when we think about the European grapevine model. that was another invasive insect, It was found in California, it was found in Chile around the same time. So you've got this invasive insect, and the state of California deemed this important enough to have an eradication program. [00:36:22] Craig Macmillan: Oh and just real quick. What kind of damage does grapevine moth do? [00:36:26] Kent Daane: So the European Greenvine Moth it'll feed on the vine, but it gets in the fruit clusters. think of the omnivorous leaf roller One of those, one of our tortricid pests that can really cause damage to the grape a number of generations per year, a lot of different possibilities where it might come from in terms of a host plant material. So it can be very problematic. It would require a spray every single year, an additional spray for a tortricid pest, if it were to establish. [00:37:00] Craig Macmillan: one the big issue here is that it attacks the berries directly [00:37:03] Kent Daane: absolutely. [00:37:04] Craig Macmillan: Okay. So that's a, that's a serious problem. [00:37:07] Kent Daane: No, no, the, it, it causes mold and rot and everything else once it gets in there. So, you know, two or three doesn't seem like a lot. You just think, well, berry can go to crush, but that berry will get all kinds of bunch rot. not a good fruit. So when you think about the eradication program, where there was monitoring everywhere in the state. When you think about the eradication program, where when they found this pest through pheromone traps, and then they did a ground search to find out where it was. And then there was a coordinated investigation. Effort to spray the right materials, to use mating disruption, to go after it in all of the adjoining areas. those eradication programs are very intense. Area wide control programs. So, let's think about Vine mealybug, which is now in most vineyards. We're still approaching this on an individual grower basis. We might have one grower using mating disruption, because they're going to go organic, and a next door neighbor doing nothing. There's going to be constant movement of that pest into that grower's. field We might have two growers, one using Movento every other year, and another using Platinum every other year. Those males are going back and forth between those vineyards, sharing whatever genetic resistance that they're developing. And so really, if those growers are switching, one's using Movento, one's using Platinum that insect is moving between those vineyards all the time. And it's not a resistance management program, or you might have a small five acre grower deciding to put out mating disruption. Mating disruption works better blanketing the whole area. So an area wide program, and then you bring into it the idea of roguing leaf roll diseased vines. there are two things I just mentioned in this last 30 seconds that are so important for area wide management of mealybug and leaf roll that are the killers to those programs. The first is mating disruption still costs more money than a pesticide application. It's a fantastic tool. It is a tool that works better the lower and lower the mealybug density gets. So you use insecticides to really drop the mealybug population down, but there gets to be a point where the mealybugs are now on the bark. There are little populations here and there, and we know the insecticides are never 100 percent. Mating disruption works better. The lower the milli buck density is. [00:40:05] Craig Macmillan: Got it. [00:40:06] Kent Daane: But there's a cost to it. So we start with insecticides. The next part is the rowing of the infected vines. That's very important on an area wide basis because if you're planting, you've had, vineyard is old, it's not productive, it's had leaf roll. You pull it out, but it's right next to a block that's got 80 percent infected vines. You're always going to have new infections showing up over and over and over again. Unless that grower next to you is just doing this bang up job of applying insecticides all the time to keep mealybugs from going into your vineyard. you can make area wide control work for the pathogen. and the pest. But in the best world, let's say you're in control of a thousand acres, pull out every vineyard that's infected and replant and then pull out every new infection in it. And people just can't afford this. [00:41:06] Craig Macmillan: Right. [00:41:07] Kent Daane: if you're managing 200, 300 acres and Your vineyard with leaf roll that's at 30 percent is still profitable. it's hard to pull out those 30%. It's just hard to do. I get it. But something that I wish we could get, you know, government subsidy for to, to have them help us come in, pull out the infected vines, start clean again. But it does work. It's worked in South Africa. It's worked in New Zealand. It's worked in Napa. It just comes at a cost that may be prohibitive in some regions, in some areas. So the best we can do is to manage mealybug and the disease incidence in an area wide manner. [00:41:52] Craig Macmillan: if I remember correctly, I mean, the work has been done now that, demonstrates roguing is your best strategy overall long term, but it's expensive short term. and that is the issue. That's the tricky bit. [00:42:06] Kent Daane: There are two tricky bits to it. The first tricky bit is the expense you just talked about. The second tricky bit is that in most of the regions where we know it's worked They have not been dealing, perhaps, with our vine mealybug. They've been dealing with the grape mealybug, long tail mealybug, obscure mealybug. we've got I think the worst mealybug. And maybe that mealybug is just better at surviving on root remnants. You know, you hear all the time from growers, I r I've been removing 10 percent of my vineyard every single year for five years. And when I looked at The south African data, they removed 20%. Second year, 5%. Third year, 3%. Fourth year, 1%. And after that, it was always 1%. [00:42:54] Craig Macmillan: last piece of this puzzle in my mind is you have to get your neighbors to cooperate. That's the area wide bit. You have to get people to get on the same page in terms of what they're doing. And it sounds to me like they don't necessarily have to be doing exactly the same thing. They just have to be sensitive to what somebody else wants to do. Does that sound right? [00:43:15] Kent Daane: There are areas where it has worked well. It can work in the Central Coast. It can work in Lodi. We may not see, you know, eradication of diseased vines. We may not see a reduction of vine mealybug to a point where we can treat every other year. We might be treating every single year. for this, but we can improve what we're doing through communication right now. In the central Valley, we're working with a great group of growers where we're just mapping out the vine mealybug and we're sharing with the growers where the melaybug populations are. It's their decision. What? What to use, what to do for control. It's their decision. Can they rogue or not rogue? But what we're trying to do is to help foster communication amongst the different growers that are neighbors, because we're a third party, which I think helps a little bit. it would be fantastic if we could have someone hired as a scout or PCA, where we work with. PCAs in the region and everyone shares data. We're trying a new computer program this year, which we at the end of the season, we'll launch with our collaborating growers where they can log on in real time. and see what the trap counts are as we count those trap counts. And that will help them make a decision, we hope, on what to do in terms of control measures. But again, the best thing might be that we're opening up communication, just as the Vineyard team is doing through podcasts, through field days, through the website. [00:44:55] Craig Macmillan: Well, let's hope. And I, and there's a number of other organizations too. the, the group in Lodi has done a fantastic job from what I understand. Fostering communication and sharing information. like you said, I think that's probably one of our, our, our best hopes. Is working collaboratively as an industry and getting communication between the experts like PCAs and the extension community. . [00:45:15] Kent Daane: And of course, anyone can always reach out to me with questions as well. [00:45:18] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. And we'll put your information in the show notes. I want to thank you for being on the podcast. fantastic. Very helpful and very, very exciting. I think I was feeling a little more dismal about this whole topic coming into this interview than I am now. I think there's maybe more potential than I was kind of giving credit. I, you know, I come from a time back in the 90s when Vine Mealybugs showed up in the Central Coast. And it was a lot of gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, and we did not know what to do, and the damage was insane. I mean, I saw stuff that was just blood curdling, and I think we've come a long way. We've come a long way, and that's from the efforts of folks like you, so I really appreciate it. I want to thank our guest, Kent Daane. He is a Cooperative Extension Specialist with the University of California, Berkeley. he works primarily out of the Kearney Ag Research Extension Center. And, thanks so much for being on the podcast. This is great. [00:46:10] Kent Daane: Thank you very much. Enjoy the harvest time coming up.   Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

We kick off College Roadshow at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with a conversation with Doug Zalesky, director of the Eastern NE Research & Extension Center. We discuss the ag program at UNL plus their impressive new Klosterman Feedlot Innovation Center. With the general election two months away we wanted to hear from Tom Sell of Combest Sell & Associates on what what he's seeing right now from the campaigns, what he'd like to see in next week's debate, and what Congress should be working on.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 42 DETAILS Purina Report Shows Profit Opportunities From Beef-On-Dairy Crossbreeding According to a report from Purina Animal Health, and reported by MeatingPlace.com, the contraction in the U.S. beef herd has opened opportunities for dairy producers to capitalize by delivering beef-on-dairy crossbred calves. The firm's recently released Beef-on-Dairy Industry Report cites Purina survey data showing that most dairy farmers are realizing a premium approaching $200 a head, with some netting double or triple that advantage. The current market has about 3 million beef-on-dairy cattle according to the report, which includes chapters written by Purina staff as well as beef industry experts from academia and extension programs. Kansas State University Professor Robert Weaber, department head for the Eastern Kansas Research and Extension Center, writes that adding beef genetics to breeding programs can help dairy producers “enhance their operations and maximize the value of their surplus calf stream.” Raising cattle with a different genetic profile requires focus attention on “other factors like nutrition and management” to achieve the “full genetic potential and value,” he said in the report's section on selecting sires. What many do not realize is the amount of beef on dairy or even traditional dairy cattle that are in the beef supply chain.  With continued financial pressure on dairy producers, it is only an obvious choice that dairy farmers are looking for other areas to realize a potential premium.  We will have more on this topic coming up on the full weekend show, here in the near future, and how this approach has paved the way for more precise breeding in the beef sector.  Specific genetics for specific goals, enter ABS Nuera genetics.   SPONSORS Trans Ova Genetics https://transova.com/ @TransOvaGenetics American Gelbvieh Association https://gelbvieh.org/ @AmericanGelbvieh Allied Genetic Resources https://alliedgeneticresources.com/ @AlliedGeneticResources Ranch Channel https://ranchchannel.com/ @RanchChannel Questions & Concerns From The Field? Call or Text your questions, or comments to 707-RANCH20 or 707-726-2420 Or email RanchItUpShow@gmail.com FOLLOW Facebook/Instagram: @RanchItUpShow SUBSCRIBE to the Ranch It Up YouTube Channel: @ranchitup Website: RanchItUpShow.com https://ranchitupshow.com/ The Ranch It Up Podcast is available on ALL podcasting apps. https://ranchitup.podbean.com/ Rural America is center-stage on this outfit. AND how is that? Because of Tigger & BEC... Live This Western Lifestyle. Tigger & BEC represent the Working Ranch world by providing the cowboys, cowgirls, beef cattle producers & successful farmers the knowledge and education needed to bring high-quality beef & meat to your table for dinner. Learn more about Jeff 'Tigger' Erhardt & Rebecca Wanner aka BEC here: TiggerandBEC.com https://tiggerandbec.com/ #RanchItUp #StayRanchy #TiggerApproved #tiggerandbec #rodeo #ranching #farming REFERENCES https://www.meatingplace.com/Industry/News/Details/115580 https://www.purinamills.com/dairy-beef https://www.purinamills.com/getmedia/9d58013e-9648-4224-9f63-7c0688fcae40/24-MRE-0229_PrimestartDairyBeefReport_062124_v3_digital-2.pdf

With drought, wildfire and other extreme weather events, climate change is bringing stress and a feeling of uncertainty for many farmers and ranchers. It’s also bringing along a new hurdle for many in the agricultural world – climate grief.  Seeing the effects of climate change firsthand can invoke fear, sadness, hopelessness and despair for many farmers and ranchers. A new project from Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center aims to help people understand their climate change related emotions, along with ways to work through them. Maud Powell is an associate professor at Oregon State University. She, along with her colleagues, launched the Climate Stress and Grief: Building Resilience in Farmers and Ranchers project last year and joins us to share more. 

On this week's Industrial Hemp Podcast, we talk to the organizers of the Lancaster County Hemp Circuit: Sarah Mitchell, Steve Groff and Alyssa Collins. The circuit, an event centered on growing and processing industrial hemp in Pennsylvania, is scheduled Aug. 20-21. “It's called the circuit because we actually have four different sites and they're all in a radius of Lancaster City,” said Mitchell, hemp specialist at King's Agriseeds, which is hosting the first leg of the circuit at the King's research farm in Christiana on Tuesday, Aug. 20, at 9 a.m. “We have 28 varieties to show off from several different continents, all by breeders who are intending to either offer certified seed varieties or are breeding for certified seed varieties,” she said. From the farm in Christiana, the event moves to the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum for an afternoon educational session, including a welcome address from Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding and a history lesson from Pennsylvania hemp historian Les Stark. “We also have six hemp entrepreneurs from Pennsylvania,” Mitchell said, “and these are businesses that are actually generating revenue from hemp. And so these are people who are not just talking about making it happen, but they're actually making it happen.” After the Landis Valley Museum and a dinner break, the circuit continues at Penn State's Southeastern Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Manheim, where Collins, its director, has been overseeing Penn State's hemp research since 2018. The evening portion of the event starts with introductions in the barn. Attendees will then head out to the field to see the variety trials and ask questions, before returning to the barn for more discussion. “This is a great opportunity to meet some of the next generation of hemp scientists, because we're going to have some of the students there to share their work that they've been working on the last couple of years on, specifically hemp disease and hemp processing and insect ecology in hemp,” Collins said. For those traveling from outside the county, Mitchell said a block of rooms is available at the DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Hotel in Lancaster. The second day of the event takes place from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., entirely at Steve Groff's Cedar Meadow Farm in Holtwood, Lancaster County, where Groff has over 50 acres of fiber hemp in the ground. The day will be full day of expert speakers, educational opportunities and equipment demonstrations from chopping and baling to no-till planting into cover crops. There will also be a soil pit, so attendees can see the difference regenerative hemp farming has on the soil. Groff said he is excited to unveil his four bar hemp cutter, essentially four sickle mowing bars that allow for easier harvesting of tall fiber hemp. “And we'll be able to cut 12 feet hemp into four sections, and make it manageable then to windrow and dry it out,” he said. Lunch will be served both days, but attendees are on their own for dinner. Space is limited, so please register soon. Learn More King's Agriseeds Cedar Meadow farm Penn State's SEAREC farm Register for the Lancaster County Hemp Circuit  Questions about the event? Contact: Sarah Mitchell, Hemp Specialist 717-327-6188 Thanks to Our Sponsors IND HEMP Mpactuful Ventures Americhanvre Music courtesy of TIN BIRD SHADOW.

One research trial at the Carrington Research Extension Center is focused on lupins. Kristen Simmons, Research Agronomist at the NDSU Carrington Research Extension Center, explains more about what lupins are.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this segment of Copper Country Today, James DeDecker from the MSU U-P Research and Extension Center talks with host Todd VanDyke about agriculture in the U.P., and how it has changed over the years. Copper Country Today airs throughout Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula Sunday mornings at 7:00 on WOLV 97.7 FM, 8:00 on WCCY 99.3 FM and 1400 AM, and 9:00 on WHKB 102.3 FM. The program is sponsored by the Copper Shores Community Health Foundation. Copyright © 2024, Houghton Community Broadcasting, Houghton, MI.

Today - a look into the recent developments surrounding the planned merger between Kroger and Albertsons, which includes the potential sale of the East Wenatchee Safeway. And later - we have some exciting news from Washington State University's Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center.Support the show: https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/site/forms/subscription_services/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“The seeds of success for rural economies have been planted!” So says the controversial champion of the rural narrative, University of Minnesota educator and researcher Dr. Ben Winchester, a demographer at the University of Minnesota's. Extension Center for Community Vitality. “If the small town is dying why is there a housing shortage in most parts of rural America!?” Winchester explodes with enthusiasm and knocks down categorically old notions and stereotypes about rural places including the one about WHY people are moving to rural communities.  “A job is NOT among the top things people look for when choosing a rural lifestyle. Employment opportunities do not bring people in and seeking investment the way it has been done by economic development officials is not an effective way to create brain gain.”  Dr. Winchester suggests another way and it is as simple as any common-sense approach can be. Professor Winchester is a dedicated community-centric advocate, a fresh and original thinker and a great interview.   Says long-time ICF jurist Bill Coleman, “Ben is one of my favorites!”

This is the 5th and final episode in a series of episodes dedicated to a network of incubator farms that Yara North America. These farms are dedicated to find innovative ways to improve farm productivity balanced with sustainable practices that can be implemented by growers to improve their on-farm profits. In this episode the focus is on the Arkansas Delta incubator farm and its efforts to enhance nutrient and water use efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and increase yields. The standout feature of this farm is the tailwater recovery system, which recycles excess irrigation and rainwater and meters nitrogen application on a demand basis. The collaboration between Yara and the University of Arkansas has led to significant improvements in nutrient use efficiency, water use efficiency, and carbon footprint reduction. The farm has also seen a reduction in labor output and disruption of soil health. The tailwater pump technology is available to farmers, and they can receive incentive payments to implement it on their farms. Guest experts on this episode are: • Curt Knight, Soil Health Agronomist at Yara, • Neil Mayberry, Yara Regional Market Development Manager of the Easter US • Dr. Christopher Henry, Associate Professor and Water Management Engineer at the University of Arkansas.  He is a specialist in irrigation system design, scheduling, and efficiency. • Dr. Tim Burcham, Director of the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center, or NERREC, for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

What fruit trees are illegal to propagate? Learn about fruit tree propagation law with with Jeremy Kent Tamsen of Washington State University. WSU's Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee Washington developed and introduced many new specialty crops over the years, including the popular Cosmic Crisp® apple. During the show, we talk about the WA64 naming contest. Here is the naming contest website link. The host of the Orchard People radio show and podcast is Susan Poizner of the fruit tree care education website OrchardPeople.com. This show goes out LIVE on the last Tuesday of every month at 1.00 pm Eastern Time. After that you can download the podcast. To tune in LIVE (and submit your questions to our expert guests!) you can:Tune into RealityRadio101.com during the time of the live showOR watch the livestream on the Orchard People YouTube ChannelDo you want to learn to grow organic fruit trees successfully? Sign up for OrchardPeople.com's free monthly newsletter at https://orchardpeople.com/sign-up/For premium fruit tree care education visit: https://learn.orchardpeople.com/. (00:00) - Introduction (00:59) - Introducing Jeremy Kent Tampsen: The Expert on Fruit Tree Patents (02:52) - The Intricacies of Fruit Tree Patents and Their Impact (08:22) - Understanding the Process and Cost of Obtaining Plant Patents (12:26) - The Honeycrisp Story: Lessons in Patents and Trademarks (19:41) - Lessons WSU Learned from Honeycrisp on Trademarks (23:11) - List of Patented Fruit Trees (24:25) - How Long it Takes to Get a Fruit Tree Patent (27:07) - Jeremy's Work in Plant Patents (30:23) - Orchard People Sponsors (33:37) - Part 2 of the Episode (34:50) - Is it Legal to Plant Seeds from Patented Apples (39:56) - The Lost Apple Project: Rediscovering Heirloom Varieties (42:56) - Should the Public Have Free Access to Patented Fruit Trees? (46:31) - WA 64: WSU is Introducing a New Patented Apple Tree and Naming Contest (49:28) - What Happens to Test Trees that Aren't Good Enough to Market? (55:44) - Learning More About WSU's Breeding Programs (59:25) - Closing Thoughts and Future Episodes

Dr. George Perry, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton, TX was guest.  He talks about some effects on reproduction that can be observed based on type of reproductive vaccine and the timing of the vaccines to replacement cattle.

Mark Silva with Mississippi State Extension visits the Crop Doctors' Podcast studio in Stoneville to discuss the network of weather stations managed by the Delta Agricultural Weather Center, which is housed at the Delta Research and Extension Center.  Mark summarizes soil temperatures from across the state and posts numbers weekly on the Mississippi Crop Situation blog at https://www.mississippi-crops.com.  This information will be useful as planting season approaches.  The Delta Agricultural Weather Center can be accessed at http://deltaweather.extension.msstate.edu.

In this insightful episode of The Crop Science Podcast Show, Dr. Jourdan Bell, an agronomist from Texas A&M Agrilife, joins us to explore the evolving challenges in crop science. She explored the impact of irrigation practices, technological advancements, and strategic crop selection in the face of diminishing water resources and environmental constraints. Dr. Bell's expertise sheds light on the balance between agricultural productivity and sustainable resource management, offering valuable insights for anyone involved in the crop industry. Tune in for an enriching discussion on the future of crop science in the U.S."If we cannot meet that water demand, we see dehydration, reduced kernels, and a loss of leaf area because the plant can't transpire it, cool itself and it just becomes impactful." - Dr. Jourdan BellWhat you'll learn:(00:00) Highlight(01:14) Introduction(04:26) Impact of irrigation on crop productivity(06:59) Irrigation strategies and crop management(09:32) Strategies to water challenges(18:14) Balancing water management and crop choices(22:14) Socioeconomic impact of changing irrigation practices(31:45) Final three questionsMeet the guest: Dr. Jourdan Bell is a regional research and extension agronomist at Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Amarillo. She specializes in soil science and crop water use and has expertise in conserving soil and water resources. Her journey in agronomy began as a student employee, evolving through roles at the USDA's ARS CPRL and leading to a Ph.D. in soil science from Texas A&M University. Dr. Bell's research, especially during the challenging Texas drought, provides invaluable insights into crop physiological responses to stress and effective irrigation strategies.The Crop Science Podcast Show is trusted and supported by innovative companies like:- KWSAre you ready to unleash the podcasting potential of your company? wisenetix.co/custom-podcast

Mr. Gene Merkl is the Pesticide Safety Education Coordinator and manages the Pesticide Applicator Certification Program for MSU Extension.  Gene recently had a training session scheduled at the Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville.  While he was in Stoneville, Gene took a few minutes to discuss his program with Tom and Jason in the Crop Doctors' Podcast studio.  The program has recently undergone a significant overhaul.  To find out more about types of certification, requirements, and training offerings, visit http://extension.msstate.edu/agriculture/pesticide-applicator-certification.

Dr. Surendra Dara brings over 25 years of experience to his work as an Oregon State University professor and director of NWREC, the North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Oregon. In this podcast, we talk about integrated pest management (IPM) tactics growers can use to keep pests and diseases in check without getting to the point of spraying, even if the sprays are organic. We discuss controls as diverse as physical barriers, irrigation, nutrient management, biostimulants, biological soil amendments and more to develop sustainable agricultural solutions. Before moving to Oregon, he was based in California where he worked with strawberry and vegetable growers. Throughout his career, he has worked on numerous invasive and endemic species of arthropods and plant pathogens. His research and extension covered commodities such as alfalfa, cassava, cotton, small fruits, and vegetables serving agricultural communities locally, regionally, and internationally. Dr. Dara has authored/co-authored more than 400 scientific and extension articles, which include three co-edited books, four co-edited special issues of journals, 25 book chapters, and more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has extensive international outreach experience training farmers in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti, Kosovo, Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe. Connect With Guest:Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/surendra-dara-7529778Website: https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/users/surendra-daraWebsite: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/people/surendra-daraWebsite: https://ucanr.edu/JEBWebsite: https://ucanr.edu/PestNews Podcast Sponsors:Huge thanks to our podcast sponsors as they make this podcast FREE to everyone with their generous support:If you're an experienced vegetable farmer, don't miss out on the 2024 Organic Vegetable Production Conference! In its 8th year, this conference fills that “expert-level” niche you're looking for. Farmer presenters share the nitty-gritty details of their production practices and also speak on a wide range of topics - from fertilizer injectors and pest management with beneficials, to seed saving and labor retention.With online sessions on January 25th and 26th and in-person sessions on February 2 and 3 in Madison, Wisconsin, you can plug in no matter where you are. Register today at https://dane.extension.wisc.edu/organic-vegetable-production-conference/#link Certified Naturally Grown - Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) offers peer-review certification to ecological farmers and beekeepers producing food, flowers, and fiber for their local communities. Demonstrate your commitment to sustainable growing practices with a certification that fits your farm's scale, budget, and community values. Learn more and apply at naturallygrown.org. BCS two-wheel tractors are designed and built in Italy where small-scale farming has been a way of life for generations. BCS has select tractors and attachments on sale now through the end of the year. Visit bcsamerica.com to find sale pricing and your nearest dealer. Local Line is the all-in-one sales platform for direct-market farms and food hubs of all sizes. Increase your sales and streamline your processes with features including e-commerce, inventory management, subscriptions, online payments, and more! Get 15% off marketing services and one premium feature for a year with the code Growing4market at https://hubs.la/Q02bpWQV0 Bootstrap Farmer - Bootstrap Farmer offers a complete range of growing supplies including heat mats, lighting, ground cover, frost blankets, silage tarps, irrigation, and trellising. They also make all-metal, all-inclusive greenhouse frames, constructed of steel made in the USA and fabricated in Texas. Their heavy-duty, Midwest-made propagation and microgreens trays will last for years and are available in a full spectrum of colors. For all that plus experienced support for everything they sell, check out Bootstrap Farmer. Vermont Compost Company - Vermont Compost Company - Each fall, Vermont Compost offers a prebuy program to incentivize ordering your spring soil before the snow flies. With Vermont Compost's prebuy program, you can receive 15% off on orders placed, paid for, and shipped by December 21st. Listeners of the Growing for Market podcast will receive an additional 5%, bringing the total discount to 20%. Visit vermontcompost.com/gfm for more details, or mention this podcast when you place your order. Subscribe To Our Magazine - FREE 28-Day Trial:Our Website: www.GrowingForMarket.com

Tucker Miller and Jeff North boast 100 years of experience between them in business as independent cotton consultants in Mississippi.  They spent an afternoon with Jason and Tom in the Crop Doctors' Podcast studio at Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville to sway tales and share wisdom about the changes and advancements in crop  production in Mississippi in their time in the business.   

David James joins me today to talk about pollinators, particularly in winter.  We discuss: Supporting Pollinators in Winter Protecting habitat for overwintering pollinators Mason Bees Butterflies Xerces Society Pollinator-related research Attracting pollinators to the vegetable garden Attracting pollinators with native plants David James is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology at WSU's Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, Washington. He became an entomologist at 8 years old by rearing caterpillars in his English bedroom.  Find complete show notes, resources, a transcript, and more at https://evergreenthumb.mastergardenerfoundation.org/episode009/

Today I talk with Todd Murray, entomologist and Director of WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center, about "creepy critters" and their value in the garden (or lack thereof in the case of rats). We discuss: Bats Spiders Snakes Beetles Rats Parasitoids Todd also explains, from his perspective, the value an endowed faculty chair/professor will bring to the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program. For show notes, resources, and a transcript of the episode, visit https://evergreenthumb.mastergardenerfoundation.org/episode007/  

September 5, 2023, News Update for Louisiana Cattle Producers   ---- Save the Dates:   Cattle Marketing Webinar Series September 5 at 10:30 AM – Understanding the Markets September 12 at 10:30 AM – Weaning and Pre-conditioning September 19 at 10:30 AM – Buyer Expectations September 26 at 10:30 AM – Market Options and Adding Value to Calves All webinars can be found at www.lsuagcenter.com/beefbrunch   Dean Lee Research Station and Extension Center's Beef and Forage Field Day Thursday, September 14th; Sign in and tradeshow begins at 2 PM Registration: https://forms.office.com/r/HPJRcHTATx   Northeast Region Beef and Forage Field Day Thursday, September 21st; Sign in and tradeshow begins at 8:15 AM Goldmine Plantation, 188 Cummins Road, Mangham, LA 71259, Registration: https://forms.office.com/r/p1tvCPdqbz   Southeast Region Master Cattleman Program Tangipahoa Extension Office September 11th through November 13th (Monday nights) 6:00 to 9:00 PM The registration cost is $200. Must register by September 8th. Contact the Tangipahoa Extension Office for more information or to register. 985-748-9381   Artificial Insemination School October 18th through 20th Dean Lee Research Station and Extension Center More information to come. Contact Glen Gentry (ggentry@agcenter.lsu.edu) or Ashley Edwards (akedwards@agcenter.lsu.edu).   Acadiana Fall Beef and Forage Field Day October 21st; Morning event. Iberia Research Station (Jeanerette, LA) More information to come.   ---- Follow us on: Facebook – @LSUAgCenterBeefCattle Instagram – @lsu_agcenter_beef_cattle Twitter – @BeefLsu   Not on social media? You can still receive notifications on new content and programs through the Remind App. Contact Ashley Edwards at akedwards@agcenter.lsu.edu with questions or for help registering for Remind.   ---- For more information on the Beef Brunch Educational Series, contact Dr. Ashley Edwards at akedwards@agcenter.lsu.edu

Listen in as we engage in a riveting conversation with two remarkable experts, Dr. Megan Hall and Dr. Mizuho Nita, about sour rot, a challenging disease that can significantly impact winegrapes. Through this discussion, we gain a deeper understanding of sour rot, exploring how to identify it, why and how it occurs, and the various organisms and insects involved. Megan shares her unique insights and invaluable experience in managing sour rot in grapes. We also delve into her ground-breaking research on the disease and offer practical advice on how to prevent it in vineyards. We also discuss control strategies for sour rot disease, highlighting the importance of timely spraying before symptom development. Megan and Mizuho share their collective wisdom on the three primary contributors to sour rot. They then shed light on their research findings regarding the best combination of antimicrobial plus insecticide sprays. Additionally, Mizuho shares his expertise on alternative options to oxidate, such as bio fungicides, which could potentially reduce the impact on fermentation. As always, we ensure to wrap up the conversation by sharing valuable resources for our listeners, equipping grape growers with the knowledge needed to manage this challenging disease. In this episode, you will hear: Why and how sour rot occurs. The signs and symptoms of sour rot. The role that insects & microorganisms play in causing and spreading sour rot. What cultural practices play a role in prevention. Alternative products for preventing and treating sour rot. The importance of proper spray timing and planning to prevent resistance development from over-spraying. Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Resources: If you have questions about today's episode or other grape growing questions, use the Ask Fritz button at VineyardUndergroundPodcast.com. Access free Virtual Viticulture Academy Grower Guide videos and how-to-guides.  Or take your grape growing knowledge to the next level with an annual Virtual Viticulture Academy membership – use the code Underground to save $75 on your first year of membership. Today's Guest: Dr. Megan Hall holds a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology from Cornell University and an M.A. from York University in Sociology and Law.  Megan spent seven years on a groundbreaking research project focused on the causes of sour rot. Prior to this research, growers' tools for managing sour rot were limited because the causal organisms of the disease were unknown. Following this research, Megan served as an Assistant Research Professor and Viticulture Program Leader at the University of Missouri before joining E. & J. Gallo Winery as a Research Scientist in the Winegrowing Research division. She now works as an independent research-based scientific consultant specializing in agriculture and fermentation with Terroir Consulting Group. Connect with Megan: Email: megan@terroirconsultinggroup.com  Terroir Consulting Group: https://www.terroirconsultinggroup.com  Dr. Mizuho Nita holds both a Ph.D. and M.S. in Plant Pathology from Ohio State.  He is an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist of grape pathology at Virginia Tech's Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Winchester, VA. He also serves as a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at Shinshu University in Japan.  His academic interest is in the areas of applied plant pathology and plant disease epidemiology. His current research projects include:  Use of a biological control agent for grapevine crown gall Management of grape-ripe rot Epidemiological studies of grapevine leafroll-associated virus and its vectors  Grape disease management tool (GrapeIPM.org) Trunk diseases Organic and alternative fungicides Mizuho provides loads of helpful information and research data via his blog, including the Sour Rot Trial he mentions during the podcast. Learn more about GRAPEIPM.ORG - An online system to help you keep track of fungicide inventory, spray scheduling, share the schedule, and keep and print records of actual spray application. Connect with Mizuho: Email: nita24@vt.edu  Website: https://www.arec.vaes.vt.edu/arec/alson-h-smith/people/nita-bio.html  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrapePathVATech  Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

The term "urban wildlife" may conjure up thoughts of squirrels and birds in one's backyard, but it also encompasses creatures like raccoons and possums that tend to emerge mainly during the night. Adam Rohnke from the Central Mississippi Research and Extension Center at Mississippi State University joins us to delve into the topic of urban wildlife and how to safely observe the natural world.Email the show: animals@mpbonline.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mr. Scott Clawson, Ag Economist with Oklahoma State University presented at the Beef and Forage Field Day at the Southeast Research and Extension Center in Parsons, KS in August of 2023.  He talked about tax implicaitons with herd dispersal, primarily due to drought, and how to get back into the business.  A video presentation that goes along with this podcast can be found on southeast.ksu.edu under the Program Areas tab, and Beef Cattle.

Ben Lawrence and Read Kelly both spent many years working in different roles at the Mississippi State University Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville. Ben and Read visited the Crop Doctors' Podcast studio in Stoneville to discuss their experiences from graduate school and working at Stoneville with Jason and Tom and how those prepared them for their current jobs.

This week on the Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming reconnects with Alyssa Collins, associate research professor at Penn State and the director of the university's Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Manheim, Lancaster County, where she oversees hemp production and research trials. Penn State Extension's mission is to deliver science-based information to people, businesses and communities. “The Extension part of what Penn State is,” said Collins, “is basically turning what nerds in a lab or a greenhouse are thinking about and doing in terms of research and translating that for people who can actually use it.” Penn State's hemp research was originally conducted at the Rock Springs farm near main campus, but was moved to the Landisville farm in 2018, “because a lot of the activity and interest was in south-central PA for growing hemp,” Collins said. “Our farm is also a little bit more accessible in the region. It's just easier to get to and we can do big events here in a way that it's a little bit harder to do when you're up in Happy Valley,” she said. Collins was one of the first guests on the hemp podcast almost five years ago. Since then, she has seen growing interest in the industrial applications of fiber and grain varieties and decreased interest in CBD. Collins said the state of Pennsylvania is a leader in the hemp industry, in part due to the Ag Department's commitment to easing regulatory burdens and making funds available. “Unlike some other states that have either really high fees or have a lot of hoops to jump through, Pennsylvania is really trying to keep it as minimal as they can with making sure they still do their their due diligence,” she said. Pennsylvania also made hemp eligible for specialty crop research funds. “Most other states have not done that. And in fact, the federal government didn't do that until recently,” Collins said. Penn State is one of several dozen universities across the country contributing to variety and agronomic trials coordinated by the University of Kentucky. The research aims to determine which varieties grow best in which regions. “We're all working from the same seed lots and we get to see how they perform relatively in our areas,” she said. Penn State's hemp research, including the variety trials, will be on display during the Hemp Research Field Walk Aug. 15 at the research farm. It's a chance for the public to walk and talk with industry specialists, Extension educators and policymakers to raise questions and share ideas about the industry's future. The event is free, but space is limited and pre-registration is recommended.  You can register here. Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center https://agsci.psu.edu/research/centers-facilities/extension/landisville Upcoming Hemp Events Aug. 3-5 South Dakota Industrial Hemp Field Day https://www.eventbrite.com/e/industrial-hemp-field-day-tickets-643817313917 Aug. 15-16 King's AgriSeeds Field Day https://kingsagriseeds.com/ Aug. 15 Penn State Hemp Research Field Walk, Policy Update and Networking Event https://agsci.psu.edu/research/centers-facilities/extension/landisville Thanks to our sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Hemptone Music https://www.hemptonemusic.com/ HempWood https://hempwood.com/

In the latest episode of STtalks we sit down with Dr Justin Waggoner, Beef Systems Specialist at Kansas State University's Southwest Research & Extension Center, to discuss from a feeders perspective how Beef on Dairy animals fit into the Beef supply chain and how the sector of this market will continue to develop.

Dr. Drew Lyon is a Professor and the Endowed Chair of Small Grains Extension and Research for Weed Science at Washington State University in Pullman. Prior to moving to Washington in 2012, he spent 22 years as a Dryland Cropping Systems Specialist at the University of Nebraska at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff. His endowment is from the WA Grain Commission, so he spends a lot of his time with wheat growers, but most of them also include pulses in their rotations. Our discussion mostly focuses on integrated weed management of chickpeas, from cultural practices to herbicides to biologicals. “We do have some effective herbicides out there. In this part of the world nature doesn't always provide us with the moisture at the right time to get those products activated and going, that increases our need to use things other than herbicides for weed control. Because we've had 30 years of really effective herbicides that's the first place a lot of growers think. But I think we're gonna have to start thinking more about other approaches, things we used to do 40 and 50 years ago before herbicides were so effective.” - Dr. Drew LyonLyon has seen herbicide tools come and go, both in their effectiveness and their availability. Because of this, he is a big advocate for an integrated weed management program, which he says all starts with trying to grow a competitive crop. He shares that there are also things that can be done to try to manage the overall seed bank of the weeds on fields. Cover crops, he says, can also be helpful with weed suppression if you have the moisture. When all is said and done, Lyon's advice on weed management comes down to three basic principles: don't get weeds started, do everything you can to grow a competitive crop, and always be changing things up.“Prevent weed problems from starting. If you don't have certain weeds on your farm, make sure you don't get them… Do everything you can to grow a competitive crop…And then the other thing is to change things up. Anytime you do the same thing over and over again, you tend to select for those weeds that do well in that system…Human nature is that we like to stick with things until we break them, but that's the recipe for getting weed problems” - Dr Drew LyonThis Week on Growing Pulse Crops:Join Dr. Drew Lyon is a Professor and the Endowed Chair of Small Grains Extension and Research for Weed Science at Washington State University in PullmanDiscussion of past, current and future integrated weed management for pulse crop producersRe-visit Dr. Drew Lyon's discussion on harvest aids from season one in episode 12Growing Pulse Crops is hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.

News and More: Canby preps for its annual Independence Day Celebration bash. Local third-graders get their hands dirty at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center. The Canby Historical Society secures a state grant.  Canby Conversation: Local director Justen Noll joins to discuss his latest project, Remington, which was filmed over 10 years and follows the lives and experiences of its characters as they face different challenges and hardships. This Week's Sponsors: DirectLink, Wild Hare Saloon, Canby Foursquare Church, Odd Moe's Pizza, The Odd Pod, Reif & Hunsaker P.C.

Welcome to the 9th episode of the 2023 season! Christina Curell, MSU Extension Cover Crops and Soil Health Educator, will host Dr. James DeDecker, Director of Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center. James will be discussing wildlife management including cultural considerations. Also, a weather update from Dr. Jeff Andersen. To learn more and register for the live event, check out the MSUE Virtual Breakfast page.   

May 2, 2023-- Host Hannah Bird speaks with GrizzlyCorps Fellow Chloe Wanaselja, about what she's learned from and contributed to the UC Hopland Research and Extension Center.

QTIP Trusts Help with Succession Planning Summer 4-H STEM Program and 2023 Spring Crops Field Day BCI Experts Debate Fly Control Methods   00:01:08 – QTIP Trusts Help with Succession Planning: K-State and Washburn University School of Law professor, Roger McEowen, begins today's show with an agricultural law update. Today he discusses Qualified Terminable Interest Property (QTIP) Trusts. He explains how these trusts can be utilized in cases where individuals have children from a previous marriage. Link to Roger's article on AgManager Link to Roger's blog post   A group of undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture here at K-State are collecting listener data from Agricutlure Today for a class project. If you have the time and are willing please feel free to take the survey at the link below.  Link to undergraduate survey on Agriculture Today    00:12:10 – Summer 4-H STEM Program and 2023 Spring Crops Field Day: We continue today's show with the program coordinator for Kansas 4-H, Amy Collins. Today Amy highlights a multi-week summer 4-H program with the aim of keeping children engaged in the STEM classroom. We also hear from K-State southeastern area agronomist Bruno Pedreira. He shares information on the upcoming 2023 Spring Crops Field day which is taking place on Tuesday May 23 at the Southeast Research and Extension Center.    00:23:04 – BCI Experts Debate Fly Control Methods: Today's show ends with this week's Beef Cattle Institute's Ask the Experts. This week K-State experts Brad White, Brian Lubbers, and Bob Larson answer a listener's question on the best options for fly control.  BCI Cattle Chat Podcast Bovine Science with BCI Podcast To have your beef cattle questions answered by the BCI Ask the Experts team - send them an email at bci@ksu.edu   Send comments, questions or requests for copies of past programs to ksrenews@ksu.edu.   Agriculture Today is a daily program featuring Kansas State University agricultural specialists and other experts examining ag issues facing Kansas and the nation. It is hosted by Samantha Bennett and distributed to radio stations throughout Kansas and as a daily podcast.   K‑State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well‑being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K‑State campus in Manhattan

Dr. Tyler Towles is a graduate of the Mississippi State University entomology program.  He most recently worked with the LSU AgCenter, but he has returned to his native Mississippi to work as an entomologist at the Delta Research and Extension Center.  Tyler sat down in the Crop Doctors' Podcast studio in Stoneville to visit with Jason and Tom about his background, training, and experience.  The conversation wraps up with Tyler's plans for his research and Extension programs for 2023.   

Transcript: http://smallgrains.wsu.edu/potential-impacts-of-microplastics-in-agricultural-soils-with-dr-yingxue-yu/ Resources and links: Puyallup Research and Extension Center: puyallup.wsu.edu WSU Department of Crop and Soil Sciences: css.wsu.edu

Drew Gholson and Jason Krutz sat down with Jason and Tom at the Mississippi Row Crop Short Course in Starkville during December to discuss their roles with water and water research with Mississippi State.  Drew is the Director of the National Center for Alluvial Aquifer Research as part of the Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville.  Jason heads up the Water Resources Research Institute on the campus of Mississippi State in Starkville. 

[wordpress] Niamh Quinn is the Human-Wildlife Interactions Advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension and is based at the South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine. Her role is to foster communication and information sharing among university academics, CE advisors, and community members. Niamh focuses on coordinating CE programs addressing human-wildlife conflicts, especially…

What are the foundations of happy soil biology? Jon Stika of UnderstandingAg, a part-time research professional at North Dakota State University's Dickinson Research and Extension Center, and author of A Soil Owner's Manual shares his perspective on keeping soil biology alive and happy.Jon draws his soil biology insights from his career as a conservationist, agronomist, soil scientist, researcher, and teacher with USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service. He discusses how integrating livestock as a means of energizing with diversity can stimulate plant growth and biological activity when grazing is properly managed. For Jon, feeding the soil is integral for feeding the plants -- and ultimately people. Once the soil is properly fed without being disturbed, key soil functions begin to be restored and regenerated, which can be good for farmers', ranchers', and gardeners' financial bottom lines as well. In Jon's experience, happy biology is foundational to sustaining food and farming systems from the soil up.A Soil Owner's Manual: How to Restore and Maintain Soil Health is published independently by Jon through Amazon Books and is available on UnderstandingAg's website. Jon's soil biology mentors include Drs. Jill Clapperton, Elaine Ingham, and Kristine Nickols.Learn more about the Virginia Soil Health Coalition, join the 4 the Soil conversation, and read the latest Soil Health Tip Tuesday blog post at https://www.virginiasoilhealth.org/ and https://www.4thesoil.org.

Dr. Eric Thomas Stafne joins the podcast to discuss fruit and nut crops – and what it takes to enhance them. With more than 17 years of experience as a horticulturist, Dr. Stafne has greatly refined his understanding of fruit and nut crops, enabling him to uncover factors that are creating issues for growers. Dr. Stafne is an Extension and Research Professor at Mississippi State University and the Coastal Research and Extension Center. Here, he researches Mississippi's primary fruit crops, including blueberries, blackberries, grapes, and muscadines. From breeding techniques to pruning procedures, Dr. Stafne is on a mission to sustainably optimize fruit and nut production… Join the conversation now to learn more about: The fastest growing and yielding crops. How crop-yielding timelines can be modified.  The importance of experimenting with crop optimization. You can find out more about Dr. Stafne and his work by clicking here! Episode also available on Apple Podcast: http://apple.co/30PvU9C

Call or text 530-487-5991 to ask questions for Phoebe and Luke to answer or provide feedback about adapting the 1 Minute Challenge Upcoming Field meetings:Introduction to Orchard Irrigation Management in three locationsMadera: Monday, November 7, 2022, 7:30 AM—12:00 PMBakersfield: Monday, November 14, 2022, 7:30 AM—12:00 PMModesto: Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 7:30 AM—12:00 PM Best Management Practices for Soil HealthWednesday, November 16, 2022, 8:00 AM--1:00 @ Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, California: Register here. Mention of pesticide use does not constitute a pesticide recommendation, merely the sharing of research findings. Always follow the pesticide label. The label is law. Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu.Thank you to the Almond, Pistachio, Prune, and Walnut Boards of California for their kind donations. Thank you to Muriel Gordon for the music.The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. The "University of California" name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.Follow us on Twitter! @SacOrchards and @SJVtandv

Long-time podcast contributor Jeff Gore visits the Crop Doctors' Podcast studio in his new role as the Head of the Mississippi State University Delta Research and Extension Center.  Jeff, Jason, and Tom talk about Jeff's ideas on leadership and where he hopes to lead DREC in the future. 

Luke discusses the recent history of sudden autumn walnut frost events in California's Central Valley, how to prevent damage ahead of the next sudden frost, and how to rehabilitate damaged orchards. Recorded Zoom webinar: Practical Canker Management in Almond and Prune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4JwrMGKros&t=3s Articles referenced in the podcast: Six steps to prepare for the next sudden autumn frost: sacvalleyorchards.com/walnuts/horticulture-walnuts/prepare-for-next-sudden-autumn-freeze/ Spring frost: sacvalleyorchards.com/walnuts/horticulture-walnuts/preparing-for-extreme-events-spring-frost Recovery from freeze damage: sacvalleyorchards.com/walnuts/horticulture-walnuts/2020-freeze-recovery Upcoming Field meetings:Introduction to Orchard Irrigation Management in three locationsMadera: Monday, November 7, 2022, 7:30 AM—12:00 PMBakersfield: Monday, November 14, 2022, 7:30 AM—12:00 PMModesto: Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 7:30 AM—12:00 PMAlso on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM there is a Best Management Practices for Soil Health meeting at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, California. If you will be attending the West Coast Nut: California Walnut Conference in Yuba City on January 4th and 5th – I will be talking about walnut freeze on Wednesday, January 4 at 9:30 AM.

Today's guest is Dr. Tim Burcham, the director of the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center in Greenfield, Arkansas. This center – a part of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture – has a focus on research, community outreach, and educating all generations on agriculture in the Arkansas Delta. You can visit their website or find them on Facebook at UofA Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center. Dr. Burcham can also be reached via email at tburcham@uada.edu or phone at 870-586-6236. “I know the Lord's in control and that's what I lean on every day.”               -Dr. Tim Burcham That Farm Life Podcast is a resource of Agri Health Network. For more information and to find more resources, check out AgriHealth.net. Questions or comments? Email us at info@agrihealth.net.