Podcasts about grapevines

Grapevines grown under poly tunnels is the topic of this episode with Sandy Booth of New Forest Fruit.

Matt Dees is the winemaker at JONATA, The Hilt, and The Paring, wineries which are located in California's Santa Barbara County.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Steam ships, snobbery, and Americans all play a role in the story of how grape phylloxera ripped through Europe and left Australia with some of the oldest grape vines in the world. 

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

Things are lively on this episode of the Bear Grease Render as host Clay Newcomb talks about finding a bear den and bringing home a 40' surprise. Special guest, Terrell Spencer, talks about equipment redundancy as a point of consideration on whether to sell Tess, the squirrel dog. And, we speculate wildly about the mysteries surrounding the grave of Osceola as we wrap up this series on the Seminole war leader. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to beargrease@themeateater.com Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode, it's time to combine football and wine again as a part of our From Games to Grapes series! Tony Moll is the co-founder and winemaker of Three Fat Guys Winery located in Sonoma, California and he two of his former Packer teammates not only have a great story, they're making outstanding wine! Before you even listen to this, go directly to their website and take advantage of their Black Friday Sale by using the code, Holiday20! #HappyFriday! #ItsWineTime! #Cheersing https://www.threefatguyswines.com Wines this episode:2022 Three Fat Guys Sauvignon Blanc ($35 at the winery or online)

In this episode, we speak with Severine Pinte.  She is a distinguished winemaker with a Master's degree in viticulture and oenology from the National School of Agronomy in Montpellier, in southern France.  With over 26 harvests of experience, she has worked in various wine regions. However, the Okanagan region and climate there have captivated her since 2010. Severine is now the Executive Winemaker at Le Vieux Pin and LaStella wineries.   In this interview, we'll discuss the science behind winemaking, the craft and passion involved, her connection to the land and the importance of sustainability in the wine industry. Listen to the Best of the WWEST on  Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, iHeart, Gaana, and Castbox Visit wwest-cwse.ca to learn more about WWEST and to listen to other available episodes.

Good Afternoon, this is the State of California. Concern is mounting for wine experts as egg masses of an invasive species from Asia were found in a shipment of art traveling from New York to California wine country in March.  It's called the spotted lantern fly and it could pose a serious threat to the state's wine industry.   For a closer look, KCBS Radio's Patti Reising and Brett Burkhart were joined by Randy Heinzen, President of Vineyard Professional Services.  You can hear The State of California every weekday at 3:30pm, It's also available on the Audacy app and wherever you get your podcasts. 

In this episode, we have a conversation with Dr. Markus Keller of Washington State University on the advances in vineyard nutrition monitoring. Dr. Keller shares his extensive knowledge of the importance of nutrient management in viticulture, drawing from his rich background and current research. We discuss strategies for regulated deficit nutrition management, winter survival tactics, emerging technologies like remote sensing for precision nutrient management, and much more. Listen in and soak up the information that Dr. Keller shares with us about all things vineyard nutrition monitoring. In this episode, you will hear: Importance of nutrient management for wine quality and vine longevity. Nutrient cycling and management, including the role of natural sources and the impact of nutrient losses during harvest and pruning. What regulated deficit nutrition management (RDN) is and what its benefits for enhancing grape quality are. Advice on tissue sampling and nutrient budgeting, especially in vineyards practicing deficit irrigation. The potential of remote sensing technologies for precision nutrient applications. How climate change impacts vineyards. Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click the ‘+ Follow' button 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 helps spread the word about the podcast. Resources: Visit Virtual Viticulture Academy Grower Guide Resources for access to target nutrient values, guides to leaf and petiole sampling, and other nutrient-related content. Come grow with Fritz through VirtualViticultureAcademy.com! Save $75 off your first year of membership with the code Underground at checkout. If you have questions about today's episode or ideas for future episodes, go to VineyardUndergroundPodcast.com and click the Ask Fritz button.  Today's Guest: Dr. Markus Keller of Washington State University is a renowned viticulture researcher and the author of The Science of Grapevines - a top reference book in the industry.  Connect with Markus – Research Website | Email | Order - The Science of Grapevines 3rd Edition | Listen to the HiRes Vineyard Nutrition Podcast Episode Sponsor: Thank you to Vintner's Vault for sponsoring today's episode! Vintner's Vault was started and is operated by winemakers, so they have the knowledge and experience to help you make an educated decision on the equipment purchases and winery setup and layouts that are best for you. They are the #1 winery equipment company that I recommend to my growers who are also winemakers. Visit TheVintnerVault.com and use the code UNDERGROUND5 (all caps) to save 5% off of your online order or mention that you heard about them on the Vineyard Underground podcast when contacting them for a larger piece of equipment, consulting services, or turn-key packages and they will provide a podcast listener discount for you. 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.

Farmer Fred and Don Shor from Redwood Barn Nursery answer a garden question from a  listener about whiteflies on grapes. But are they really whiteflies? They discuss how to control whiteflies and leaf hoppers on grapevines, the use of organic sprays, and the importance of correct pest identification. Also, Debbie Flower answers a question about removing the first tomato that appears on your plants. Does it help, Yes or No?  Then, Master Gardener and fruit tree expert Quentyn Young joins the conversation to discuss planting citrus trees on mounds for better drainage.Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout.Pictured: That First Tomato - Take It Off…or Not?Links: Subscribe to the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter https://gardenbasics.substack.com Smart Pots https://smartpots.com/fred/HeirloomRoses.com (with the FRED discount link) Redwood Barn Nursery, Davis, CAWhitefly Identification (UCANR)Leafhopper Identification (UCANR)Extreme Bush TomatoTomato Growing (UCANR)Got a garden question? • Leave an audio question without making a phone call via Speakpipe, at https://www.speakpipe.com/gardenbasics• Call or text us the question: 916-292-8964. • Fill out the contact box at GardenBasics.net• E-mail: fred@farmerfred.com All About Farmer Fred: The GardenBasics.net websiteThe Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Newsletter, Beyond the Basics https://gardenbasics.substack.comFarmer Fred website:  http://farmerfred.comThe Farmer Fred Rant! Blog http://farmerfredrant.blogspot.comFacebook:  "Get Growing with Farmer Fred" Instagram: farmerfredhoffman https://www.instagram.com/farmerfredhoffman/Twitter/X: @farmerfredFarmer Fred Garden Minute Videos on YouTube  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from possible links mentioned here.Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.

April 25, 2024 Daily Devotion from Lutheran Hour Ministries

Today's sip and listen is all about spirits, the spooky kind and wine form. Join us as we discuss haunted wineries!

Welcome to The KSL Greenhouse Show! Hosts Maria Shilaos and Taun Beddes tackle your gardening questions, talk plants, and offer tips for an amazing yard. Listen Saturdays 8am to 11am at 1160 AM & 102.7 FM, kslnewsradio.com, or on the KSL Newsradio App. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @kslgreenhouse. #KSLGreenhouse  Listeners are asking what trees hold up well in high winds. Taun explains that it's the way you plant the tree rather than what kind of tree it is. Karen has an Alberta Peach tree that is not ripening. Taun goes through how to get rid of a wild rose bush. Judy has several rose bushes with skinny stems. Taun goes in-depth on pruning grapevines. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was originally posted in 2019 - Now a guy who calls himself John Fucking Caldwell is likely to be brash...probably a risk taker, and likely one of a kind. In John's case, yes, he could be described by each of those descriptors, as well as pleasant, inventive, philanthropic, and one who can make the best of a situation. So it may come as no surprise that he's the kind of person who would consider, and accomplish, smuggling grapevines into the U.S. And that's just half of the story. Join us in his kitchen in south Napa Valley as John shares the compelling tale he's told many times...because it's one worth hearing.  For images of John, his wine, and spirits visit onthewineroad.us/john-fucking-caldwell New episodes will be arriving soon.    

In this episode I cover how to prune your grapevine and propagate the cuttings.

Grapevines, grapes, and wine played a major role in the life of ancient Israelites. So much so that Israel adopted the vineyard as an image for their nation (grapevines were depicted on the Temple, on Israelite currency, etc.). Fertile vineyards became a symbol of God's promise of abundance and life, while images of sour grapes or barren vineyards were developed by Israel's prophets to decry the nation's sinfulness and rebellion. Jesus built on this thread by describing himself as the “true vine,” through which we might bear fruit, and Paul used this same picture to describe the “fruit of the Spirit” which is evidence of a truly transformed life in Christ. We are called to bear fruit in Jesus' name!

This is the weekly newspaper column.Back to basics 6-21-2023Arcane knowledge is the bane of wine writers. While we fulminate over nuance differences between bâtonnage and pump-over, readers roll their eyes over esoteric words with obscure, oddly accented letters.Reboot. Back to basics: Wine 101.• Wine is an alcoholic beverage. While wine can be made from any fruit, most wine is made from “wine grapes.” Wine grapes are different from table grapes. Wine grapes are sweeter, contain seeds, and have thicker skins than table gapes.• There are thousands of wine grape varieties. Most trace lineage to the species vitis vinifera. Each vine type is a variety. When wine is made using a particular variety, it is called varietal wine.Photo by Tobias Andersson ÅkerblomMany wines are blends of varieties, with each variety contributing characteristics. Cabernet sauvignon is softened and gains depth and complexity when blended with merlot, for instance. In many cases, varieties are fermented separately, then skilled palates determine what percentage of each achieves the optimal wine.On the other hand, field blends are a mix of varieties that grow together and are vinified together. You get what you planted, not what wine geeks determine with beakers and daedal formulations.• Grapevines are woody perennials that produce an annual crop. Various factors—climate, soil, human interaction—affect how a wine tastes. The wine term for this myriad of influences is “terroir”—which is French for land, but in the context of wine, means every influence involved.• Vintage refers to harvest year. Non-vintage (NV) refers to wines that are a blend of several vintages. Champagne and many sparkling wines and sherries typically are NV. This allows winemakers to achieve consistency. In exceptional years, sparkling wine makers produce vintage efforts.• There are four basic types of wine. Sparkling wine retains CO2, making it bubbly. Still wine does not retain CO2. Fortified wines include added distilled wine spirits; typically to increase alcohol content and stop fermentation to produce a sweeter wine. Aromatized wines include non-grape additives to influence smell; vermouth is the best known.You don't need to know bewildering words and obscure techniques to enjoy wine. Sip it. If it pleases you, it is good wine for you, no matter fulminations of wine wordsmiths.Tasting notes• Domaine Bousquet Sparkling Brut Charmat Organic Rosé, Tupungato, Mendoza NV: Lively, fruit-forward charmat process sparkling. Superb value, wide distribution. $13 Link to my review• C. L. Butaud Pa Pa Frenchy Red Wine, Texas, 2021: Grenache-based Texas wine. Simple, easy drinker. $18-22 Last round: I heard that Argentina is starting to get a little colder. In fact, it's bordering on Chile. Wine time.Since you subscribe to my newsletter, it follows you enjoy wine and humor and are an adventurous, inquisitive person. Each morning, The Sample sends you one article from a random blog or newsletter that matches your interests. When you find one you like, you can subscribe to the writer with one click. To give it a try  Click hereGus Clemens on Wine is reader-supported. If you enjoy, please upgrade to a paid subscription ($5/month) to access complete archives and bonus material. Opt out any time.Thank you for reading Gus Clemens on Wine. This post is public so feel free to share it.Email: wine@cwadv.comNewsletter: gusclemens.substack.comWebsite:  gusclemensonwine.comFacebook:  facebook.com/GusClemensOnWine/posts/Twitter: @gusclemensLinks worth exploringDiary of a Serial Hostess Ins and outs of entertaining; witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane.As We Eat Multi-platform storytelling explores how food connects, defines, inspires.Balanced Diet Original recipes, curated links about food systems, recipe reviews. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gusclemens.substack.com/subscribe

The health of a grapevine starts at ground level – literally in the soil. The California Department of Food and Agriculture is helping farmers improve the quality of their soils through the Healthy Soils Initiative. Taylor Jones, Ph.D., Director of Viticulture at Star Lane and Dierberg Vineyards used his funding as an opportunity to study the effects of compost. After completing two three-year trials in six different soil types in two American Viticulture Areas, Taylor found that compost additions significantly increased organic matter, Reduced Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium usage by 35 percent, and decreased water use dramatically. Listen in to hear the only downside to increasing the use of compost on your vineyard. References: 149: Fair Market Trade: Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Grapevines 151: The Role of the Soil Microbiome in Soil Health 163: Onsite Compost Production Using Vineyard Waste   165: Become a Microbe Farmer: Make Compost   167: Use Biochar to Combat Climate Change California Department of Food and Agriculture's Healthy Soils Initiative Compost Benefits and Quality for Viticultural Soils Compost use in premium vineyard development Dierberg Vineyard Taylor Jones LinkedIn  Tyler Jones: taylor@dierbergvineyard.com Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - DONATE SIP Certified 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 Craig Macmillan  0:00  Here with me today is Taylor Jones. He's Director of Viticulture at Star Lane in Dierberg Vineyards. And we're gonna talk about some soil health projects that he's got going. Thanks for being on the podcast.   Taylor Jones  0:10  Yeah. Thanks for having me.   Craig Macmillan  0:12  I just learned about this recently, and you talked about a little bit in the vineyard team tailgate meeting that got me interested, you have more than one thing going on? Is that right? Yeah, yeah, we do. And these projects are funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture Healthy Soils program. Is that right?   Taylor Jones  0:25  Yes, that's correct.   Craig Macmillan  0:27  We'd love to chat about that part of it a little bit later. But right now, I really want to know what you're doing. How many projects, what are they about? What are you trying to find out?   Taylor Jones  0:33  We have two projects, we were awarded two different grants, one for each of our vineyard properties that we have. So we have one healthy soils project over in Santa Rita Hills that started in 2018. And it's a three year program. And then we have another project that's healthy soils program at our Star Lane Vineyard in Happy Canyon, AVA and over their three year project also. And that one started in 2020, I believe. So we just hit our final year, this this last year. So yeah, to two different projects. And essentially, we're the states paying us to put compost down and improve our soil health. So we're jumping on that and trying to see what actually happens in the vineyard after compost has been applied. Since we're getting all of this compost from CDFA. It's we're going to use the money that we're saving on the compost to kind of do some some studies and see what's actually being impacted in our vineyard soils.   Craig Macmillan  1:30  So talking about the Star Rita AVA, project.   Taylor Jones  1:33  Over at Santa Rita hills, we have Drum Canyon vineyard, and over there we were awarded, it was 35 acres of compost applications, we had six tons per acre. For three years, over the three year span, we had 18 tons per acre put down down over there what we did, we tried to, as best we could make an experiment, you know, it's kind of hard to make a proper randomized trial. In a field when you're doing compost applications with your normal operations, we try to apply compost in all the areas that we could in our vineyard and while leaving a few barrier rows that we could do tests. And so we had, for example, we'd have 10 rows applied with compost, and then a few rows, no compost so that we could test those rows separately see what's going on. Are there changes in organic matter? Are we seeing changes in compaction, all the good stuff that comes with soil, so testing soils for nutrition, microbial populations, and then also water, I think water is the big thing. So that's how we set everything up on the property, we have five or six different soil types that we apply conference to and in each soil type, we did our own measurements there. And we were able to have soil moisture probes in most areas so that we could utilize those to help with some data. We really saw a lot of benefits from putting the compost down. I mean, we're in you're entering our sixth year after application, the state's requiring us to send a final numbers and we have to do one more test of organic matter. So that's coming up soon for our final dataset. Overall, we saw some great really good impacts from from the healthy soil program at that site.   Craig Macmillan  3:11  Before we go farther, are we talking about banding under the vine we're talking about broadcasting?   Taylor Jones  3:14  Whenever you do your grant, you have to specify what you're going to do. And in our case, we went with banding the spreader that we have is a bander you know we'd have six foot rows and we have a ag soil works hydraulic gripper, the wings move. So we're in an area where we have a lot of compaction. Typically we like to rip every three years every other row. And so that kind of led to the decision of banding. We're getting the compost close to the vine. Since we're in a six foot row, our rippers going right down the vine row right next to the root zone. So we're trying to get everything incorporated and move down lower in the soil profile. That was our target what we did we since we had three different years, and we didn't want to rip every single year, we did well alternating rows. One year we did every other row with a compost band and rip. The following year we did the even numbered rows with the compost band and rip and then the final year, our desire was to go no till so at the final year, we banded and we just did a light disk and seed on top of that, that we didn't unnecessarily rip over again. So it was technically a combo of riping and broadcast.   Craig Macmillan  4:22  Unrelated just further conversation that I've had weed control under the vine using some kind of cold federal weed knife or using herbicides?   Taylor Jones  4:31  For the extent of this trial. We use it herbicides, trying to keep all the weeds down as much as possible so that we're not seeing any funky results coming from having weeds all over the place. So we try to keep the berms clean as possible.   Craig Macmillan  4:42  And this one has been going for a little while now. What kind of preliminary results do you think you're seeing?   Taylor Jones  4:47  We're seeing some some great preliminary results. The most impactful result that we're seeing is water. Our water usage has declined dramatically. I mean, we went from irrigating every two weeks historically, this will be my eighth vintage here at the company, we used to always pretty religiously we'd water every two weeks, if not more over on that property. And every year, we were kind of able to spread that out, we were seeing water holding capacity almost increase. So last year, we ended up waiting 79 days from basically from bloom until we harvested, we were able to not water at all. Pretty amazing, we were able to heat stress, we have totally sensors in the field that help us tailor our irrigation strategies, but that 79 days of no water being used was significant for our operation in terms of water savings, you know, propane costs, even the irrigator had more time to do other things besides troubleshoot the irrigation system. I think all of that kind of stemmed from the organic matter increase. We saw, on average over a three year timespan, the average was about point 2% increase in organic matter per year for those three years. And you know, 1% organic matter is more or less 20,000 gallons of water per acre that you can hold. That's our goal. Let's try to increase organic matter by 1% and try to achieve that extra water holding capacity. Let's see how high we can get and so we had different different soil types reacted differently in terms of how well they held water.   What kind of soils do you have out there? We're talking about the Santa Ynez River Valley, we're talking about being relatively close to Lompoc, for those of you who are interested, there is tremendous will type variability all through that area. And Drum Canyon is relatively on the west side of that area. I would describe it as that what kind of sils do you have out there?   So we have top of the hill pure sandbox, as you go down the hill, we have some nice Shaylee loans. As we continue down, we get more and more loamy but a little bit more clay and silt as you kind of go to the flats. We're getting a lot more water holding capacity there in the flat zone. And then we have another corner of the vineyard that is the lowest coldest spot and that's mostly sand like a kind of like a sandy clay. So huge variability in soils, we kind of have almost all the types on our property, which is well fun for me.   Craig Macmillan  7:12  Fun for you. Tremendous variation in water holding capacity.   Taylor Jones  7:15  Oh yeah, we had a block we tried to establish our sandy soils, and that was watering twice a week with four gallons per vine, like just trying to get those vines. I mean, it's windy there, we have a lot of struggles and sand is sands an issue trying to get vines established. And to get that taproot down, otherwise, our loams on the hillsides, they tend to have good drainage, they're maybe two feet deep before you hit a layer of sandstone. So our soils are fairly shallow. So we get good water infiltration and penetration, good ability to stress the vines out quickly, but not really holding water. Well, as you get to the flood zone, we've always been able to irrigate a little bit less often those soils kind of have more of clay particles, they're holding on to water a little bit more, until you hit the sandy zone and there are definitely watering twice as much as we do in other areas.   Craig Macmillan  8:02  But you're seeing improvement in all these areas?   Taylor Jones  8:05  Definitely every single area of all in line with each other and what what we're seeing in in our sandy soil series, we saw the higher increase in organic matter than the other soil series. And we were able to irrigate slightly less in those zones than the other ones, which then in previous years percentage wise, which was surprising, but also I'm so glad water is the same you know, in our sandy soils, we saw almost it was point eight 5% organic matter increase total over a final timespan. So that's the equivalent of 16,600 gallons per acre that of water that was used, On the lower end some of the, our loamy silty soils, we ended up getting about a point seven 2.45% increase over five years. So a little bit different there. But you know, we didn't need as much help with holding water in those soils of the sandy soils. So it kind of balanced out percentage wise in terms of how much water we were using.   Craig Macmillan  9:06  What about above ground? Did you see changes in the vines, the fruit crop load, wine quality?   Taylor Jones  9:11  Not so much crop load tons tons per acre, we're pretty spot on throughout the vineyard with seasonal variability. For better or for worse. Some areas we had too much vigor, some areas are vigor was improved overall vigor was higher than than previous years, even with reduced water and reduced and reduced fertilizer inputs as well. So yeah, above ground pruning weights increased a little bit. But that was that was kind of expected. We're having a lot more vigor. But yeah, fruit load was not impacted, which is fine. We're not like trying to pump out as much fruit as possible.   Craig Macmillan  9:43  We've made wines out of these?   Taylor Jones  9:45  Yes. So why is not really a lot of changes in wine. Our winemaking team. They make a couple different wines. A lot of its blended from different areas of our flat zones. And in our other ranch we saw some Yans increasing Other than Yans, that's about it in terms of wine quality was still on point with with every previous year, so no changes in wine quality and no changes in Brix or pH, anything like that phenologically ripening, everything seemed to be pretty, pretty standard for our ranch.   Craig Macmillan  10:18  And that's a good transition. So what about the Happy Canyon?   Taylor Jones  10:21  We're just getting some, I'm finally organizing some data for Happy Canyon. And they're we're seeing similar results. And if anything this year more so or we have had some pretty significant rains. But our cover crop took off a lot quicker than any previous year, this last November, November, December is when we put our final load of compost in from healthy soils. So we were in year three, and we're finally seeing cover crops just taking off. Unfortunately, I think the only downside of these projects has been a lot of increase in in inter row weeds, we've had a lot more weeds creeping up. And that's just I think, some of the compost we're getting this now the seed beds in there just stuck there. And you can see the Malvo just coming up right where we planted and ripped, which is frustrating, but I'll take the soil benefits and deal with the weeds later, you know. Happy Canyon, we're seeing very similar results, we're starting to be able to use less water on a per annual basis, we have a little bit less soil diversity over at Happy Canyon a lot more silty clay silty on the hillsides, clays towards the bottom and the flats. That grant there was 95 acres of compost and give that reference over over a three year timespan that ends up being it was 58 $59,000 worth of compost that we got to not to have from the state which which was phenomenal. And then at the Star Lane project, we're only doing four times an acre, not six tons an acre, the grants kind of based off of what compost you're buying and your carbon nitrogen ratio of your compost, so four tons an acre and Happy Canyon still with the goal of trying to go no till over there. And we're seeing similar increases in organic matter where we're getting that point 2.25% increase year after a year. So there were targeting hopefully, my goal is to find one block, maybe that we can get a full 1% increase in that would be amazing. But it's good to see similarity over two different ADAs two different ranches. It's nice to see the similarities kind of confirming what we're seeing at one ranch versus the other ranch.   Craig Macmillan  12:24  And I want to come back to that. But before I forget, again, we're talking about this is four tons per acre banded, you are not tilling the middle right now.   Taylor Jones  12:32  Correct.   Craig Macmillan  12:33  But you are tilling with that piece of equipment over at the Santa Rita ranch when you have to occasionally yes in terms of no tilled you for see Star Lane being able to farm with a no till system indefinitely? Or do you have plans that you'll have to reset the system every so often? And if so, how would you go about it?   Taylor Jones  12:53  That's that's a good question. I think that I would love to go no tilling indefinitely, unfortunately, with the rate of compaction all of our soils have and then the heavy equipment we're using it's it's inevitable that we're going to have to rip and till but I don't think that we'll ever have to do like every single year full plowed down kind of stuff. I'm totally fine with instead of ripping every three years, let's double that to rip every six years or even further down the road, see how far we can push it. I think with our compaction results that we're seeing in both ranches, our rate of compaction has reduced by about 80% We should be able to go for about five and a half years without ripping instead of every three years. So we can probably push that to six years and rip and then you know, maybe future copost applications will help reduce that even more. We're doing some no till trials where we planted a vineyard and started it no till and comparing it to the same block that's being tilled annually every year. And so far, we're five or six years in now and seeing no differences in yield or plant growth which is promising because I think that for our soil future we kind of need to go the the no till route and you know show that it can be done. And let's see what happens.   Craig Macmillan  14:06  Something that we didn't touch on that. I think if our listeners are not familiar, this is in Santa Barbara County, Santa Yenz Valley. Happy Canyon and the Star Rita AVAs are about as different as you could possibly get in my opinion. So fill us in a little bit about what's going on soil and climate between those two branches.   Taylor Jones  14:24  Both are similar in terms of frost. I mean we had we always have the same amount of frost days I feel like but yeah, so So Santa Rita hills a lot closer to the ocean. You've got the Santa Ynez mountain range, they're going east to west kind of funneling in all the morning fog so we get Santa Rita Hills morning fog usually burning out towards the end of the day, high winds and that that kind of leads to some nice distressed plants are really big fluxes in temperatures with daytime highs versus nighttime colds very similar toHappy Canyon Aava like stuff over there, we get a lot warmer during the day, we're seeing a lot more 90 degree plus days than what we would see in Santa Rita Hills. And with with the way the climates moving, both ranches seem to be trending towards more and more and more high heat days. And we're seeing more cold days as well. And out at Happy Canyon, we're kind of on the far edge of Happy Canyon where Star Lane is and we have morning fog kind of creeps in and it will kind of tickle the edge of our ranch almost kind of recedes a lot more back into Santa Ynez. So at Star Lane, we get a lot more a lot less foggy mornings, kind of ocean mist, and we have a lot more beautiful sunny mornings out. But over there, we also have a lot of wind as well, the significant amount of wind. So AVA wise, they are, you know, they're fairly, fairly similar, I would say only because you have some of that marine influence. High winds with soil types are completely different. And just like the amount of the day that you're getting sunlight in different areas, and wind is fairly different as well.   Craig Macmillan  16:05  Tell me a little bit about the Healthy Soils program. I think this is a really fascinating thing. I remember when it started, and how did you find out about it? How did you get led to it? What was the process like for getting into it?   Taylor Jones  16:17  Trying to think I found it, I really liked looking for grant money, I came from an academic background. And if there's free money to be had, why not apply for it, we use all the tractor replacement grants, we're trying to get electrification grants, you know, find money where we can find it to help our help our company out. Pretty sure we just stumbled upon this program being available. And we basically talked to CDFA. And we're like, Hey, we're interested in applying and said, Here's the process. And it ended up being kind of ridiculously easy. I'm surprised that more people don't apply for Healthy Soils programs, there's just an an online application that you fill out, not only while you're filling out this application, they make you use the Comet Planner tool online, which is a really fun tool, if nobody's used it before, just to estimate greenhouse gas emission reductions based on you know, that's, that's kind of the core of the program is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing organic matter in your soils. And comet planner can kind of help you look at that. So there's some criteria you have to meet, you cannot have applied compost on these fields within I forget what it was in the last five years or something like that. If you've been applying compost, you can't get the Healthy Soils program. So we used some areas, we had put compost down so we couldn't use those zones, which is why in our Drum Canyon Ranch is 69 acres, but we could only put compost down on 35 of that. So that's one One limitation of the program. But overall, you pick your blocks that you want to do you set out a sampling protocol for them. And they'll usually accept it. And it's essentially you sample your soils every year during the program prior to compost application. And they'll reimburse you for those soil samples as well. So that you can track your organic matter. That's that's all they require. We submit our soils for more testing than just organic matter. Yeah, overall, it's a really simple end of the year, you have to send them proof of your project. And that's generally photos of the compost arriving pictures of the team implementing the compost, actually putting it into the ground, receipts, invoices that you had for just everything to prove that you've done what you do. And then yeah, it's three years. And then in year five, you have one last soil sample to send to the state. So overall, it's a simple application process. I found it one of the easier grants to actually apply for.   Craig Macmillan  18:38  You mentioned that you were doing soil analysis beyond just the soil organic matter what what variables are you looking at?   Taylor Jones  18:44  We just submitted for a full a full soil health panel looking back on it, I wish I would have added bulk density on that, because I think that would have been interesting to see how it changed. But you know, hindsight is 2020 but we looked at you know, NPK, calcium, magnesium cation exchange capacity. Any differences in pH, soil moisture, sodium, just kind of the whatever you send to us soil lab, whatever they'll give you for those tests. I think the biggest thing was we reduced our NPK usage by about 35%. At both ranches after this soil results showed you know we had some NPK increases, but not really as much. I think what we're seeing more so is our vines, roots, finding new areas where they haven't been before. And they're kind of being able to utilize resources that previously weren't available to them. So that's leading to our decrease in fertilizer usage, which is great. We're trying to go towards organic and getting away from a lot of inorganic fertilizer usages would be spectacular.   Craig Macmillan  19:47  That reminds me of something so have you been applying either synthetic organic NPK formulations on top of the compost as the compost been it for the fertility program?   Taylor Jones  19:56  We still do add a little bit, a little bit of NPK but more so calcium, we will have more calcium applications. Especially out in Happy Canyon, we have really high serpentine soils and really bad magnesium problems. So we're always trying to add in gypsum and calcium whenever we can. The Drum Canyon Ranch, not too much of a problem over there we have a problem with potassium uptake. Um, so we do increase our potassium usage they're coming into this year, I think we're really going to reduce based on what we saw last year in terms of vigor and vine health. I mean, our nitrogen applications are going to be really low. Phosphorus, we're always pretty fine on we don't need to use much will probably continue with potassium, but we'll see what petioles looked like this year.   Craig Macmillan  20:40  Well, we're running out of time. Is there one thing that you would tell a grower one piece of advice you'd give to a grower regarding what you've learned from this project?   Taylor Jones  20:49  I mean, the advice is use compost, I think we're we're seeing root zones reaching areas they haven't before where we're using significantly less water, which is just key to farming in California and really in the world going forward. You know, you're you're increasing your CEC or your cation exchange capacity so less nutrients down I mean, you're getting compost is kind of like a win win scenario. The only downside is weeds. Our soils are seem to be returned to normal. We had earthworms returned for the first time since I've been at this ranch. Five different soil pits we found earthworms in which they've never been in before. They're kind of creeping in from the edges, which is awesome. I think we're gonna maybe transition to worm farming.   Craig Macmillan  21:33  (laughs). Where can people find out more about you and what you do?   Speaker 2  21:39  you could always find out. Dierberg and  Star Lane Vineyards, we have Dierbergvineyard.com. Starlanevineyard.com. Otherwise, I kind of just bounced around the Santa Barbara County. I think it always...   Craig Macmillan  21:50  Just like if you're looking if you're looking for him. Just go to Santa Barbara County and drive around a little bit. Yeah. Probably near a vineyard.   Taylor Jones  21:58  Yeah, exactly.   Craig Macmillan  22:00  He has a lot of friends.   Taylor Jones  22:02  But no, yeah, you know, I'm happy if people want to reach out to me. You know, my emails, Taylor taylor@Dierbervineyard.com. Yeah, happy to help people out with applying for grants or if they want to chat or look at some data. I'm always down to see what other people are seeing and compare what we're seeing in our AVA versus another AVA or different grower strategies for compost applications. You know, I think information sharing is the way to go.   Craig Macmillan  22:28  Yeah, totally. Fantastic. Well, Taylor, I just am so happy you could be on the on the podcast, this has really been fun for me.   Taylor Jones  22:35  Thanks for having me.   Craig Macmillan  22:36  This is a topic. It's obviously a hot topic, continuing topic. And I think that the longer that we as an industry have been doing this, because this isn't something that people were doing in the 70s for instance, you know, is this you know, we've all had to learn we've had a compost is not just compost, you need look, the analyses and this rate is not the same as that rate and on the soil does that and the fact that you guys are doing that work along with everybody else and that you're sharing information. I think it's really fantastic. So, thank you so much for your contribution.   Taylor Jones  23:03  Yeah. Thank you.   Craig Macmillan  23:04  So our guest has been Taylor Jones. He is director of viticulture at Star Lane and Dierberg Vineyards in Santa Barbara County.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, commonly abbreviated to AMF, coevolved with plants from 500 million to one billion years ago. Fossil evidence shows AMF in existence back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Paul Schreiner, Research Plant Pathologist at USDA-ARS in Corvallis Oregon explains that grapes are a very receptive host for AMF and their symbiotic relationship benefits both organisms. AMF helps plants obtain nutrients like potassium and phosphorous. The plant provides AMF with sugars and fatty acids. AMF lives both inside and outside of the plant. Inside the plant, they form arbuscules inside the root cell. These structures look like little trees and increase surface contact dramatically. Outside the plant, AMF mines for nutrients, likely releases carbon, and prevents soil erosion with its root hair-like structure. Listen in to learn the practices you want to use, and not use to increase AMF populations. References: 149: Fair Market Trade: Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Grapevines 151: The Role of the Soil Microbiome in Soil Health 165: Become a Microbe Farmer: Make Compost Article Abstract: The diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi amplified from grapevine roots (Vitis vinifera L.) in Oregon vineyards is seasonally stable and influenced by soil and vine age Paul Schreiner, Oregon State University Courtesy Appointment Paul Schreiner on ResearchGate USDA-Agricultural Research Service Publications Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - DONATE SIP Certified 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 Craig Macmillan  0:00  Our guest today is Paul Schreiner. He is a research plant physiologist with USDA ARS in Corvallis, Oregon. And today we're going to talk about our arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Thanks for being on the program.   Paul Schreiner  0:11  Thank you for having me, Craig, happy to be here and talk about one of my favorite subjects.   Craig Macmillan  0:17  Obviously, can we just go with AMF, we'll just jump right to that. Yes. Because if I have to arbuscular too many times today, I'm gonna, I'm gonna crash.   Paul Schreiner  0:27  It's a tough one. And it's back in the old days, it used to be called vesicular, arbuscular mycorrhiza. So it was even harder.   Craig Macmillan  0:34  Yeah, it was even hard. We're not in the old days. Whenever a bunch of scientists were sitting around and going, like, you know, what the V this just too much. Can we get into three words, you know, was that big national meeting of mycologist. All right. So let's just go for you studied EMF for a long time. And you have stayed in the field. So you've studied vineyards? Let's start the very beginning. So what are AMF? And what kinds of roles do they play in the soil and interacting with plants?   Speaker 2  1:00  AMF are, as you said, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. So there are a group of fungi that evolved a really long time ago, estimates are from at least 500 million to a billion years ago.   Craig Macmillan  1:15  Wow.   Speaker 2  1:16  Yeah, that the billion number comes from some molecular clock kind of work, which, you know, is based on mutations in DNA that might be slightly overestimated, but there's fossil evidence that shows them at 450 million years ago. That's a really long time. You know, that's, that's what dinosaurs were around.   Craig Macmillan  1:35  Early dinosaurs if we had time later. I want to know how paleo Micology where I How do you find fungi, but we don't have time for that right now. But if we can come back to that, that's mind blowing.   Unknown Speaker  1:48  Yeah, we can.   Craig Macmillan  1:49  Go ahead.   Paul Schreiner  1:50  Yeah. So one thing I should say I think that's helpful is there's more than one kind of mycorrhizal fungi group, basically, right? The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are this older group, or they evolved a very long time ago, and there's been a long period of coevolution with plants. And what's happened is the arbuscular mycorrhiza, which is the kind that grapevines form. Most of our crop plants also form arbuscular mycorrhizal that mycorrhizal group can no longer grow or complete their lifecycle by themselves on their own, they require a host plant to get carbon to survive, there's a whole bunch of other kinds of mycorrhizal fungi. The most important besides the arbuscular would be what we typically call Ecto mycorrhizal fungi and the Ecto are typically on forest trees, especially in temperate and boreal regions. Interestingly enough, a lot of the trees in the tropics are am or arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. So, it is important to just think about that, because some people, when they hear Mycorrhizal, they automatically assume one or the other Ecto or am or arbuscular. It's even far more complicated than that, because there's like five or six other types of mycorrhizal fungi that different plant groups associate with. However, the mycorrhizal fungi that I studied the arbuscular type are the most prevalent, they're the oldest. And you know, it's kind of an interesting thing, science wise that, based on our best information, they evolved, the whole world was one big continent, right? That's when they really radiated and evolved rapidly, I can get a sequence out of grapefruits. That's a mycorrhizal arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus. And it'll match 100% to a sequence in Europe somewhere, or in South America somewhere on any other crops. And, you know, so that's kind of an interesting thing.   Craig Macmillan  3:39  That's a question. And so if we have that kind of similarity in different parts of the world, does that make the research that's done either in on vines in another continent? Or on a different crop? Does that is that useful for understanding how these things work in advance?   Paul Schreiner  3:56  Certainly, yeah. Especially in the last, I'd say 20 years, because we've developed molecular tools to really delve into evolutionary questions and DNA, those kinds of things. Were starting to separate that group of fungi with a finer tooth comb, if you will, right. In a very broad sense, there was this massive radiation during Pangea, and then all the continents separated, a lot of that genetic material is very, very similar. However, there is still evolution going on. It's just you have to look harder for it. And you have to do whole genomes. That's not something that I do. I'm much more on the practical side of agriculture. But I tried to stay in tune with all that. This group of fungi traditionally were thought to be asexual. Now, we think there might be some sort of sexual phase, but it's unclear and not clearly demonstrated yet. We're learning more all the time. But it's also a slow, kind of a slow process. Their interest intractable to study this group of fungi a little bit because they do rely on a host plant to complete their lifecycle. So like, we can't culture them and put them in a lab. So were grown on petri dishes, you know, that kind of thing. They have to be grown with a plant. So we've developed ways to do that. But it does present challenges.   Craig Macmillan  5:10  Yeah, how do you do that.   Paul Schreiner  5:11  And this is really important for this group of fungi. From a practical sense, you have to grow them on a plant companies that produce mycorrhizal inoculum have this kind of fungi, the arbuscular type, they are growing them on plants. Typically, they're doing that in a some kind of either soil or soilless mix, and producing that in a greenhouse. And what like when I grow cultures of these fungi, we grow them on plants. One of the challenges with this group of fungi that relates to all this is that they're also ubiquitous around the globe, pretty much anywhere you have plants, these fungi are are there, the diversity is different in different places, of course, and there probably are some specialists, you know, groups, for example, that might be in more tropical climates versus more boreal climates. But I mean, we're still just beginning to understand that kind of information with this group of fungi. You asked also, what role do they do in terms of soil ecology or plant ecology? There's no question. The biggest role that this fungi plays is in helping plants obtain phosphorus. There is evidence of uptake of other nutrients, particularly those nutrients that are more immobile in soil. And that's why phosphorus is one in particular, but Potassium is another nutrient that's not super immobile in soil, they help take up potassium, they also help take up copper, zinc, I'd say those four are probably the top. However, they also play a role in nitrogen uptake in some plants. You know, we have addressed this in grapes with my former student, Tian Tian, who's now a farm advisor in Southern California working on table grapes, part of her thesis work was looking at the nitrogen impact on mycorrhizae, and how they help with nitrogen uptake. And we're continuing that work to some degree now with my new student. So far, we've not been able to show that the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are helping grapevines take up nitrogen. However, lack of evidence doesn't mean it can't happen. Other groups have shown in other plant systems that they do help the plants take up nitrogen. But still even even though that's true, without question, Phosphorus is the main thing that this group of fungi helps plants obtain from soil, you know, and phosphorus is a really critical thing, because yeah, phosphorus reserves are running out, you know, we've been mining basically guano, right? I mean, that's our main source of phosphorus all around the world. I just read an article it was in the New Yorker the other day, about phosphorus. I'm glad it's, you know, being highlighted again, because, you know, some people think 20 years from now, we're going to be out of phosphorus.   Craig Macmillan  7:40  I think so.   Paul Schreiner  7:41  And we're going to be in a world of hurt. Yeah. So it's hard to know for sure. Other people estimate we've got hundreds of years, but I don't know how good these estimates are. But helping plants get phosphorus means we don't need as much phosphorus to apply as a fertilizer. This is becoming an issue for basically the whole globe and human production. Yeah, their biggest role is Phosphorus, they also probably help do other things in plants, which I can kind of go down a list if you want.   Craig Macmillan  8:07  Well, before we do that, I do want to do that. Because I think that that's crucial because a number of ideas have come up and some I think are probably accurate. Some I think are not, but I don't know, AMF, it's a parasite or it's a symbiotic organism?   Paul Schreiner  8:21  Yeah there symbionts.   Craig Macmillan  8:23  Okay, there's symbionts. Now, how does the plant and the fungi interact? Are there things that go into the root or the root is coded by something? Or how does that work?   Paul Schreiner  8:34  Yeah, so that's, it's a pretty interesting process. If you start at the very beginning of a naked root, let's say, you know, a root does not colonize this starting to grow in soil. It sends out signals that the fungus consents, or the fungi, you know, there's more than one fungus in this group. Some of those signals, we already know what those are, like Striga lactones are one for example, you know, complicated term, but it's just a particular group of compounds plants make, the fungi can sense that. And they can grow towards the root, you know, the hyphy of the fungus, when it touches the root or makes contact with the root, it forms what's called an apex thorium, and then it makes a penetration peg and can basically punches through the wall of the root. This is the same way that fungal pathogens, you know, who are bad fungi, let's say right, they also use the same kind of mechanism. And typically when that's happening, you know, there's enzymes involved, bits of the cell wall of the plant and or some of its cuticle get kind of chewed up by enzymes and it releases certain compounds and then the plant can say, Oh, I know this one's a bad guy, or sometimes a plant is producing enzymes, for example, kinase that's trying to degrade the fungus itself and then you release certain other signal compounds, so the plant can sense that and in certain pathogens. We know that a very specific metabolite can be sensed by the plant and it stimulates the plant to respond in a defense response with the mycorrhizal fungi. The defense response is repressed.   Craig Macmillan  10:00  Okay, oh.   Paul Schreiner  10:01  Yeah, and so part of that is probably the kinds of chemicals that the and fungi have that are being released, you know, through these various enzymatic interactions have yet to be recognized by the plant as as the bad guy. Anyway, that's, that's maybe getting a little too into the weeds. But yeah, it all starts in the same way like a pathogen trying to get in or even, you know, there's a group of parasitic plants that form these things called hostaria, that attack roots of other plants. Same kind of process.   Craig Macmillan  10:31  It sounds to me like there's an enzymatic reaction, and then also a signaling reaction, which would probably be some kind of a protein, I would guess it's complicated, or it's a feedback thing in that, oh, I've been poked, oh, I'm gonna do this, Hey, wait a minute, this is okay. And then they kind of settles into a balance, I guess. Is that fair to say?   Paul Schreiner  10:49  Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. It's really complicated. And I mean, we only are beginning to understand the way they communicate. You know, there's a whole new class of compounds called effector proteins, which are secreted by different organisms and soil plant can recognize a lot of those, it crosses many things like even goes to nematodes, right? Like this is all kind of newer stuff that we're learning. But the bottom line is, the am fungi get in because they don't stimulate a defense response in the plant. And that's because there's been at least 500 million years of coevolution the plant knows these guys are okay, these are the good guys. Once they're inside, they grow throughout the cortex of fine roots. And then they form these things called arbuscules. And that's where they get their name. So the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi form arbuscles, our bus skills are basically like a little tree, if you can see a picture of it, it looks like a little tree inside a root cortical cell. It's just basically a way that both the fungus and the plant increase their surface area contact by like, a huge amount, you know, like, like, imagine what a tree looks like above ground, you know, like, especially without the leaves on the wintertime is a great time. That's exactly what it arbuscular Looks like in miniature inside a root cortical cell, the plant membrane grows all the way around that there's all kinds of activity that arbuscule cell is super active, because there's a lot of metabolic things happening. And that's where the plant and the fungus are exchanging nutrients,   Craig Macmillan  12:17  then then exchange is cell wall to cell wall. It's not puncturing into a cell, or is it punching into? Oh, heck, what's the word I'm looking for, a pipeline?   Paul Schreiner  12:28  No, the and fungi don't get into the vascular tissues of the plant, they actually colonize these cortical cells, they're sort of like, if you think about leaves, leaves the cells, we think about most of the mesophyll, or the spongy mesophyll. They're the ones that are doing photosynthesis, right? In the root cells that are most active in the fine roots are the cortical cells. That's where most of the activity is happening. So the fungi colonize there, they form these arbusculs which is, I mean, they're, they're amazing structures, they're very cool. They're short lived, like, a lot of times in arbuscular, will form, develop, and then degrade within, say, a week to 10 day period, you know, so it's like a fairly rapid turnover during that you increase the surface contact between the two organisms, but there's always still a membrane on the fungal side and a membrane on the plant side that keeps those two organisms separate, you know, their cytoplasm doesn't mix. You know, that would be weird, kind of, you know, would be weird. Yeah, we just don't see that in biology, you know, they really have much greater metabolic activity in those arbuscular cells. So what happens is, the fungus is giving phosphorus to the plant in this process, and other nutrients. And then in exchange, the plant is giving the fungus sugars. And we now know also fatty acids. Yeah, that's been a recent discovery in the last two decades. Anyway, I can't remember exactly when it came out. We now know because of genome sequencing efforts, that this group of fungi lack the ability to make fatty acids, they actually get those from the plant as well.   Craig Macmillan  14:01  So we've got the arbuscules on the roots. That's kind of the structure, we've got the peg in there. Now what's going on away from the roots? Are these big long, multi celled single identifiable organisms, or is it kind of a community or what what's going on?   Paul Schreiner  14:19  There are different fungi. Okay, so there's multiple species, a single root can have many species of fungi inside it. However, those species also probably mark out some territory. This part is still a little bit unclear because it's really hard to pinpoint this stuff. Just as an example, our research vineyard here at Oregon State University that I work on, even though I'm ARS I also work in in part of OSU, our research vineyard. I think we found 19 Different mycorrhizal fungi. colonizing the groups, the roots of the grape vines, you know, there's a fair number, how they actually interact on a very tiny scale like within an individual single individual root is it's hard to know for sure, that's again Getting off into the weeds a bit.   Craig Macmillan  15:01  Not so much because I'm going somewhere with this.   Paul Schreiner  15:04  I want to get back to your question though about what's happening outside because that's really critical. Yeah, what's happening inside is we have these aruscules and hyphae growing inside the root, and it can be, it can be very intense, especially in Grapes. Grapes are a super host, in my view, they really love mycorrhiza they get heavily colonized. But then on the outside out in the soil, the naked hyphae, if you will, of the mycorrhizal fungi are exploring the soil. And that external phase we call extra radical hyphae, it actually is physiologically different than what's on the inside of the root. I'm trying to think of a good analogy, but basically, the inside part has a different function than the outside part. And so the inside part is trying to get carbon from the plant give the plant phosphorus and other nutrients, the outside part is mining the soil for that phosphorus, exploring the soil, it also probably exudes a significant amount of its carbon into the soil and helps the soil microbial community get a carbon source as well. And these fungi seem to play a critical role in helping soil aggregate and or resist erosion, basically, I mean, the evidence of this is, is pretty clear. But we also know that roots do the same function, especially root hairs, you know, so one way to think about these fungi is they're, they're sort of like root hairs. Except they're even finer, you know, their job is to connect root to the soil and to the soil, water and nutrient supply   Craig Macmillan  16:30  Two spatial questions. One, when they say they explore space, how deep do we find an organism? Do we find a fungus that's connected to a to a vine or plant, right? So how far down is it going? And then how far out in lateral space is it going?   Paul Schreiner  16:44  People have studied this by using artificial system where we can put a screen for example, like we can grow a plant in a greenhouse in soil, have it be colonized by microbes and fungi, and then put a screen in place that the roots cannot cross. But the fungi can, you know, something below like, or I don't know, somewhere in the ballpark of 40 micron diameter screen, so very fine screen like a silk screen, the hyphae can grow in there. So like people have shown they can grow 15 or 20 centimetres away, no problem, you know, significant distance when you're talking about soil as far as how deep they go in soil, that varies a lot with the rooting depth of whatever the plant of interest is, or, you know, the ecosystem, we tend to see greater colonization in the, in the surface soil, which just fits everything else that happens in the surface soil, right? I mean, that's where more of the water and nutrients are being turned over. It's also you know, where the soil environment is more favorable to life, right, because of this whole soil structure, idea and porosity, allowing oxygen to get into the soil in a vineyard. Particularly, you know, we always talk about vineyards and how the roots go all the way to China kind of thing, right?   Craig Macmillan  17:52  Until you hit clay or limestone.   Paul Schreiner  17:54  Sometimes roots can go really far. I mean, 30 meters I've seen reported and get into, you know, basically rock, right? There's not too much mycorrhizal fungi down where we're there in rock, we did the study, again, it was at the research vineyard. And when you get into what is known as the sea horizon, in the soil, which we would typically think of as the subsoil, it's where it's more compact, there's less porosity, and it's pretty dense, right? And it's more like clay, colonization drops off a lot, you know, we might have 90% of roots are colonized in the topsoil. But in the subsoil might be 30%. That's because many things, one, the environment is just not suitable for life in general, at that depth, because it's compacted, there's less oxygen, it's a different environment.   Craig Macmillan  18:37  And again, you've mentioned AMF need more than just a plant root, they need to be out in the environment, there needs to be oxygen, there needs to be water, there needs to be other, there needs to be a favorable environment for life period. Right now, one thing we've talked about water holding. In other interviews, we've talked about water holding capacity improves in fields that have a higher or more successful AMF population, and that you talked about aggregates, it's part of that picture. We've talked about nutrient movement particular phosphorus, one of the things that I've heard people just kind of say colloquially is that if you have a meaningful mix, whatever the popular population, ecosystem involving AMF, it's going to lead to greater stability in the vine, and give the vine an ability to tolerate drought stress a little bit better. Are you finding those things? Are those things true? Even if it's kind of anecdotal? I mean, you're scientist, so you don't like anecdotal probably. But   Paul Schreiner  19:33  Yeah, so that's, you know, that's the interesting world of science in my world. I need to have evidence for what I say, especially, especially when it comes to publishing scientific papers, right?   Craig Macmillan  19:43  Well, of course, yeah.   Paul Schreiner  19:44  But then there's also opinion, you know, sometimes you can't show things in science. I mean, science isn't perfect, right? Mistakes happen, and some things are just more intractable and difficult to show, however, okay, on a broad scale, there's pretty good evidence that mycorrhizal fungi helped Plants tolerate drought stress better than non mycorrhizal plants when you know when they've been compared. So that has certainly a long term consequence that you might think would eventually relate to stability in some way.   Craig Macmillan  20:16  So one of the reasons that I asked that is science, Applied Science, especially applied Agricultural Science often is moved by growers noticing something or having an image in their head about how something works. And then folks like you come in and say, Okay, well, let's find out. Another thing that I've heard people mentioned that I don't know is true or not, is do AMF actually move water into the plant? We know that they transport minerals, or they actually move water into the plant?   Paul Schreiner  20:42  Yeah, that's a great question. The answer to that question at this point in time is, they don't move water in a way that we would like to think of it, they're not acting like a pipe, because their own cytoplasm is a, you know, it's a vital part of them, it's just like us, you know, like the inside of ourselves, we're not just gonna give that away, people used to think of them like, Oh, they're just pipes out there, and the water just flows right through them into the plant. Well, that's impossible, that just can't happen. What does happen potentially, is water moves on the external surface of the hyphae. Because similar to a plant root, they exude some carbon, they have some structure makes connection to soil water in the pores of soil. And so in theory, because these fungi are much finer diameter, let's say 50 to 100 times smaller in diameter than a root is, you know, fine root of a plant so they can get into smaller pores inside the soil and get access to soil water that the root may not be able to get access to. On top of that, there's potential especially because they help aggregate soil and help improve soil structure, they may actually in the long run, improve soil water holding capacity, because they're adding to that long term carbon storage of the soil. It's really well known that as you add organic matter to soil, you improve the water holding capacity of soil. The am fungi do do that. I mean, partly it's this bit of carbon that they exude into the soil rhizosphere itself or the we call it the micro rhizosphere. Even their turnover. So when they die, or when they're eaten by something else, they're also then contributing to that pool of soil carbon, and the more old and complex that carbon is, probably the more it's tends to be tied to soil, water and small pores. Yes, they do help, we can show that they help plants take up a little bit more water, but it's not a big deal. You know, it's kind of like let's say the plant on a given day use 10 liters of water and you let the plant go to the wilt point. Maybe the mycorrhizal plant got another 10 mils of water out of 10 liters, you know, it's not a huge amount.   Craig Macmillan  22:55  They're not the pipeline, but they are changing the soil environment such that the water holding capacity is changing. And that makes it more water for the mines to pick up. So it's not that there is a pipeline through the mycorrhizal fungi but that it's changing the environment in a way that makes it more likely that the water will be held and that the mind then has it available.   Paul Schreiner  23:12  Right and that that effect is small, it's hard to show because it's very small. The other thing that they probably help with the plants is that as soil dries, nutrients are harder to get. And particularly those nutrients that are more immobile and soil like phosphorus, a big part of why we see improved drought tolerance in a mycorrhizal plant is because they are accessing soil phosphorus better than a non mycorrhizal plant can and that's contributing to the overall drought tolerance of that plant. So some of our effects that we see are an indirect effect of improved phosphorus nutrition that goes across to any of the other functions that AMS might help plants do. Like another big category that I feel I should mention is there's good evidence that mycorrhizal fungi help plants resist or become more tolerant to other pathogens in the soil. So the bad guys or even nematodes, a lot of work has been done on this, you know, the experiments run the gamut, like they're there all over the place, because, you know, we're talking about really complex things. One of the things that we know, is that just improving the overall phosphorus nutrition of the plant and or other nutrients, sometimes it's, it might be another new nutrient that's limiting that gets you added tolerance to to any of these other effects, right? Whether it's drought, whether it's a root pathogen, even like insect feeding on above ground parts of the plant, you know, I mean, if you're in a better nutritional state, you're going to be better able to tolerate a lot of things. A lot of what happens with AMF is linked to their role in phosphorus, you know, so going back to this phosphorus story, some of my colleagues get mad at me because I they think I'm too opinionated about phosphorus. But I mean   Craig Macmillan  24:59  You You're having beers with people. And they're like, Paul, when you get off the phosphorous thing?   Paul Schreiner  25:05  Yeah, they're like, come on, Paul, you know, they play a role in nitrogen too.   Craig Macmillan  25:10  Okay, so we're in at a time with a couple of things I just absolutely, positively have to hit on if we draw the big old box around this topic, we would say, AMF are beneficial for vineyards. Okay, so what kinds of things can I do as a grower to encourage a AMF and what kinds of things should I not do that might dink the AMF community?   Paul Schreiner  25:29  Very good question. The most important thing probably is to think about AMF, before you plant a vineyard. And so like in some of the materials that I've I've, I've written about and published on, especially for like trade journals and trying to help growers, it's really important in my mind to separate pre plant versus post plant, and at the pre plant stage is really a time you should think about mycorrhizal fungi because that's the time. If they're not there, you've got a problem. But chances are, they're already there. It's also the pretty much the time that you can add mycorrhiza and they're going to do something, you have an opportunity to inoculate vines if you want when they go into the ground. The biggest thing about pre plant is what is the past history of that land, especially the recent couple of years if you've had plants on it, especially if their host plants for mycorrhizal fungi, which almost all of our crop plants are, even if it came out of say, forest land, and then was converted to vineyard. Typically, there's a AMF there because even in the forest, which are dominated by Ecto mycorrhizal trees, for example, here, and in the north, west, for example, there are still understory plants that rely on AMF. And so the AMF are there, normally, you don't have to inoculate. But knowing what the land history is, is very helpful. The worst thing you can do is of course, apply a fumigant, which we are doing much, much less now than we used to. Not that that will will stop entirely. But if you fumigate especially with like in the old days, methyl bromide was the main fumigant used, you'll kill the mycorrhizal fungi. And so you would want to inoculate if you did that. The other thing is if you have a really, really long period of fallow land, and when I say fallow, I mean fallow no weeds, nothing, most of our weed species also support AMF. So I mean, even having weeds on the ground before you plant a vineyard is going to keep the population up. And again, that goes back to the biology, this group of fungi that they can't grow on their own. And so eventually they'll be depleted in soil if there's no plants to keep feeding them. So that kind of relates back to the very beginning of our conversation, which is why this group of fungi is different. So like, basically avoid long fallow plant a cover crop of clover, for example, that's a good one, because Clover is very heavily colonized. It also provides nitrogen, which is good for vines, you know, especially at establishment and avoid fumigants. Once you get to the post plant side of things, I think the most critical things to think about are tillage, and then fertilizer use.   Craig Macmillan  27:56  What happens there?   Paul Schreiner  27:59  With tillage, you breakup the mycorrhizal network that's in the soil. And so like we talked about that external phase, or what we call the extra radical hyphae of this group of fungi, that phase is out in the soil and it actually survives and overwinters even for example, like you know, some of it dies back, but some of it remains if you keep destroying that with tillage. Eventually you reduce the population of AMF, there are a few fungi that seem to be much more tolerant of tillage. And these are some of our favorite lab rat ones, for example. Ones that are tolerant of disturbance have been ones that are most often done well in the laboratory and are easily easy to culture. Again, we're culturing on a plant but still similar kind of thing. So tillage is one thing. The fertilizer issue is I would avoid both high nitrogen and high phosphorus inputs. We have shown in some of my work if you apply phosphorus, for example, to the foliage, which some people like to do, you can reduce mycorrhizal colonization. It's all tied into the whole plant response to these this group of fungi, you know, plants evolved with the fungi, right? It's not just the fungi that were evolving. They know that the main function is phosphorus. So when the plant has high phosphorus status, it down regulates the colonization by this group of fungi. Well, when you get plants phosphorus, especially to the foliage, it sends a signal to the roots, I'm very happy, and it tends to reduce colonization.   Craig Macmillan  29:24  Specifically, how many units of nitrogen are we talking about?   Paul Schreiner  29:28  That gets into tricky territory.   Craig Macmillan  29:30  You know, if I'm putting on a 777 am I am i doing a bad thing?   Paul Schreiner  29:35  Probably not course, it also depends on the rate, you know, I mean, 777 But you're putting out 200 pounds per acre that's   Craig Macmillan  29:42  Yeah, that's why use the term units.   Speaker 2  29:45  Yeah, you know, and the thing about viticulture is we don't need as much nitrogen and as much phosphorus that as we do in other classic farming crops, you know, like the big the big crops corn soybean commodity. Yeah, commodity grapes are super cheap. super efficient at getting nutrients, other work that I do, which is actually more of more of my time spent on nutrition than it is on mycorrhizal fungi. But, you know, we've shown that high nitrogen is not necessarily a good idea in the vineyard, right. And most people know that. And almost intuitively, you don't want a massive canopy, that shading the fruit.   Craig Macmillan  30:19  In a vineyard, if I'm putting on nitrogen at a replacement rate, so I'm looking at how many pounds per acre I took out, I'm guessing and how many pounds per ton that relates to taking in cycling from canes and leaves that fall on the ground and go into the soil. You know, most vineyards you're looking at not a lot. So I've looked at some organic systems that are putting in, you know, two pounds per acre, the highest I think I've ever seen was 25 pounds per acre. Eight is a pretty good number kind of on average total. It sounds to me like these replacement level rates, not the high rate, but the replacement level rates where we're, we purposely are trying not to get a bigger canopy, we're not trying to bump a vine. That sounds like those are fine.   Paul Schreiner  30:58  I think so we've done work here, see, it was in Chardonnay, and also Pinot Noir. And we were putting out 20 and 40 pounds of N per acre. These are not high rates in in my view, especially when we look at agriculture as a whole right, we can see a little bit of a depression in mycorrhizal colonization, when we apply, say 40 pounds, or 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre, we don't wipe it out entirely, you know, the vines also can recover. The other thing is, the kind of nitrogen you put out may play a role as well. More soluble classic conventional fertilizers that have more soluble N and especially more soluble P will probably have a more negative impact. If you're putting out more organic sources of those fertilizers, because they're more complex, you know, they don't cause as quick of a response in the plant. And it does seem that that does not have as a negative impact on AMF, as the more soluble forms.   Craig Macmillan  31:58  There we go. Now we're out of time, unfortunately, this could go on forever, you and I should get together sometime and just hang out talk about phosphorus all you want. What is one piece of advice that you would give to grape growers related to this topic, especially if they want to increase or maintain in AMF population in their vineyard?   Paul Schreiner  32:17  You know, the most important thing is to be conservative with inputs. I think that's probably the the key thing conservative with both water inputs and nitrogen inputs and phosphorus inputs. You know, the role of fungicides, so far does not really appear to be a big deal. And again, we don't have time to go into all that. But the evidence that we've collected so far suggests that you know our fungicide spray programs, for example, which we're talking about controlling things in the canopy, I'm not seeing a clear effect on microns of fungi because of that. If you overwater over fertilize. That's when you're going to do damage to Microsoft fungi, you know that that's clear. And then the other piece of advice is think about it pre plant, because that's the time you can actually do something put a cover crop in prior to planting the vineyard and I bet 99% of the time, the mycorrhizal population that's there will be sufficient to colonize the vine roots and be healthy goes back to just very briefly the fact that I consider grape vines, a very, very receptive host for mycorrhizal fungi. I've looked at other crop plants, including other woody perennials, and grape vines are so heavily colonized. It's it's truly amazing.   Craig Macmillan  33:28  That is cool. Where can people find out more about you? And or more about this topic? You mentioned research that's been published recently on some of these topics. Where can we find you?   Paul Schreiner  33:39  So the easy way to find me is type my name Paul Schreiner. And grapevine will be in the title in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you just put my name and grapevine nutrition, or grapevine and AMS, I should pop up as the first thing on Google. But you can also just email me paul.schreiner@usda.gov. And I'm happy to provide for those that are more interested in getting into the weeds. I can provide you some lists of good references and whatnot. So I'm happy to do that.   Craig Macmillan  34:05  That's fantastic. My guest today has been Paul Shriner. He is a research plant physiologist with USDA ARS. He's based in Corvallis, Oregon. This has been really fun for me. I hope it's fun for our listeners, too. This is such a hot topic. And so thank you very much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Paul,   Unknown Speaker  34:22  Thank you so much, Craig. It was great having this conversation   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Today we'll discuss two cases from California that occurred in early 2011. One remains unsolved, while the other has a conviction and unanswered questions. On February 11th, 2011, Ilma Saucedo disappeared from her Riverside, California home without notice. On March 29th, the body of a woman was discovered in a Kern County Vineyard. When details about the woman in the vineyard were finally released to the public in 2018, tips flooded in. However, answers never came. Tune in for more details.  If you have any information about the woman in the vineyard, you can call the Kern County Sheriff's Office at 661-861-3110, or remain anonymous by calling Secret Witness at 661-322-4040. If you have any information about Ilma Saucedo, you can contact the Riverside Police Department at 951-353-7135 or 951-826-5531. SPECIFIC CONTENT WARNINGS: Murder, mutilation of a body, betrayal, brief mentions of cancer and c-sections, foul language Website Blog Facebook Group IG Twitter Discord Server --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thricecursedpod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thricecursedpod/support

In this latest episode:All the latest from the Clare and Gilbert Valleys Council with CEO Dr Helen Macdonald:$10 thousand commitment for Yoshinga/Bizen Japanese exchange programStructural issues with Riverton Community Hall to be factored into current refurbishment quoteOutcome to the the Council's Community SurveyTwo community consultations about Riverton's IGA's proposed trolley standVolunteer needed for Riverton Light GalleryDevelopment application approved for major poultry breeder farm SA Autumn Garden FestivalThousands of people flocked through the gates of the Clare Showgrounds to attend the very successful SA Autumn Garden Festival, the largest of its kind in the state. There were 65 stall holders ranging from plant and garden stalls and handicrafts, children's craft corner, garden themed stilt walkers, food and drink and a brilliant lineup of gardening experts, one being the very popular garden gnome Costa, the host of Gardening Australia. In this story you'll hear all the buzz and excitement from the event from Mid  North locals, Costa Georgiadis, Rebecca Sullivan and event coordinator Paulie Calaby.Guidelines to reduce smoke taint on winegrapes A new set of guidelines have been developed to help SA grain and wine grape growers manage smoke from broadacre stubbles to reduce the impact of smoke taint on winegrapes. The Broadacre Burn-Off Smoke Management Guidelines was launched in March after consultation with PIRSA, the state's wine and grain industry and CFS representatives. These guidelines show a unified approach which will strengthen communication lines between the two industries. Anna Baum is a broadacre farmer from Auburn and also executive officer of the Clare Valley Wine and Grape Association and welcomes the new guidelines. She says smoke taint has been an ongoing issue for the wine industry for many years and hopes these new set of guidelines will make both parties more aware of their responsibilities.Gather Together: Centenary Park in Auburn was a hive of activity at the end of March as school groups, Ngadjuri youth and people from different cultures and backgrounds came together to join in on a Ngadjuri Led Inclusive Youth Cultural Event.  It was about teaching youth about the Ngadjuri culture and identity, so they can pass on to future generations. Allow  young people to connect to land, family, ceremony, and language and unite with other children and young people in particular those that are underprivileged. This story features Ngadjuri youth, children from Auburn Primary and St Joseph's Clare,  Sarah Cheesmur from Employment Directions and Angelina Harradine from Ngadjuri country.Clare and Gilbert Valleys Council:  https://www.claregilbertvalleys.sa.gov.au/Clare Valley Wine and Grape Association: https://clarevalleywine.com.au/The Broadacre Burn-Off Smoke Management Guidelines

This is the weekly newspaper column.Optimism 1-4-2023New year. No matter if you look back on 2022 with a sigh of satisfaction or you are grovelingly thankful to survive another solar circumnavigation, time for optimism.If you make wine or enjoy wine, wine is an expression of optimism. Growers gaze across pruned vineyards stark and bare, maybe swaddled in snow, maybe resolutely defiant against the howls of winter. Still, optimism.There must be optimism or you would not be a grape grower. You are confident that in more years than not, after cold comes fledgling promises of spring. Each day dawns a minute earlier. The vineyard begins to awake—vines are optimistic.This is a reader-supported publication. Consider a paid subscription ($5/month) to access bonus material and complete archives. Opt out at any time.By April, the signs of life appear. Sap rises. Buds begin to break. Sure, dangers lurk—hail, late freezes—but this is time for optimism, optimism justified more often than not. After bud break, growers prune shoots to calibrate production. Reducing quantity of grapes increases quality because the vine optimistically concentrates more energy into the remaining clusters.Flowering follows. Grapevines produce “perfect flowers” because they pollinate themselves without the need of bees.Vine grape budsIn early summer, clusters appear. They begin as tiny, green bulbs. Clusters of optimism for the dramatic visual to come.Then, a miracle. The tiny green bulbs grow and change color. Vérasion (“verre-ray-shun”) is the most beautiful time of the year in a vineyard, the time growers optimistically anticipated the previous seven months. Green becomes purple, black, red, pink, yellow.As summer fades, grapes ripen, sugar levels rise. At the peak moment—optimistically with dry weather and adequate labor—comes the harvest. Then, on to the winery and another opportunity for optimism as skilled grape growers hand off to skilled winemakers.If you enjoy drinking wine, optimism goes without saying. Why would you buy a bottle of wine if you were not optimistic it would be a rewarding experience?With this effulgent homage to optimism to begin 2023, I leave you with a twist on an old Irish blessing: “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face, and may the best bottle of wine you have ever enjoyed be the one you enjoy tonight.”Tasting notes:• Montes Limited Selection Sauvignon Blanc 2021—fruitiness in a softer take on sauv blanc. $9-12 Link to my review• Siduri Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2020—superb entry-level pour into world of Siduri pinot noir. $17-22. Link to my reviewLast round: My New Year's resolution: Drink more of what you will give up for Lent a couple of months from now. Wine time.Thank you for reading Gus Clemens on Wine. This post is public so feel free to share it.Email: wine@cwadv.comNewsletter: gusclemens.substack.comWebsite:  gusclemensonwine.comFacebook:  facebook.com/GusClemensOnWine/posts/Twitter: @gusclemensLinks worth exploringDiary of a Serial Hostess Ins and outs of entertaining; witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane.As We Eat Multi-platform storytelling explores how food connects, defines, inspires.Balanced Diet Original recipes, curated links about food systems, recipe reviews. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gusclemens.substack.com/subscribe

Working at a haunted place makes for a little less boring of a job. Follow and review Tales from the Break Room on Spotify and Apple Podcasts! https://pod.link/1621075170 Join EERIECAST PLUS to unlock ad-free episodes and support this show! (Will still contain some host-read sponsorships) https://www.eeriecast.com/plus SCARY STORIES TIMESTAMPS 0:00 INTRO 1:05 At Home and At Work from Tise26 10:20 Fresh Air from Volf 18:37 Intruder in the Grapevines from So-Nora CREDITS: Background Music for Stories by Dark Music (me) LINKS:  Join my DISCORD: https://discord.gg/5Wj9RqTR3w Follow us on Spotify! https://open.spotify.com/show/3mNZyXkaJPLwUwcjkz6Pv2 Follow and Review us on iTunes! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/darkness-prevails-podcast-true-horror-stories/id1152248491   Submit Your Story Here: https://www.darkstories.org/ Get Darkness Prevails Podcast Merchandise! https://teespring.com/stores/darknessprevails Subscribe on YouTube for More Stories! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_VbMnoL4nuxX_3HYanJbA?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest for this episode is Mark Shepard. I'm so excited to share this conversation with you because Mark has a perspective on viticulture and agriculture in general that is revolutionary… while also being incredibly common sensical. He's as funny as he is passionate and that passion comes from wanting to share an incredibly important message not only for producing wine, but also for our survival. Mark is the author of Restoration Agriculture which is a top 10 Amazon best seller in multiple categories. Restoration agriculture is his term for ecomimicry permaculture or multi-story perennial polyculture using what thrives naturally in your ecosystems. He practices this at scale on his 110 acre New Forest Farm in Wisconsin, and on several other properties, and he provides agricultural consulting around the planet. One of the quotes from his book that stood out to me is when he is talking about our conventional, monoculture approach, and says, “We have created the conditions under which pests and diseases thrive, while almost completely ceasing the improvement of the crops' own resistance to the threats we have created.” This is so true in wine, where we have a global monoculture of a handful of European grapes that have been propagated by cloning for two hundred years or more. And in the last 50 years we've spent literally billions of dollars developing chemicals to enable these clones to survive, while investing very little in breeding new varieties that don't need the chemicals… or in expanding the idea of wine to include other ingredients besides European grapes. Mark doesn't spray his fruit, whether it's apples or cherries or chestnuts or grapevines, he employs a kind of vitiforestry, and his approach to agriculture illuminates some incredible perspective shifts in how we could think about growing grapevines differently… as well as how we could think about wine differently… as one symbiotic element in a holistic perennial polyculture. Support the Organic Wine Podcast: https://www.patreon.com/organicwinepodcast Sponsor: https://www.centralaswine.com/

Taylor Chalstrom sits down with UCCE Viticulture Farm Advisor Tian Tian to discuss the long-term effects of rootstocks on performance of mature grapevines.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1791 On this day, Australia's first thriving grapevine was planted. The First Fleet's Captain Arthur Phillip brought grape cuttings from South America and South Africa and produced a small vineyard at Farm Cove. Today, Farm Cove is the location of the Sydney Botanical Gardens. When the plants did not bear, they were transplanted to Parramatta.  Arthur Philip served as the first Governor of New South Wales when his Crimson Grapes flourished in the warm Australian fertile soil. Today Crimson Grapes can also be found in Victoria and southeastern Queensland. Australian Crimson Grapes enjoy a long harvest period from November to May.   1869 Birth of Charlotte Mary Mew, English poet. In her poem, In Nunhead Cemetary, she wrote, There is something horrible about a flower; This, broken in my hand, is one of those He threw it in just now; it will not live another hour; There are thousands more; you do not miss a rose.   And in The Sunlit House, she wrote, The parched garden flowers Their scarlet petals from the beds unswept Like children unloved and ill-kept But I, the stranger, knew that I must stay. Pace up the weed-grown paths and down Till one afternoon ... From an upper window a bird flew out And I went my way.   1887 Birth of Georgia O'Keeffe, American modernist artist. During her incredible career as a painter, Georgia created over 900 works of art. She is remembered for her iconic paintings of skulls and flowers. In 1938 Georgia's career stalled. Yet she was approached by an advertising agency about creating two paintings for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Food Company) to use in their advertising. Georgia was 51 years old when she took the nine weeks, all-expense-paid trip. Georgia never did paint a pineapple. And gardeners will enjoy this obscure fact: Of all the floral paintings that O'Keeffe created in Hawaii, exactly NONE were native to the island. Instead, Georgia loved the exotic tropicals imported from South America: Bougainvillea, Plumeria, Heliconia, Calliandra, and the White Bird of Paradise. It was Georgia 0'Keeffe who said all of these quotes about flowers - a subject for which she held strong opinions. Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time ...like to have a friend takes time. I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move! If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment. I decided that if I could paint that flower on a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.   1930 Birth of James Graham Ballard (pen name J.G. Ballard), English novelist. James was part of the New Wave of science fiction in the 1960s. Yet, he is most remembered for his 1984 war novel, Empire of the Sun. In The Unlimited Dream Company, James wrote, "Miriam - I'll give you any flowers you want!' Rhapsodising over the thousand scents of her body, I exclaimed: "I'Il grow orchids from your hands, roses from your breasts. You can have magnolias in your hair... In your womb I'll set a fly-trap!" And in The Garden of Time, James wrote, "Axel," his wife asked with sudden seriousness. "Before the garden dies ... may I pick the last flower?" Understanding her request, he nodded slowly.   James once wrote, I believe in madness, in the truth of the inexplicable, in the common sense of stones, in the lunacy of flowers.   Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake This book came out in 2021, and the subtitle is How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. This book has won all kinds of recognition: The Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. The publisher writes, In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake's vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the "Wood Wide Web," to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.   Entangled Life is a fascinating read. Merlin's passion for fungi (fun-ghee) knows no bounds. Fungi are often referred to as a neglected kingdom of life. Compared to other kingdoms like plants and animals, we know very little about fungi, and only six percent has thus far been described. And Fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. Today most plant life depends on relationships with mycorrhizal fungi or fungi that live in their roots. These fungi help plants acquire water and nutrients. They also protect the plants from disease.  But its not just plants that need fungi. All Life on earth depends on fungi. Most fungi are mycelium - the branching fusing networks of tubular cells that feed and transport substances around themselves. Fungi have a unique way of organizing themselves. Mycelium cover the earth in a chaotic, sprawling way. Mycelium can be stretched out end to end up to ten kilometers from a single teaspoon of soil. This book is 368 pages of the mysterious and miraculous world of fungi.  You can get a copy of Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for around $9.   Botanic Spark 1909 On this day, the orange blossom was designated as the official state flower of Florida. This gesture inspired the poet William Livingston Larned to write a poem called Florida's State Flower. The last little bit goes like this: Whenever you see the spotless bud, You know tis Florida the fair. And wafted to you comes the scent Of all the blissful regions there. The rose may have its followers, The violet its standard, too; The fleur-de-lis and lily fair In tints of red and pink and blue; But just a scent, On pleasure bent, Of orange sweet, The nostrils greet, And from our dreams, the castles rise, Of groves and meadows 'neath calm skies.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, known as AMF, has an interesting an important relationship with plants, grapevines included. AMF helps vines take up mineral nutrients, creates a layer of protection from pathogens by occupying plant cells, and seems to improve soil structure and water movement.  In turn, grapevines supply carbohydrates to the fungus. Scientists believe the pant calculates the value of giving carbon in exchange for nutrients provided by the AMF. Tian Tian, Viticulture Farm Advisor, Cooperative Extension Kern County, UC Cooperative Extension studies this super host relationship between grapevines and AMF to determine how farmers can cultivate this natural alliance. She also covers how different Nitrogen applications impact wine flavor. A winemaker can create tropical notes or clean flavors in Chardonnay through soil, foliar or winery applications of Nitrogen. References: 28: Understanding Soil Health 72: Soil Microbes and Nutrient Availability Appropriate Time to Measure Leaf and Stem Water Potential (Abstract only) Dr. Tian Tian, Cooperative Extension Kern County Impact of Nitrogen Fertilizer or Nitrogen Wine Additions on Productivity and Sensory Outcomes (Abstract only) Managing Nitrogen in the Vineyard and the Winery Efficiently SIP Certified Sustainable Ag Expo November 14-16, 2022 | Use code PODCAST for $50 off The Effect of Soil Nitrogen Enrichment on Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (Video) 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 Craig Macmillan  0:00   Today is Dr. Tian Tian Viticultural Farm Advisor with Corporate Extension, Kern County, part of the UC Corporate Extension system. Dr. Tian, thank you for being with us today.   Dr Tian Tian  0:11  Thanks for having me.   Craig Macmillan  0:12  Can you tell us a little bit what's your role as a Viticulture Farm Advisor? That's a term that we hear but we don't always know kind of what it means.   Dr Tian Tian  0:19  My title is a Viticulture Farm Advisor. So there's a three components involved in my job extension, research and education. So a lot of times what we do is we help growers to solve problems, through farm calls and to find better solutions for their problems through a research project. And if they are something, knowledge have been obtained through research or other sources, we communicate with growers and to inform them the availability of those knowledge. And the meanwhile, education is occurred during this process. Specifically for Kern County, this is a big area for grape production. So 60% of the grape in the county are table grapes, and close to 30% are wine grapes, and 10% is a rasin grapes. The nature of my work, I work close with table grape growers, then to help them to solve the production issues they may have. And they're teaching me a lot of things along the way.   Craig Macmillan  1:20  I'm sure. I'm sure. So you have a role directly with farmers.   Dr Tian Tian  1:25  Yeah, yeah, it's way, a lot of times we find those research questions in the vineyard and a grower call us to say, for example, last year, was it delayed, the spring grows, a lot of them are observed. Stunted growth, and they're just wondering what's happened. And then that is actually as a start off me to look into what it is the reasons lead to the problem. And next year, what can we do better. And then, early this year, when we have our annual meeting and a rower come and they just say, Okay, now we know how there's some practice we can use to avoid the problem again, and how to adjust our practice based on the weather we got in certain years. And what other things we should taking, taking consideration when making management practices. All of those has been a really beneficial for both sides. I learned a lot from them, and then they actually benefited from the extension work were doing.   Craig Macmillan  2:25  That's really great. And I'm glad that that exists. And I'm glad you're on the job there in Kern. And prior to that you have done a lot of research in the area of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. And also in terms of the effects of nitrogen, either as fertilizer or natural uptake, into vines and impacts on buying productivity and also on wine quality and all of that. Mycorrhizal fungi are something that a lot of us hear about. We're aware of. We know they're important. It's part of the soil biome, but I think a lot of us can use at least a refresher course. What exactly are arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi? What is the role that they play in the soil microbiome?   Dr Tian Tian  3:05  That's a really good question. Actually. I feel arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi is probably a one group of the fungus were no more than a lot of other groups. The reason for that is arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi actually form the fungal structure inside of the critical cell of grapevine roots. And it's probably something happened million years ago that grapevine just decided they really liked this a friend. So for a lot of roots, we have looking at 80, let me say 60 to 95% of the root cells are a critical cells are colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. And so it's kind of a reflection about how how tight those association is. So in terms of what does the fungus do, there's a main, the three main roles we know. The top is to help the plants to take mineral nutrients from the soil. So especially those fully mobile ones and the ones we know more than others is a phosphorus. So it's in the vineyard where you have low phosphorus availability, the day you fumigat it and then just kill that AMF inoculum and your ends up with a stunted vine because phosphorus deficiency and it has been observed in the past. But once you innoculate with AMSF they're improving the efficiency of obtain those fully mobile nutrients. And the second thing we believe or it needs more research into the area is because they have a lot of fungal structure is a high fast growing in the soil. So they improve the aggregation of the soil and then improve the water movement in the soil. So that is, that is a new area where or kind of the newer research or dive into it is maybe the grapevines are also say creating a lot of the, let's say sugar or other compounds a carbohydrate compounds through AMF hyphae. And so it's influencing the soil microbial community in that way. So it is a really interesting fungus where they have part leaving the plants and apart out of the plants, and also there have a critical contribution to grapes. But it's a fair trade when the AMF is working hard to grow the hyphae through to explore the soil for those mineral nutrients. And the grapevines are supply carbohydrate to those fungus as well. So what they caught is a fair trade market. In other crop, what they find is actually the plants were reward the AMF be able to deliver the more resources they need.   Craig Macmillan  5:54  So are AMF actually do they play the role of kind of an extension of the roots? They're bringing resources to the root?   Dr Tian Tian  6:03  Yeah, kind of you can understand that way they consider the the high face or extension of the roots. But there's other arguments is a hybrid much stronger as compared to a roots. So what is probably not a really close analogy. So what we find is the root length off a grapevine is kind of the distance your walk your dog in a day, but the length of the hyphae the vine can hold is the probably the lens you can kind of make a circle around the earth for at least one circle. So yeah, because there's lower construction cost, if you have thinner hyphae compare with grapevine roots, which is thicker as compared to grass and as a crop. But that data is only opt in to from our greenhouse trial. It's does not necessarily mena its representing what happened in the natural environment.   Craig Macmillan  7:03  How do you study the stuff in the natural environment? This seems really hard. You're talking about things that are finer and sounds like very fragile, even compared to roots. And if you're growing things in like a clay, clay loam soil, it seems like it'd be hard to tease these little bits out or to study how things moved or anything. How do you do it in the field?   Dr Tian Tian  7:22  Yeah, so in the field, what our focus is we focus on the roots, it is really difficult to get even in the greenhouse where the vines growing in a confined space, but those hyphae are really hard to pick up from the soil. And then to find them to isolate them and to evaluate them is really difficult. But there's a certain protocol can be used to study that area. It's just not that what I did for my PhD. My PhD advisor was left with all those. So what my my PhD work focused is I'm looking into arbusbular actually living in the roots, they were formed a tree like a beautiful structure called arbusbular actually living in the roots, they were formed a tree like a beautiful structure called el bosque, you're the frequency of those albacore show up and the intensity of their basket or, or even the size of them are a reflection of the nutrient exchange between the two partners. So what I did is we're we're collecting rock samples, both in the field and also in the greenhouse to clean it up, and then to stain the roots and a molded glass plate, and then to look under scope. So we could say how different treatment has effect, basically, the association of grapevines and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. But in addition to that, we'll look into plant grows, plant nutrient status and to track it during the season. And so in our list work, give us some idea about what happening. It's a big complicated puzzle and a wedge, I find it's really fascinating, but may allow it to make it a different area to study albacore. The frequency of those arbuscular show up and the intensity of their arbuscular or, or even the size of them are a reflection of the nutrient exchange between the two partners. So what I did is we're we're collecting root samples, both in the field and also in the greenhouse to clean it up, and then to stain the roots and mount it on a glass plate, and then to look under scope. So we could say how different treatment has effect, basically, the association of grapevines and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. But in addition to that, we'll look into plant grows, plant nutrient status and to track it during the season. And so in our list work, give us some idea about what happening. It's a big complicated puzzle and a which, I find it's really fascinating, but may allow it to make it a different area to study.   Craig Macmillan  9:01  Right, right. Right, right. This is a silly question, I guess. But there's no silly questions. So is it fair to say that more AMF is better for crop?   Dr Tian Tian  9:12  That's actually a really good question. We're trying to find the answer is not an optimal level. It's like wow, what my wines are 80% of the fine roots of my vine our colonized and away call it good. It's more complicated than that. If we're thinking about a question like this is first if you like you're in your vineyard, and you do your leaf petiol or leaf blade and nutrient test your phosphorus or has never been really a problem. So for us, that's an indication that the vines, the association between mycorrhizal and the grapevines are working and then so if that does not really work, and the way you're using the test you say a phosphorus is a probably mineral nutrient or tell you how good the bond is. And another thing is grapevine we consider it as a super host. They love AMF. So listen, it's how it happened is glorified probably pretty efficient in terms of fixed cover so they can afford to allocate those were like to contribute to the AMF to you know, to establish a good relationship. And another thing for plants is they need to consider if I give the carbon to the it's not that smart of the process, but that's how we think that's happened is the grapevine so will have a way to semi calculate how much carbon you get or how much things like nutrient you can get from that. So what they find is with the amount of carbohydrate they supply, and it's more efficient to allow the fungus to do the job to get the bio nutrients. And then there's other benefits off AMF is there whilst they occupied the cells and a lot of time the the pathogens are hard to get into the into the roots and to serve as a layer of protection. That is area more research is dive into under to say how good it works. So in general, I would think not exactly more AMF is better. Its the plant make it's a choice that based on the situation. But for other samples I have a look at in Oregon and the roots are colonized really well. With that being said, Oregon is an area where we have more radical soil where the availablity is relatively low. And so that's maybe why we say a really high colonization rate. I'm curious to see what happened California.   Yeah, absolutely. And that was leads to my next question is as far as we know right now what are the conditions that promote AMF populations?   Well we find is in general adding AMF is a different story if you're have you have no fumigation going on your vineyard is relatively healthy on a you don't run into other issues it is really not clear to us if you're inoculated certain you wouls day more beneficial AMF will lead to a better growth. That part of the data or is to your liking because if you apply to to the greenhouse it does not representing what happened in the field if you put in the field it is just really hard to do that you probably need to mix your soil with also inoculum right and and now there's a some product say you can mix it in the liquid and then there were significantly increase the amount of colonization but there's so many different ways to look at the fungus so it's added to a lot of vague area what we're gonna be doing. So but in general, what we're finding is if you have have legume as your cover crop legume is a host for AMF and so they're able to increase kind of both of the AMF population. So if you are thinking about to grow a new you establish a new vineyards and the you have the history nutrient limitation, I will just say use legume would be a good choice. And on the other hand mustard is not AMF host but it has been using cover crop some people were saying it's were released some of the compounds that were feter nemotodes so that's a totally different story. Yeah, so for me the best way it's not really add more AMF and the vine will bemore healthy. A lot of time what happened is in the vineyard there the vines and afff are both pretty happy and they have a good relationship. Actually we tried really hard to to increase nitrogen fertilization rate and able to shake that relationship a little bit so they're bonds are pretty tight and then it's if you are not running into a huge issue that is maybe it's the AMF inoculation and potential is low or that's a certain things in the vineyard and welcome to discuss that was me however interested know. And then the last thinkg that happens, you really it's I want to say most of the time, the AMF in your soil will be sufficient to help your vines to get the fully mobile nutrients like phosphorus, Zinc, copper from the soil.   Craig Macmillan  14:31  Are there ways that I can test to see whether I've hit that threshold?   Dr Tian Tian  14:37  There's a test you can run to see the inoculum potential and then just to say feel filled is a safe, but generally that is happens normally in a research lab. Yeah, there's not any commercial lab I know of there were collector root, route samples, because that's a tedious process. You're collecting the routes and the unit to pick only the fine routes, not all the woody roots you can, the AMF does not live there. Then you need to clean them really well, stain it at a look at it under the scope and evolve in like way, we have a great system and then to great how much the roots got colonized. So while the way we're used mostly to say where a problem occurred is look at leaf petiol and leaf blade, phosphorous status and I felt that's the most easiest way you can now if there's a problem. But the threshold if a nutrient is deficient or sufficient, that's another another topic.   Craig Macmillan  15:36  There's kind of a proxy variable there that I can actually look at my soil phosphorus, it's maybe not mobile, then I can then look at what the what the deficiencies are, sufficiency are in the vine and say, hey, you know, I'm guessing that I don't have a lot of mycorrhizal activity here. arbuscular mycorrhizal activity here because I'm not seeing that phosphorus moving, there's plenty there, but it's not moving into the plant. So that seems like a good kind of guide. What things can go or do if anything to encourage AMF in their soil? Assume its there, relationship with the grapevine. Maybe I'm not seeing the kind of transport that I think I would like to see which would make sense what can I do to help move that process along recurs as populations?   Dr Tian Tian  16:18  Okay, so that's kind of a dive into a really good question. So a lot of times, people weill think AMF is able to assess a different pool of phosphorus as compared to grapevine, that's really not true for AMF or they're assessing all the inorganic phosphorus in the soil. So a lot of times the availability of phosphorus in the soil is changing based on the soil pH if you have a really low pH soil you're probably outline prior to planting to bring up the pH and a like that. But there's no really a particular thinkg you're really do in the vineyard to bolster up the AMF population as long as you have a good canopy growth canopy create a couple of hydrate without carbohydrate AMF wont. It's it's a kind of both it's a fair market trade thing. If the grapevine is because in some of the experimental way wrong and the way keep the nitrogen rate really low so the vines are not really growing and we have say the arbuscular frequency in the fine roots are decreasing. Our understanding of that is so the grapevine says I tried really hard but I just cannot supply the carbohydrate you be happy with. So AMF just said okay, you know what I will do what I can do I'm not as happy as when you give me more but I will do what the job I can possibly offer right. Well you have a decent Canopy Growth and your nitrogen is kind of in the middle they reach you know a happy relationship is, yeah, you know what I am ready to share with my carbohydrate and AMF say okay, I'll give you the maximum benefits. But if you are in the vineyard you have really high nitrogen status which mainly happens in research not really I've noticed that you weren't dump a lot of nitrogen if that happens. And so the vines say maybe I have you know enough ability to grow the roots I think our be less dependent on AMF or the nitrogen you add in actually is regulating some part of AMF and AMF is okay, I feel my function our association our relationship is affected the cell that I decided to colonize les. So actually there's quite a bit of research going on to tease this apart out but so far we don't know which is a key part that is playing in terms of how AMF and the plants out there are regulating each other.   Craig Macmillan  18:44  So we know a little bit but we don't know if mentioned Oregon soils and so at this point, what do we know about AMF and soil and other particular soil that seems to do well and you find it more frequently here there's others were really shows up at all.   Dr Tian Tian  18:57  Yeah, well I was thinking about this question because when we're thinking about soil type that's including a lot of things the texture the pH the organic matter the so so I'm am still really learning about California to the soil here and then I haven't got to dive into the roots yet. So what happened in Oregon is there some more clay and loam soil there generally with AMF of the hyphae of the fungus are pretty powerful in terms of explore the soil and a few have little pore and the roots cannot grow and lead and the hyphae. So when we grow plants in the greenhouse where we have have soil and have sand and the AMF of colonization is about 75 to 95 even 100. And that is a similar to what we got from field where we have more clay loam soil. So I would say soil texture or soil type may have some effects, but I'm not so clear on how big the impact is. In terms of the lifecycle, or the impact of AMF I found the plants.   Craig Macmillan  20:04  So moving to California, welcome, very glad to have you as a farmer advisor in Kern County, and you've been doing some research here recently. That's kind of exciting. Would you want to tell us a little bit a little bit about that things related to nitrogen fertilization and things related to wind quality and nitrogen uptake? You've done some interesting stuff on that.   Dr Tian Tian  20:23  My Nitrogen work is also work I did in in Oregon, and my colleague, Dr. Matthew, Fidelibus in Cardiac Center, and he's doing more work in table grapes. Than they have a bigger project to find a more efficient way and easier way to look into plant to vine nutrient need and how you're going to fertilize. So for my work in Oregon, is to start with a simple question. If you want to add in nitrogen, should you add it in the vineyard or in the winery. Because nitrogen is a essential nutrient for the grapevines but also essential nutrients for the yeast, you can either adding nitrogen to the soil or to the foliage in the vineyard, or you can just keep the nitrogen low in the vineyard and then the added in the winery. And in the winery you can have a two form of nitrogen you can add a one is diammonium phosphate, and then or you can add organic and supplements like those those products and have a lot of people are selling. At the beginning of the research is we want to find a which one relates to about her wine quality in chardonnay and also in Pinot Noir. What previous work in Oregon what my PhD advisor Dr. Paul Schreiner did is he find that maintaining a low nitrogen status in Oregon vineyard is not a bad idea. The yield is less responsive to nitrogen status as compared to the canopy grows the vegetative growth, if you're changing nitrogen application rate, you're saying the response pretty significantly. And then so that is one benefits. And second is from the wines they made they point to the low nitrogen wise actually gave more floral aromas. And then the color is darker. So it's related to a better quality in the sense of you know, sensory and appearance of the wine and all those things. They think lower nitrogen may be the way to go. But that research is did in our research farm where they have put the device in 50 gallon big pots, so they can control the fertilization. It's not really a commercial production setting. So my PhD work is to focus on okay, let's think about that were to add in nitrogen and water to relate to. So what we actually find is adding nitrogen to the soil in the vineyard affected the wine sensory quality more than other treatments, where you've highlighted in the trial, and we say a more clear in fact, in shadow neck than Pinot Noir. The reason is not really a varietals, only varieties are different. It's also because the Chardonnay block where you'd have lower nitrogen depth status to start with. Yeah, so what we're finding is if you're adding nitrogen to the soil, and then the finish wine, the Chardonnay, we're have more tropical aroma, the pashion fruit trait that is a famous for sauvignon blanc producing New Zealand. So a lot of people like those more fruity drink wine, but if you wanted to Oak Chardonnay, and then to maintain a more, the winemaker calls it clean characteristics, and then data where bring more potential during the aging process. We say the soil aliance brings more the rather fruit characters, like a berry, like the cherry, and the plum, or it's kind of in that category, I need to go back to dive into my own notes. But what what generally we find is soil nitrogen application in the bigger cause and effect on the wine thatn foliar application in the vineyard or adding nitrogen in the winery.   Craig Macmillan  24:10  In a positive way?   Dr Tian Tian  24:11  Well, we were considered as winemaker can use it as a tool to make wines in a different style. So if you want your wines to be more fruity or have these and that characters, there's a something you could do just kind of just other just a practice you're already using in the vineyard and to achieve that.   Craig Macmillan  24:31  You talked about two topics here. And so I'm gonna ask the same question regarding the kind of both of them is it what is the one thing that you would advise or would recommend to a grape grower regarding AMF and maybe soil health just kind of in general?   Dr Tian Tian  24:46  Wow. Theres so many things. But in general what I, I have been thinking about this question a lot because now soil health is a big topic, no matter whichever area would dive into and not only grower, consumer wants to have a fruit a coming from, a vineyard that is more sustainable operated. One advice I would have is adding organic matter back to this compost is good. There's a lot of things, it does not need to be so fancy. And it'll work kind of increase the if organic matter basically adding food to the soil microbe microbial community, right, there's different parts, and each of them are playing a role. And we do a lot of bio genome kind of study, who is there, but what they're doing is a series of things we don't know. And so that is a good thing. And the second is, so I'm only allowed to say one thing?   Craig Macmillan  25:47  Go ahead and say a second thing.   Dr Tian Tian  25:51  Okay. So the second thing I always think is just look at do your leaf petiol or blade, nutrient. The threshold stablished by research. That's a lot of work into it, but it is representing a limited number of vineayrd. If you have a record for your own vineyard, you want to feel more comfortable about how you manage the nutrition.   Craig Macmillan  26:15  Now that said, just do one thing I'm going to now I have to ask a follow up question. What's your recommendation for how to add organic matter? What do you think are the best ways to do that?   Dr Tian Tian  26:24  Well, a good question. Actually, I was thinking about I would dive more into that as a research trial. So a lot of growers in our region do, they were just lay on the compost kind of on the surface around the vine. So there's a benefit is actually like, yeah, slowly releasing fertilizer. But some people will say add the planting, you can incorporate it into the soil a little bit, or even after planting, you can incorporate it into the soil. Yes, you're improve part of the roots, but you're also adding nutrients back to the soil where the roots can easily access. The answer is I'm not so sure what is a best idea. And also, now they have a liquid for an organic fertilizer on the market and so there is another way other than to use a compost, there's another form of fertilizer you can add and that is organic certified and then provide organic matter to the soil.   Craig Macmillan  27:16  Now going back to nitrogen, what is one thing that you would recommend to grape grower regarding their nitrogen management?   Dr Tian Tian  27:23  Oh, okay, monitored closely, and they don't fertilize too much. But as of this year, the fertilizer price is increased to 30 to 40%. I think over fertilization is really not an option. But it's more like I feel growers like to take care of babies, you'll you look at their needs, and then you you know, you do the physical exam, to understand what's happening, and then you'll fertilize it based on that. Block to block may be different. And the variety to a variety can be different. And then the more you know about them, and then the more you can help them to gather to the level of of canopy growth and the fruit quality you're shooting for.   Craig Macmillan  28:05  And that's gonna have everything to do with taking those petiol and leaf blade samples and keeping records and then comparing them to what your outcomes are.   Dr Tian Tian  28:13  Not only that, it's also including looking at the vineyard and to walk through to to look at the canopy. If you're thinking about a petiol nutrient test, they're testing concentration, right, and then the threshold established our concentration. But how the concentration of those nutrients is decided by the canopy size. Okay, the vine grows, have some ideas on aware, research are looking into easier ways to monitor in vine rows so you can compare a year to a year. And a lot of times it catches the onset of the problem is really important. And then we're always learning I feel agriculture is a learning business. Every year we'll learn something new and next year we're doing something better.   Craig Macmillan  28:58  That is very wise. Where can people find out more about you and your work?   Dr Tian Tian  29:02  Welcome to visit the UCC Kern website and then also feel free you can find my email my phone there and then feel free to call or email and I'm happy to help if there's any anything I could do to make your life happier and you will be happier.   Craig Macmillan  29:18  And then we will have links to those things in the show notes. I want to thank our guest today Dr. Tian Tian Viticulture Farm Advisor, Cooperative Extension, Kern County UC Cooperative Extension, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. And thank you for sharing your knowledge. I think you're gonna be a real benefit to the region. And we really appreciate you having this job.   Dr Tian Tian  29:35  Thank you. That is a so fun to chat about my research work and all those interesting things. The grape world is happening.   Craig Macmillan  29:44  It is a really, really fun and I think that's why people like this podcast, especially me, this is so much fun for me. Anyway, enough about that, you know, thank you so much.   Dr Tian Tian  29:55  Thanks for having me.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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My guest for this episode is Tom Plocher. Tom has been growing and breeding grapevines and making wine from them since 1980. He was a longtime friend and mentee of Elmer Swenson, and lives and grows grapes in Minnesota just north of the Twin Cities. Tom has bred several varieties of grapes that are patented and available for sale out in the world… and you've heard about at least one of them – Petite Pearl – if you listened to the recent episode with Montpellier Vineyards in Vermont. In this interview Tom gives detailed instructions about how to breed grapevines, with some great tips and an in-depth sense of what is involved. While Tom isn't focused on breeding for resistance to mildew or pests, what he's doing and what he teaches us in this episode may be some of the most valuable information ever shared on this podcast. Because learning to breed grapevines is what will make it possible to adapt to the rapidly changing climate and find a delicious future for wine that doesn't require the unsustainable use of chemical sprays that make environmental degradation worse. Tom literally shows us the path to the future of wine, and that it's something you can do with some intelligence, patience, and care on your own, without a lot of land. Here's a fun fact: The time it takes to research, develop, test, and get approvals of a new chemical pesticide is about 10 years. The time it takes to breed, grow, prove out and patent a new variety of grapevine that could have any number of beneficial traits – including a diminished need for new pesticides – is about 10 years. Forget the fact that the development of the pesticide took millions of dollars too, and that breeding the grape just took time and some knowledge and practice. Imagine if all of us who grow vineyards also began collecting, crossing, and breeding new vines. Imagine where we'd be if we'd channeled our resources over the last 80 years into this approach to resilience and vitality in our vineyards, rather than trying to prop up a handful of increasingly more feeble grapevines with the ongoing development of chemicals that degrade our environment and make climate change and human health worse.   Think of how much further along we'd be to having real solutions to viticultural challenges by looking in the vines themselves. It is both possible and 100% achievable to have delicious wine made from grapes that never need to be sprayed with anything and thrive in the extreme climate that will be our future. But not as long as we fetishized and clone the same vines over and over again. If we take the knowledge that Tom gives us here and apply it to the California wine industry, we could have a continually renewing, regenerating, and improving cycle of increasing health and flavor in our wine and our world, rather than this downward spiral we're on that has an expiration date. The only thing standing in our way, I believe, is prejudice. We've created a hierarchy in which a few types of grapes, and only those few select grapes, can make great wine. That hierarchy is bullshit. All grapes are hybrids.   I hope you'll join with me in normalizing the idea that wine is not made from a few European grapes but from an ongoing process of adaptation, innovation, experimentation, and inclusion. If you do, I think the future of wine can be exciting. It can be diverse. It can be delicious. In this interview, Tom gives us the tools to get there. https://www.plochervines.com/ Sponsor: https://www.centralaswine.com/

Live in the Grapevines  Host: Coach Guests: Martha Graf and Dan Vice 

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast w/ Shiona Thompson: Topics Include: CPC Leadership debate Campaign promises Poilievre skipping debate And more GUEST: Jean Charest, Leaderships Candidate for the Federal Conservative Party - The fate of this season's crop came down to one mid-January evening, when a bitter cold blanket fell across Niagara. Grapevines covered on Westcott Vineyards with thermal blankets survived, but for other parts of the Jordan Station vineyard, there was “quite a bit of bud damage” said owner Carolyn Hurst. It saw its crop load reduced by 50 or 60 per cent for the year, and lost about 25 per cent of its grapevines altogether.GUEST: Aaron Dobbin, President of the Wine Growers of Ontario - In a defensive back and forth between that lasted well into the fourth quarter, it was the BC Lions who would prevail over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to claim a win in the second game of Thursday's doubleheader. GUEST: Rick Zamperin, Host of Good Morning Hamilton & CHML Sports Director and Host of ‘The Fifth Quarter' - Thing we still don't know about the Jerry Dias investigation in the wake of the leaked report. GUEST: Rosa Saba, Business reporter for the Toronto Star

Grapevines have been plagued by pests that can leave a vineyard void of fruit. Olive trees has been dying in many countries due to pests and disease that has killed off entire hillsides. Have you felt that same frustration with your 401(k), IRA or other retirement account? Specialized grafting has saved many vineyards and olive groves. Could a graft of a whole life insurance policy into your plan help your retirement account sustain itself, to not only survive but to thrive?  Mark Bertrang, the author of Investments Don't Hug: Embracing the Life Insurance Asset discusses the grafting of a whole life insurance policy to your overall retirement planning to counter the financial pests and disease that your retirement maybe suffering from.

There are three levels of cold hardiness in grapes and understanding these can help growers select and manage the best varieties for their region. Imed Dami, Professor of Viticulture in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at The Ohio State University, explains cold tolerance and new information about the role of abscisic acid in ripening. First an overview of cold hardiness. The first level is very cold tender. A lot of these varieties are grown in California and they are not native to North America. Second, are cold hardy, or tolerant grapes. These are the native species to North America. And third are hybrid crosses. The majority of grapes being farmed fall into this category. New research is being done on abscisic acid, a plant hormone that induces dormancy. When sprayed around version, it can help send the plants into dormancy earlier and maintain a deeper dormancy which makes the grapevines more cold tolerant.   References: 2022-06-03 Roller Crimper Tailgate (Register) Abscisic Acid and Cold Hardiness in Grapes Buckeye Appellation Foliar Applied Abscisic Acid Increases ‘Chardonnay' Grapevine Bud Freezing Tolerance during Autumn Cold Acclimation Foliar Application of Abscisic Acid Increases Freezing Tolerance of Field-grown Vitis vinifera Cabernet franc Grapevines (Abstract only) Imed Dami (email) SIP Certified Sustainable Ag Expo November 14-16, 2022 Winter Injury to Grapevines and Methods of Protection 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 Craig Macmillan  0:00  Our guest today is Imed Dami. He's Professor of Viticulture in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at The Ohio State University. Thanks for being on the show, Imed. So you're doing some pretty interesting work there in the Midwest or East, depending on who you ask. So you work in Ohio, and you work in cold hardiness of grapes, grape vines, which is the work you've been doing for quite a fair amount of time. Now, you did that as well, in your graduate work. What can you tell us about what the climatic conditions are like in Ohio, especially in regards to cold weather, that may not be seen another grape growing region to the US. So other listeners may not be familiar with kind of the challenges there are.   Imed Dami  0:35  So in terms of the growing season in Ohio, it could be similar to many other grape growing regions in the country. However, during the dormant season, in the winter, it is different, it is much colder in Ohio. So the way we determine you know, how cold it is, in Ohio, is there is this maps, it's called the plant called hardness map developed by USDA. And these maps are based on lowest temperature for 30 years during the coldest month of the year. So they put that information together, you know, and they come up with averages, and then they divide, you know, each state into different zones based on those minimum temperature. Okay. So for example, in Ohio, we have three zone. The minimum temperature range between zero and minus 15 fahrenheit. So that is cold. And then they designate you know, these zones, like a number and the letter. So, for example, in Ohio, we have the three zones, you know, designated as six B, six A and five B. However, the majority of the state falls in the what we call six A's zone, where temps range between minus five to minus 15. So that is very cold. So, how do we relate this to the grapes? Grape vines, typically, they start to see cold damage at temperature of zero fahrenheit, or lower. So you could see, you know, like grown grapes in the majority of the location in Ohio is challenging, you know, just because of how cold it gets during the winter. Just to give you like a point of reference, these numbers, you know, of the zones, the higher the number, the milder the winter is. So, for example, in California, the majority of the grape growing region, they fall in the region of 9, 10, and 11 zones. And in those zones, the minimum temperature doesn't fall below freezing. So that's why in California, you don't hear any, you know, problems about cold damage during the winter.   Craig Macmillan  2:44  That's in that brings up an interesting point. So, you know, you say damage happening at zero degrees fahrenheit, why is it the vine damaged and cell walls breaking and whatnot, when we get below freezing? If that vine is full of, you know, water, that it's taken up in the fall and things like that? Why is it why does it need to get so cold before we see damage?   Imed Dami  3:03  That's a good question. So the, the plants in general, they have a different mechanism of survival, you know, to cold. So when it comes to grape vines, the most sensitive part of the vine are the buds. And these buds, the way they survive winter is with the mechanism that we call a super cooling. So what super cooling is, is basically, the water or the solution, and the plant remains liquid, even below freezing temperatures. So that's how the grapevines you know, buds survive those minimum temperatures. So that is the mechanism by which grape vines survive. Of course, when you have a super cooling up to a point, in general, plants could super cool down to like minus 40 Fahrenheit, which is very cold. But it ranges you know, from let's say, like I said, you know, just below freezing all the way down to that. And the difference is the type of grape variety or species which I will be talking about later on.   Craig Macmillan  4:08  What is severe cold damage on grapes look like? Again, a lot of folks outside of the Midwest or the northern United States may not have ever seen anything like it before. And what kind of economic impacts are there?   Imed Dami  4:19  Sure, the vines you know, they have this parts that are above ground, and any part above the ground that is exposed to those minimum temperature could sustain cold damage. And then because there are different parts, the one that is the most sensitive are the buds, like I mentioned earlier, the way you identify a cold damage is by cutting through the bud. And then the typically, the buds are alive, they look green, and then when they are damaged, they look brown, so it's very easy to tell, you know, by visual observation. And then within grapevines, we have what we call the combpound buds, they call them compound because there is a primary, secondary, and tertiary bud. Primary bud actually is where the fruit comes from. Unfortunately, that is the most sensitive to cold. So what that means is every time you have cold damage, the primary bud is damaged, that means that's going to become like a loss, you know, in crops. And then the other tissue that is important that could also sustain damage is what we call the vascular tissues. These are basically the pipeline's you know, in the grapevine, primarily what we call the phloem, and the cambium. And those two actually, same thing, when you will cut through the cane, you know, or the corridor or the trunk, you'll see the color change to brown, which indicates cold damage. Though the worst case scenario is not only you have the canes damaged the cordon, the trunk, but also the whole vine, and basically, cold actually could cause complete vine death. So in terms of economic impact, it depends on the severity of the plant part that is damaged. So if you have only buds damaged, that's typically becomes you know, like a more like a crop loss. Same thing with more severe damage with the vascular tissue, let's say in cane, cordon, or trunk, you lose, you know, those parts of the vine like a cane, you may lose it or the cordon, or the trunk. The most severe damage is vine death, basically, the whole vine dies. In terms of economic impact for the vine damage. Actually, there is a study done in New York, where they estimated the loss, you know, from a dead vine due to cold. And their estimate is a loss of $155 per vine, and this is for vinifera. So if you extrapolate that to per acre is equivalent to $125,000 per acre in terms of losses. And the main reason is not only you have to buy new vines, you have to replace you know, remove the vines, do the replanting, and then also, the main thing is you have a loss of production for four years. And then basically, when we talk about wine grapes, you're not only losing the grapes, you are also losing the product, which is why for four years, and that's why the number is so high and significant.   Craig Macmillan  7:20  That's a good question. So if you have a bad winter, and you go in and you evaluate buds, and they're dead, and you then go into the cordon and look and say oh, that's not good. And then you work your way down into the trunk, and look at that, is it ever the case that you will hit a spot where there's still some vinifera that's alive towards where the rootstock graft union is that you could graft on to or that you might get some latent buds to come out.   Imed Dami  7:45  So, actually, I will talk about this later on in terms of the practices, you know, in the vineyard when we talk about grafted vines, which is, you know, common for vinifera. The reason why I mentioned this, because typically here we also grow hybrids, they're not grafte. With the grafted vines, you typically hear in the east, we mound soil around the graft union. So at the base of the trunk, you know, you see this what we call mounting or healing up around the vine. And the main reason is to protect you know, that graph tune because it's very sensitive. And then also the base of that trunk to avoid any damage in case of the worst case scenario, like you said. When do you have damaged, you know, all the way of the cordon and then the trunks. If you have that situation, then you save the base of that trunk. And then you have regrowth, you know, of the vine. So that's typically how it is done, it is not common here to graft over, you know, the vines when they are damaged. But that is typically the practice, you know,   Craig Macmillan  8:48  Which reminds you something else. So is this a temperature over time kind of a curve? Or is it a threshold? Once we hit this temperature it's done or is it need to be at a temperature for a period of time before the damage really shows up?   Imed Dami  9:03  Typically, when you reach like the temperature outside, you basically have the temperature outside and then the temperature of the tissue. When we talk about the small tissue like gray buds, they reach an equilibrium between the two. So as soon as it gets cold, you know, let's say two minus 10 in the outside it will be minus 10 in the buds as well. So in that case, you know, the the freezing of the water is instantaneous. It's like immediately. When you have tissues that are bigger, like the cordon or the trunks because they're thicker you know, just like you take a piece of wood you know and then the temperature usually outside is colder colder than the temperature in the trunk. So it takes more time for trunk to get damaged. You know it may be like hours before it really, yeah. So typically here in our situation, you know, when we have some these big events like the polar vortex back in 2014 Not only it got cold, but it's  stayed cold for a long time. And those are the worst scenarios, you know, because not only a damaging or the bad, but also, it damaged the trunks as well, because it's so cold, you know, for a long time.   Craig Macmillan  10:11  When we see this kind of an event, are we looking at a 100% loss across the vineyard?   Imed Dami  10:16  No, not typically. So, again, you know, I'd be mentioning this later on. The vines, you know, they tolerate cold based on their genetic makeup. So there are some varieties like the vinifera, they are very cold tender, they may sustained some damage, or more damaged than more cold tolerant or resistant varieties, like, you know, Concord, or some of the native grapes, you know, here grown in the east. So there are differences, you know, that you see, in terms of cold damage.   Craig Macmillan  10:49  Tell me more, you mentioned hybrids before and we're talking about different varieties, what can you tell us about the cold tolerance to cold hardiness of different varieties and what the genetic background might be on those and how plant breeding has addressed this problem maybe.   Imed Dami  11:03  So as I mentioned earlier, the cold hardens is actually a genetic trait. So what that means is the genetic makeup of each variety determines the cold hardens level of that variety. So it is in the genes, you know, of the viru. Based on that we have, like mainly three groups of grape types, if you want to call them The first group, what we call very cold, tender or cold sensitive, these are the group of the species vitis vinifera, these are basically the varieties grown in California. And the main reason why they're so tender, because they're not native to North America, they are used to more what we call a Mediterranean climate, you know, which is characterized by mild winters. So when we imported them here, and we grow them like in climates, like here in Ohio, it is very challenging because they're so tender. The other group, kind of the other extreme is what we call the cold hardy group, you know, or cold tolerant. These are native grapes. These are native species to North America, and we find them a lot here in eastern US, like vitis labrusca, an example of variety, like very popular varieties Concord. We also have other species like vitis riparia. So these are all native to this region. And those species are very cold, hard, you know, because they're used to the type of climate, you know, they are grown in. And then the third group is what we call the hybrid. So the hybrids are crosses between the vinifera and the native grapes. And the main reason why they develop these crosses is the vinifera basically provide the quality of the fruit, and eventually the wine. And then the native grapes provide the cold hardiness. In our industry, and generally, in the east, most of the grapes we grow actually are hybrids, because they tolerate a more cold, you know, than the vinifera. And there are several examples of varieties, old varieties like Vidal. Seyval, example of Chambourcin. And, and then we have now like a lot of new hybrids, like Traminette, Chardonel, are varieties are developed from New York program. And then we also have other very cold hardy do they call it super hardy varieties from the University of Minnesota like Frontenac, Marquette. These are very hardy varieties. And they are hybrids.   Craig Macmillan  13:28  Yeah, they were developed in Minnesota that have to be pretty darn hardy. You can see the challenge there. Tell us about your work around abscisic acid, I know that that's related to cold hardiness, that's related to sugar and other things. First of all, tell us what what is abscisic acid, ABA, what is abscisic acid.   Imed Dami  13:48  So abscisic acid acid actually is a plant hormone, it is naturally produced by the plan. And typically it is, it is associated with a lot of like physiological response by the plant. And one of them actually induces dormancy. Our idea when we use the abscisic acid is we try to kind of enhance dormancy by applying abscisic acid, you know. So we are adding more abscisic acid to the plant that produces its ow. And by doing that we could, our hypothesis at the time is can we change the dormancy like in terms of occurrence, you know, can we make it happen earlier because the earlier the vines enter into dormancy, the more prepared they are for the winter. And then number two, yeah, and then number two is the level of dormancy, the more dormant the vines, the better they do in the winter. And so when we applied abscisic acid actually did both. So while we are pleased with the responses. And then eventually vines, you know, not only they enter into dormancy earlier in the season, they also have a deeper dormancy. But then that actually was reflected later on in more cold hardy response by the vines that are treated with abscisic acid. So it was really a very positive response, you know, by applying that product. It was the first time this product was used in grapevines. And we're very excited to know by the response.   Craig Macmillan  15:21  How is it applied?   Imed Dami  15:22  We looked at the timing, you know, when is the best time to apply it. And what we found is actually, right after verasion during fruit ripening, when the leaves are still on the vines, you know, actually, the fruit is still maturing, we found that is the best time to apply abacisic acid. So this is basically sprayed, you know, it's a liquid, that you spray it on the canopy. And then that's it, then basically, we look at the response, you know, later in the fall, and then during the winter, so.   Craig Macmillan  15:56  You also mentioned a deeper dormancy. What does that mean? When is deeper dormancy?   Imed Dami  16:03  A deeper dormancy, that means the vines, you know, basically, during the fall, they began to enter into what we call dormant, you know, basically, they go into a state of like, asleep. When they do that, sometimes they don't go like into what I call, like a deep sleep, you know, and then that has to do with the climate, the conditions, you know, that they were exposed to every year depends also on the vine health, etc. When the vines enter into deeper dormancy, that means it takes more time and more effort to wake them up. And then when they are more dormant, they actually gain a more cold hardiness as compared to when they're not as as dominant. So, so that's what we mean by deeper dormancy.   Craig Macmillan  16:55  And that can be achieved by applying abscisic acid into the canopy, right around verasion?   Imed Dami  17:02  Yeah, we weren't able to do that. Exactly. So again, you know, like anything else. When you apply a product, you know, it works in some varieties, it doesn't work in others. It works in some climates, you know, not under others. So, we see sometimes this kind of inconsistency. But when we have a controlled environment, let's say in a greenhouse, we consistently see the response to abscisic acid by the plants. So basically, absciscic acid you could think of it as it mimics the environmental cues that typically the vines, you know, get from the environment because the vine, for the vines that go dormant and begin acclimating it has to have two clues from the. It's short days, as soon as the days become shorter, the vines you know, start to get dormant. And then the second clue or cue is the temperature. When he started to get colder, the virus begin to become more dominant and become more cold tolerant. So those are the two. And then we could replace those two cues, actually, by applying ABA.   Craig Macmillan  18:10  You know, actually, this brings up something that often or continually be been kind of confused about. How does the vine sense photoperiod? If the leaves are falling off or becoming cut off from the rest of the vine, is there another organ or way that the vine can sense what's going on with the light?   Imed Dami  18:30  Well, actually, they do that sensing when the leaves are still on.   Craig Macmillan  18:33  They do. Okay.   Imed Dami  18:34  Yeah, so the receptors really actually are by the leafs you know, and I think that's why probably even when we applied the ABA was more effective, you know, when the vines still have their leaves on. So that I mean when you think about like short days, you know, during the growing season that starts back in June. So it's such like a way early see and then actually, by that time the vines begin already sensing you know, this short days, they begin the process actually of cold acclimation. So cold acclamation, or we call the hardening off of the vines. Actually, it begins right when the fruit begins to ripen during verasion. So it happened like way early, you know, like in the summer, basically, you talking about July, you know, and you start to see the tissue, as they, as the fruit is ripening the vines actually at the same time is preparing for the winter at the same time. And then it will continue after the leaves are dropped. And then the vines become more sensitive to the temperature rather than the full period. So it becomes the second step is based mainly on the temperature.   Craig Macmillan  19:38  Interesting, interesting.   Imed Dami  19:39  And that's why during the winter because that is the coldest month, the vines you know, they sense these cold temperatures, and they reach actually their maximum cold hardens during the winter because they need it.   Craig Macmillan  19:51  And then it's the response to the warming temperatures that brings them out of dormancy.   Imed Dami  19:54  Exactly. And that basically happened like late winter like right now or early spring and that's why basically, the winds, you know, begin to wake up. And that phenomenon is typically driven exclusively by temperature. As it starts warming up, you know, in the spring, the vines, you know, begin to do, what we call deacclimate. So that means they lose their cold hardness, and then they start growing again.   Craig Macmillan  20:18  What can growers do, are specific practical things that growers can do to prepare for, or manage, or prevent damage to vines in these really cold areas.   Imed Dami  20:30  Sure, yes. In terms of like things that the growers could do, there are three main category, if you want to call them. The first one is what we call a preventative. So how do you prepare for the cold before even it happens. One of the main ways to do that actually is site selection. You have to have a very good site to grow the grapes, and avoid, you know, this minimum temperatures. So that is very critical. You know, especially for us here in the east. The other thing is selecting the proper variety. So like I mentioned, we have variety that are very sensitive dive right at a more cold hardy. So it's very important to match the cold hardness of that variety with the site where you're going to grow them. You cannot grow for example, vinifera in a site where it gets to minus 10, you know, every year, that is not possible. The other thing in terms of practices. And again, this is more unique, you know, to eastern US, is we train vines with multiple trunks. If you look at the vines, you know, in California, they all have a single trunk. For us here we have multiple trunks. So you could see a vine with two trunks, you know, they look like they are two vines, but they're not like one vine with two or more trunks. And the main reason is when we have a cold event, that cold event doesn't kill both of those trunks kills one and not the other, so they don't die simultaneously. So that is kind of like a kind of an insurance, you know, practice. And typically we see this in almost all grapevines. When we have injuries, you see one trying to get damaged and not the other. The other thing that I mentioned earlier, is we heal up the vines to protect the grafting union. So this practice actually is done every year, it is done in the fall, and then the vines have to be dehilled, or removing those mounds in the spring. So this is a common practice that we use for vinifera here in the east. And then the third one is what we call cultural practices. In terms of fertilization, crop management, anything basically improves fruit quality also is favorable for improving cold hardiness. In terms of during the cold event, the main thing that our growers, you know, some of them they use is what we call the wind machines. So when machines I know for example, in California, they're very common not to use for spring crops, but here we could use them for spring frost events as well as cold events in the winter, they are an effective tool. So finally, what I call practices by the grower after you do, you have like a cold event. So even though you do everything by the book, you don't have a good site, you have good varieties, you know, a suitable variety then you do the multiple trunks and cultural management, you still it gets cold enough, you know that you have damage. In that case, vines are trained or adjusted, you know, depends on severity of the damage. So for example, when we have only bud injury, we adjust pruning to compensate for those losses. And by doing that you could have a normal crop even though you lost some of the buds. So for example, if you lose 30% of the bugs, you could compensate pruning by adding you know 30% more buds you know, then how you typically prune those vines. And by doing so, you could have normal crop up to a point of course. Another more severe damage when we have trunk damage and basically die back you know of the vines. In that situation, we have to retrain the shoots. And typically the way we retain thse you know is kind of unique in the east. Like I said, we do multiple shoots or multiple trunks, it's very important to do that. And then the size of those shoots are important. We have to select shoots or canes that are pencil size. The main reason is big shoots or large canes we call them bullcanes are not favorable because they are more damaged by the cold. So selection of these shoots and canes, and how many shoots you trained are typical practices, you know, for retraining, winter damage vines.   Craig Macmillan  24:35  Well, is it better to cane prune or spur prune? Does that make a difference?   Imed Dami  24:40  Yeah, it doesn't. If your vines you know are typically prune spur or cane you know, it doesn't make difference. However, when you have injury after the fact and your vines let's say they are cane prune. What we found is it is best if you convert those vines into spur prune. And this is only when you have a severe damage of the buds. We found that when you do spur pruning, you had a better recovery, better crop than cane pruned vines. Again, this situation is only true when the vines sustained damage and like more severe damage of the buds. Then you could convert the virus into spur pruning. And then of course, you know, you could always go back to your original in our pruning later on to cane pruning, again, after like year one of the winter injury.   Craig Macmillan  25:31  All right, what, what's the best timing for pruning in a cold situation?   Imed Dami  25:36  In our situation here, timing, you know, is not critical. However, when you have large large vineyards, you know, you have to prune like over many months, we typically recommend that you prune the cold hardy varieties first, and the main reason is, you know, if you get like a cold damage, you haven't pruned you know, the code sensitive yet. So you could still leave, you know, more buds or more canes, like I mentioned, with the pruning adjustment. You leave the sense of variety last in terms of pruning, so we prune those last. That is kind of typical recommendation for our growers.   Craig Macmillan  26:09  Tell me a little bit about the role of ABA and sugar.   Imed Dami  26:15  One of our research focus, I mentioned, you know, ABA, but before that, actually, we looked at sugars. And what we found is like sugar production by the vines go hand in hand with the cold hardness of the vines as well. So what I mean by that is during the fall, when cold hardness keeps increasing during the fall, the sugar concentration also increases in the vine, in the bud and the vascular tissues. And then when it reaches the cold hardens its maximum during the winter, the level of sugar is also reached maximum at the time. And then in the spring, when the vine lose hardness, the level of sugars goes down again. So there's a very close relationship between cold hardiness and sugar accumulation. And one of the explanation is the sugars that are produced more by the vines, you know, is because they they provide what we call protection to the tissues, you know, they call them cryoprotectant. What we found in our research also is there is a specific group of sugars that we call raffinose family oligosaccharides, RFO. And these are like larger sugars, they have even closer relationship with cold hardiness and cold acclimation as well as dormancy. So in our recent research, what we found is when we apply abscisic acid to the plant, actually, that acts as a signal to produce sugars in the vine. So basically, ABA and induces sugar production. And we have demonstrated that in our recent research, and this is why we have this close relationship, you know, between the ABA role, and sugar production in the vines.   Craig Macmillan  27:50  Does that affect the sugar accumulation in the cluster? And the berries?   Imed Dami  27:53  No.   Craig Macmillan  27:54  Interesting.   Imed Dami  27:56  Because, you know, the time when the sugars are accumulating, let's say in the winter, the clusters are already gone, you know. So the vines actually, they don't only not only they accumulate sugars in the clusters, at the same time, they are accumulating sugars in the dormant tissues. They do it faster. Of course, once the vines are harvested, they do it at the bigger, faster rate, you know, so they call that actually kind of becomes like a major pool of sugar accumulations, you know. And that's how the vines you know, they have to have this reserves to overwinter, you know, properly.   Craig Macmillan  28:27  We've talked about a lot of different things. But is there one, one thing that you'd recommend to our listeners that are facing cold hardiness issues? What's the top? What's the top thing?   Imed Dami  28:38  The top thing? Wow, you know, like I mentioned earlier, it is very simple. I mean, really, in our industry, even though we've been around for a long time, one of the major issue and challenge, you know, in the east is selecting, you know, the proper variety in a given site. And that is really, it's work in progress. It's you know, like, in Europe, you know, they found this matching that we call terroir, over hundreds of years, you know. Even in California, you know, it's still a young industry. So imagine here in the east, we are still really learning about the best varieties, you know, in the best sites, and especially a lot of these hybrids are new to our industry. So we're trying to find you know, that match because really, and for me, that's I always find that the most challenging, you know, to our grower to find out, so.   Craig Macmillan  29:28  Where can people find out more about you and your work?   Imed Dami  29:30  One of the ways is, obviously my email address I could give it to you could contact me directly. It's dami.1.@osu.edu. And then there's more information in our website. You could Google grape wherever you know, Ohio and it will show up you know, it is called Buckeye Appalachian. There's a lot of information there about what I talked about. And then also it talks about our extension work you know, working with our industry as well. So I would say those are two good ways or resources, you know, to find out. In terms of information called harness. I mean, I know this is a long title. But we published you know, years ago, a book on cold hardiness of grapevines, it is available through Michigan State Extension. It is called Winter Injury to Grapevines and Methods of Protection. Everything I talked about, with a lot of details, and with more technical stuff, you know. It's like a over 100 pages book. And it is really an excellent resource, you know, for any growers, especially dealing with cold damage.   Craig Macmillan  30:51  That's fantastic. We're out of time for today, I want to think a guest, Imed Dami, Professor of Viticulture in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at The Ohio State University. This has been a fascinating conversation, for me. It's not an area that I really knew very much about, and I feel much more educated than I did. That's a book I might need to get from my bookshelf.   Imed Dami  31:12  Sure.   Craig Macmillan  31:13  So I want to thank you. I want to thank you again Imed. Check out our website for more podcasts. We've got many different topics and many different speakers at the Vineyard Team website. And thank you all again for listening to Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

All winegrowers are on the same quest to find virus negative plant material. James Stamp, President at Stamp Associates Viticulture, Inc, works with his clients to find the highest quality grapevine plants to establish new vineyards. This thorough process to find virus negative material includes partnering with nurseries that previously delivered good product. There is oversight through all stages of production from testing material to harvesting and grafting, from production to delivery, and the final selection of plants for the vineyard site. The number one tip to get quality grapevines is to pay attention to where the plant material is coming from, have great communication with the nursery, and sample the finished product for Red Blotch and Leaf Roll Three. References: 06-03-2022 | Roller Crimper Demo Tailgate, King City, CA (Event registration) 20: Dr. Mark Fuchs | Red Blotch Virus in Grapevines (podcast) 49: Stopping the Spread of Red Leaf Viruses (podcast) 71: New Techniques to Detect Grapevine Leafroll Disease (podcast) 131: Virus Detection in Grapevines Grape Program at Foundation Plant Services Grapevine propagation: principles and methods for the production of high-quality grapevine planting material Leafroll 3 Virus (GLRaV3) AKA Grapevine Leafroll Disease in Washington Red Blotch Virus SIP Certified Sourcing Grapevines for a New Vineyard Stamp Associates Viticulture, Inc. Sustainable Ag Expo November 14-16, 2022 Virus Disease Guide in Grapes 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 Craig Macmillan  0:00  My name is Craig Macmillan and I am your host, as always. Today we have with us James Stamp, who is president of Stamp Associates Viticulture, Incorporated. And thanks for being on the show, James. I'm really looking forward to this.   James Stamp  0:13  Yes, thanks for having me, Craig, I'm looking forward to it as well.   Craig Macmillan  0:15  So James, you have a interesting company. And you've had an interesting career over the years. But right now, your company does a number of very interesting kind of things in three different areas. And what I was hoping to do is talk about each of those individually in a little bit of detail and have you explain kind of how those things work. First of all, you folks do independent analysis and quality control for grapevine nursery stock production. Tell me more about that.   James Stamp  0:39  Our clients hire us to find the highest quality grapevine plants for establishing new vineyards. And what we do is to select nurseries that we have previous experience with in terms of delivering good product. And nurseries, where we have previously inspected and tested their increased box and the increase box, as you know, are the rootstock and science sources of materials for propagation. So we, we put together a proposal for our clients to provide the best quality of plant materials that we can. And then we get involved with discussing with nurseries, which materials are best to use. We oversee the testing of those materials, we oversee the harvesting and grafting of those materials. We oversee the production of those materials, that particular nurseries, and we oversee the delivery and final selection of those plants to the vineyard sites. And as part of our, our understanding with our growers, we are available to look at those plants during the course of the vineyard development. We'd like to be there to see how our plants grow. Once they're planted,   Craig Macmillan  1:54  A grower will come to you and say I'm planting a vineyard, I want to make sure that it's virus free, or disease disease free, I would imagine. And you folks start at the very beginning, you go out and look at the blocks where the first cuttings are going to come from the good gonna go into those plants. Is that right?   James Stamp  2:12  Yes. When I first started doing this, in 1999, I was asked to look at finished product. In other words, vines that had already been grafted, already been grown in the field, already been growing the greenhouse. And at that point, it's very difficult to have any real control over the quality of the finished product. So it seemed to me like a good idea to start with the source materials that we use to graph the vines and to make sure the source materials, the root stock on the scion, are of high quality and disease, pathogen test negative and that's exactly how we start by finding the source materials for the production of grape vine plants ultimately to be planted in the vineyards.   Craig Macmillan  2:53  Obviously, if someone's going to plant, let's say hundreds of 1000s of vines, we're talking about hundreds of 1000s of cuttings. Is that right?   James Stamp  3:03  Hundreds of 1000s of vines. Well, yeah, we're talking a lot of cuttings and in generally speaking from an increased block or rootstock increase block, you might expect to get say 100 cuttings from every mother vine or every increased block vine 100 cuttings for the rootstock. And for the scion material, the Cabernet, the Viognier whatever it might be, you're probably going to get somewhere from 50 buds or 50 cuttings per vine up to maybe 500 cuttings per vine for some very vigorous clones such as maybe Pinot Noir or Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc we sometimes see 500 cuttings per vine.   Craig Macmillan  3:40  How many samples are you taking how many pieces of wood are you taking in? What are you testing them for and how?   James Stamp  3:47  We with the advent or the discovery of Red Blotch, it became clear that the only way to produce vines that are free of Red Blotch disease is to test every plant that is used as a source of materials for that for that finished product. So if you do the math, nurseries will graft anywhere from 1.5 times, one and a half times to two times the amount of vines per finished product. So if you have an order for 10,000 vines, they might refer 20,000 vines. So we have to test enough mother vines or increase block vines which is the correct term, to provide us with 20,000 rootstock cuttings and 20,000, say Cabernet Sauvignon buds. Let's say you've got just for example, a Cab Sauvignon plant that's giving you 500 buds per vine and you want 20,000, you want 20,000 bugs, then you've got to test 40 plants to get 20,000 buds. 40 times 500 is 20,000. Depending on the size of the plant, if its is a large established plant, we want to take more cuttings per vine than if it's a smaller plant, because viruses are not evenly distributed within the mother vine or the increase block vine. So if it's a larger vine, we might take four pieces per vine. If it's a smaller vine we might take two pieces per vine. So that's roughly sort of math that's involved in deciding how many samples we take. We are taking 1000s of pieces of cutting and putting them together into samples that we then test for a range of pathogens. And generally speaking, there are roughly 15 or so, 16 pathogens that fall on our testing list. And they include all the common viruses, the leaf roll viruses, the vitiviruses, A, B, D, Red Blotch virus, Fan Leaf virus, we also test the Pierce's Disease, we also test for Agrobacterium Vits, which is the causative agent of crown gall disease, which is a bacterium. And our pathogen panel depends on really the program that we're involved with. If we're, if we're working with materials where we have a good history of testing, we might adjust the panel slightly. It also depends on the budget, if a client has a limited budget, then we will focus on viruses that we think we'll find or viruses that we have found in the past. So but generally speaking, we have a pathogen panel of roughly 15 to 16 organisms that we look for routinely.   Craig Macmillan  6:27  And in so it sounds like you're using a composite sample, like you may do a composite sample of rootstock and the comparison sample of scion.   James Stamp  6:34  Exactly, yes.   Craig Macmillan  6:36  Does that composite sample comprise a sample from every one of the vines involved?   James Stamp  6:43  Yes.   Craig Macmillan  6:44  So when I get a result back, I can be confident that all the plants that provided the rootstock or the scion are clean.   James Stamp  6:52  Well, clean is, you know, clean is a word that you will not get anybody, you know, real scientists to use. Okay, these are all virus test negative. It's, you know, it's hard to prove a negative, but the sampling that we do shows that the vines, or the pieces of tissue that we've tested are negative for the virus. And they know and we were sampling for a wide range of pathogens, but it's to say it's clean, to say it's 100% guaranteed not to have viruses. It's something that people don't do because you're it's really, it's really hard to prove a negative. But we've we're sampling, we're sampling every plant and every plant is testing negative. And therefore, we can assume that those plants do not contain the viruses that we're testing for or the pathogens that we're testing for.   Craig Macmillan  7:35  Excellent. I think that's a really important distinction to make various negative versus cleaning in quotes. So that's the so the points along the way, we've got the rootstock, we've got the scion, is there inspection, testing, investigation as we go through the grafting process and the callusing process and the greenhouse process?   James Stamp  7:53  Well, really the first, the first step in the process to produce high quality plants is to visually evaluate the scion increase blocks before you test them. So there's no point in spending a lot of money on testing plant materials that don't look good. So we go to the nurseries that we have orders with for the following year, or the year after that. We go to those nurseries and look at their scion increased blocks in October. So we look in October 2021. At the Cab 47, or the Cab 30 or the Sauvignon Blanc 01 or the Pinot Noir, you know 777, and we find contiguous rows and contiguous sets of vines that look healthy. If they look good. In other words, they don't look like the disease, they don't look like they're struggling to grow. Because if a plant is looking diseased, or looking like it's having a hard time growing, that would not be the sort of material you want to select for high quality vine production. So if we see any issues with the vines during our October walkthrough, then we do a couple of things. One, well the nursery is usually with us so the nursery will then want to check those vines and test them or remove them, test them and remove them if necessary, to see if they are virus or there's something else wrong with them. And then once we find clean vines, then we will test them. So the first thing to do is find the clean plants, and this is done in October. Test them. We tag the plants so that we make sure we put our labels on plant materials that we want to graft. And then we see those materials getting harvested and then moved into cold storage and then we're at the nursery when those materials are grafted. So that we can see that the materials we tested and viewed in October and November are now actually on the grafting bench at the nursery February and March of the following year.   Craig Macmillan  9:47  That's impressive. That is very impressive. Yeah, and I'm assuming you've had good luck with it as it sounds like you couldn't be any more fastidious.   James Stamp  9:55  You know, it was really an eye opening moment,  I think for me, when Red Blotch became a problem, as you know, it was in late 2012. And we have a lot of plant materials that we were to test for Red Blotch because the new PCR test was made available at that point in time. And it was clear that sampling increased block vines, on a sort of a random basis, sampling the plants in the nursery, the nursery vineyard that gives you the cuttings, not sampling every plant, but sampling say, even I'd say 95% level of confidence with a 5% confidence interval, you're still only sampling a very small amount of plants that are going to be used to give you the cuttings that you need. So the only way to detect the virus, which might only be present in a few plants, but if you're getting 400 cuttings from those one or two plants are infected, you're actually you know, producing a lot of virus that can be contaminated. So the only way to do it is to test every plant.   Craig Macmillan  10:53  Right. And then is there some additional quality control once they come out of the nursery for you?   James Stamp  10:59  I mean, nursery production is a very primitive craft, if you will. It's still very, very basic. It's basically putting rootstock and science together and allowing them to graft and providing good conditions for that. And what they want is they want to first of all the cuttings should be have high carbohydrate reserves. So they're strong cuttings. They actually have a good wood to pith ratio. So a small amount of pith, a good amount of wood, which represents good carbohydrate reserves. They should be grown in a way that produces cuttings that are good for grafting rather than growing these cuttings in a way that is good for fruit production. And so we want to see what's going on right from the very beginning. So I actually just gave a presentation the other day. And my first slide on the presentation says that what does every grower want? Every grower wants, or what they really want is no surprises. And that is high quality vines being available, in the right amount, on time and of good quality. Because the last thing a grower wants is to hear from a nursery when they call up and say, you know what, my 10,000 grafted vines delivered in a couple of weeks time and they say, well, we've only got 1000. So what we do, and it's really it's really it really sort of comes with the territory that if you're going to be involved in trying to produce high quality, disease test negative vines, then really in a way, it's I feel like it's on us to make sure the plants exist as well. If you will.   Craig Macmillan  12:22  So yeah, absolutely.   James Stamp  12:24  And on the one hand, we you know, we always have this provision that if we do a lot of testing and the plants are diseased at the end of the process, well, then we're not going to plant them. But we do want to make sure that the plants are available for all we can. So we keep we keep very close track on the way these vines are growing after grafting. And so we'd like to see how many plants of the 10,000, that grafted, get grafted, how many get planted up. So maybe in order for 5000 vines 10,000 get grafted, but only 7500 get grafted up. Well, that's actually a good number. But if you graft 10,000 vines, and the only plant 1000 vines up, you know, within four or five weeks of grafting that you've got a problem. And so it's part of our program is to how to solve that problem. So we need to be in touch with the nurseries right, all the time so that if there's a problem, we have time to fix it so that our clients have no surprises. And maybe they have to spend more money perhaps on testing more materials because we found virus, or it may be that the nursery had a bad take, in which case we have to graft more materials. But ultimately, we want to make sure that our clients plant the vines they want on time, and that those vines are of good quality. So what we do is work to solve problems as they develop. And you know, over the years, we haven't had very many problems. But again, I think we paid close attention to what's going on.   Craig Macmillan  13:41  And suddenly, it just occurred to me, so how many tests per 1000 or 10,000 plants when we're when we're talking about the finished product, how many samples went into, how many tests went into per per 1000, or per 10,000, or whatever?   James Stamp  13:55  You know, it's very variable. Let's say if you're, we're testing for 15 to 15, or 16 different pathogens, and we may be testing, one set of testing at least two plants for every 100 finished product. So if you've got say 1000 vines then, we're probably testing protesting 20 upfront vines, for every 1000 vines of finished, but actually 20 times, multiply that by two. So 20 rootstock and 20 scion approximately. So we're testing roughly 40 plants for every 1000 finished plants. Those 40 plants are being tested for, say 16 pathogens. So it's 40 times 60. If you do that multiple it's you know, 3200 or something like that, or whatever it is. That's a rough idea.   Craig Macmillan  14:44  Of actual individual samples, test. I'm gonna pay so much per test, it's going to be 1000s of tests?   James Stamp  14:52  Yeah, I mean, we test 1000s of samples.   Craig Macmillan  14:55  I guess. Wow.   James Stamp  14:56  We have a pretty large business. I think we were probably the The largest business of its kind that does this type of work, I think. Probably anywhere in the world, I guess. And, you know, it involves a lot, it's a lot, it's a lot of work, especially when you're dealing with a biological system like this, which is open to all sorts of climates and you know, biological impact. You know, drought one year can have a, some sort of weird impact the next year. So just like, you know, getting your fruit every year when you're growing your grapevines is difficult, convoluted, it's based on many different parameters. It's the same thing with producing grafted vines. A lot of different parameters affect the look of the finished product. In fact, this year, we looked at a bunch of dormant routings, and they were really super high quality this year did very, very nice, dormant routings this year with just very good internal approach. So not only is the virus testing and the pathogen testing, we've talked about, the other side of what we do is physical quality. We're involved in selecting the best plants that come through the propagation cycle. So for example, if you grafted 10,000 vines, you have an order for 5000 vines, you have 7500 vines that make it through to the finished product line. Well, we want to select the best 5000 of those 7500. And that involves having a good understanding of the parameters that are involved with a grapevine finished product, which include things like does it have a good root system? Does it have a properly healed graft union? Are the wounds on the rootstock shaft properly healed? Do you have good caliper? Do you have good lignification of the shoot spur? And all those, those different facets of the finished product are related to the pathogenic load of the vine when you start off. So if you if you're starting from materials that have high levels of fungal pathogens, and fungal pathogens are everywhere, in the nursery production cycle. And so the way to ensure you have best product is just is to select pathogens that have very good, that have demonstrated very, very good wound healing. Because those vines won't heal their wounds properly, they won't have good graft wounds, they won't have good root systems. They will have rootstock shaft disbudding sites that are not calloused over, they will have lesions running down from the graft union and running up from the base of the plant if they'd been developed or propagated from poor quality plant material. So the physical quality of the vine and vine and the pathogen status of the virus sort of closely interwoven.   Craig Macmillan  17:28  So this involves looking at every single vine?   James Stamp  17:31  No, actually it involves, what we do is we we sample every increase block vine that is used to produce the vine. And then we look at the finished product by sampling the finished product in terms of its physical evaluation. And I've been doing this, I mean, I started doing this in 1999. And in 1999, I looked at 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of finished product. And you know, you look at finished product, and you just like anything else, you really get to know what finished product looks like looks like. You get to know, you know what a batch of plants looks like. You know, you get to know how many vines you need to look at, to know in other words, to feel comfortable that you're looking, that what you're looking at is representative of the rest of it. And so you use that information, that experience to help you to determine how to evaluate finished product.   Craig Macmillan  18:19  And so regarding, actually regarding methodology, it sounds to me like you have a fairly set methodology that you have tested over using years and years. And there's a quantification component to this as well. So you can say we found this percentage of this as opposed to that, as opposed to that.   James Stamp  18:36  That's exactly right. Yeah. So I think if you would, I mean, you know, things have changed. And we today, we don't get to look at much finished product that we haven't been involved with, right from the very beginning. But sometimes we do and it's always interesting to do that. Because I mean, obviously there's different types of finished product, the potted plants, and then there are dormant bareroot, finish plants. Any any batch of vines that get delivered are going to have some type of defect. The question is, what are those defects and what proportion of the finished product has those defects. So for example, if it's if it's a if it's a severe problem, we'll cancel the order. If it's if it's a severe problem, but in a very small amount of plants, and we know how to identify that problem, then we can have the nursery go back and grade out the bad vines, or we can grade out the bad vines ourselves and take the good vines and get rid of the bad vines. Or we can advise our clients who maybe are buying vines from a nursery I will tell them well this is how you identify the problem in these vines by doing this type of physical manipulation of the plant. It'll tell you what's right or what's wrong with it. But generally speaking, our plants when they've been through our program are very high physical quality with a very small amount of defects or zero defects. Obviously, there's always gonna be some defects. And you really are the final line of defense is the guy who's planting the vine. But our goal is to to sell to our clients vines, the pathogen test negative or very high quality, where there will be no rejects or planting time.   Craig Macmillan  20:07  So let's move into the field. So you also conducted valuations of newly planted and established vineyards for their performance, presumably in the face of pathogen load. How do you conduct these kinds of evaluations? What kind of methodology do you use?   James Stamp  20:22  I have to say, I don't do we don't do this, as much as we used to do this was a much bigger part of our portfolio maybe 10, 15 years ago than it is now. And we used to get called out to look at vines, vineyards that have been recently planted. And say, you know, it's a two year old vineyard, and a three year old vineyard. What do we try to do is to, you know, it's important to look at the venue and at the right time of the year. If it's potentially a virus problem, then you want to look at that vineyard in October, when you can see symptoms of virus, they may be well apparent. But the first thing to do is to try and if there's a problem in a vineyard, maybe it's just performing improperly. Is to try and link any visual performance issues with any particular physical attributes that the plant might have, or they may be associated with the site. Simply put, if you've got vines that are growing properly, than those vines that aren't grown properly, have bad graft unions, or have they been planted improperly. And they've got a J rooted root system. I tried to look at the vineyard and say split into say, three into three categories: good vine performance, bad pine vine performance, and say intermediate vine performance. And trying to correlate those different types of wind performance with either a site issue which might be a soil, irrigation, utilization, fungal pathogens, weeds. And then also compare that with just the vine itself. And this oftentimes involves sacrificing vines, but taking, digging that vine up and looking at the root system, looking at the grafting. And it's actually very easy to tell by looking at vines, whether or not the issue that you're seeing is a result of the vine being imperfect at the time of planting, or whether it's more like you know, whether it's related to the way it was planted or where it was planted.   Craig Macmillan  22:09  That is really, really fascinating. We've kind of run out of our time here, I want to thank you again, James Stamp, Stamp Associates, Viticulture Inc,. There's obviously a lot of work to continue to do. And the work that you folks are doing is wonderful. And I hope that more people will start thinking along the same lines, at the very least I hope the philosophy spreads. Is there one thing you would recommend to our listeners?   James Stamp  22:32  Yeah, I think what's it's a, it's a big one thing with with sub parts. It really is to pay attention to where your plant materials coming from. To have a really good communication with the nursery. If nothing else, sample the finished finished product for Red Blotch and Leaf Roll Three, which are the two viruses that have the biggest impact on vine performance. And the two viruses that are very easily vectored in the industry.   Craig Macmillan  22:59  That's great. Where can we find out more about you?   James Stamp  23:02  We have a website, the website is JamesStamp.net. There's all our, that we have. We've written a bunch of articles about what we do. We give presentations fairly frequently. And so some of that information is on there. And we have a website and of course, phone number, email, of course all that's there.   Craig Macmillan  23:20  Perfect. Fantastic. Well, I want to thank you again, James, and I want to thank our listeners for listening to Sustainable Winegrowing with the new team. Again, my name is Craig Mcmillan, your host and we look forward to having you download us again.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

With the prevalence of Leaf Roll Three, Red Blotch, and other viruses, accurate and timely detection of viruses in grapevines has never been more imperative. Alan Wei, Owner and Lab Manager at Agri-Analysis LLC in Davis California explains how his lab is using next generation sequencing (NGS) to find new viruses. Currently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the widely accepted method for testing for viruses. This process tests for one gene at time. Next generation sequencing allows labs to test multiple genes at a time and get results much faster. References: 20: Dr. Mark Fuchs | Red Blotch Virus in Grapevines 49: Stopping the Spread of Red Leaf Viruses 71: New Techniques to Detect Grapevine Leafroll Disease Agri-analysis LLC Donate: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship Grape Program at Foundation Plant Services Leafroll 3 Virus (GLRaV3) AKA Grapevine Leafroll Disease in Washington Next Generation Sequencing (Deep Sequencing) PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) Testing Red Blotch Virus SIP Certified Sustainable Ag Expo November 14-16, 2022 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 Craig Macmillan  0:00  My guest today is Alan Wei, who's owner and lab manager of Agri Analysis LLC in Davis, California. Alan, thanks for being on the show. Alan Wei  0:10  Thank you very much, Craig, for hosting me. And I'm very delighted to be here. And I want to use this opportunity to say hello to listeners as well. Craig Macmillan  0:19  So Alan, I want to have you on the show, because I want to talk about anything that's new and exciting in the world of grapevine virology, and a lot of research and a lot of development in industry with labs like your own. So, what's what's what's happening out there, what's going on with detection of viruses these days? Alan Wei  0:36  There is a International conference on grapevine viruses that's held every three years. So last time was 2018, in Chile. And the second, the following time was supposed to be 2021 in Greece, and unfortunately, that was canceled due to the obvious reasons, and then was supposed to be happening this year. And by the way, is not happening, and it's postponed until next year. So as a result, we have not, the researchers in this field have not been able to meet to report the latest grapevine viruses. Just to mention something that in the literature, for example, there are two or three new DNA viruses being discovered and reported. In fact, in grapevines, but their practical consequences are known. So we probably don't want to get in too much into them. Craig Macmillan  1:33  Maybe not, but I think this is an interesting thing because for instance, red blotch, caught everybody by surprise. And so how are these new...how are these these new viruses, how are they found, if you are looking forward, you're looking for other things, what kind of technology they're using to find this new stuff? Alan Wei  1:49  Typically, they're found by deep sequencing, also known as NGS Next Generation Sequencing. Researchers are always trying to look for the frontiers of why viruses virology by applying these methods and find this new viruses, but their practical impact needs to be validated, study to further be before we alarm growers. And red blotch was found a similar way. With the exception that the red blotch phenomena, and the disease was known to growers for years without the assay and the way the branch was first reported, or discovered through NGS that was, you know, the "wow" moment to growers. Yeah, we do now know what is causing this read leaf in my vineyard. Craig Macmillan  2:43  Tell me a little bit more about NGS, it sounds like this is gonna be an important technology for us, this deep sequencing. Alan Wei  2:48  Yeah, definitely. Deep sequencing is very widely used in the research community. And, when was that, in December meeting hosted by FFPS, they reported that NGS is going to be accepted by regulators like APHIS as a alternative way of testing materials coming from overseas. Which means shortened time and rapid, faster deployment of foreign important materials in in this country, or practically to growers hands. Yeah, the technology is definitely upcoming, and we're looking to possibly deploy it for routine use. We need to hear more feedback before we really do it. Craig Macmillan  3:41  This is obviously a very complicated technology, but like in a sense, can you explain what it is? Alan Wei  3:48  PCR is the way that accepted method in testing viruses or microbial in general. Compared to PCR, which tests one gene at a time, NGS would allow you to test multiple genes at a time. Because through the use of small, small redundant primers, which amplify many sometimes millions of hundreds of millions of fragments of the gene, which can parallelize sequenced with that data, and coupled with information, analysis, informatics, you can extract new new information from your sample, including new viruses, new bacteria. Craig Macmillan  4:38  So essentially, I've got a sample of plant material. And I run it through this NGS process, and it comes back and says, hey, there's genetic material in here that doesn't belong here. This is not grapevine, or hey, visit genetic material that's associated with some virus or something like that. And that's the flag that I get. And I get it from the whole picture. I'm not doing it like like you say gene by looking at for specific genes, I'm getting a kickback, I'm saying hey, there's there's a variety of things or whatever genes we weren't, wouldn't even thought to look for. Alan Wei  5:10  Exactly, exactly. You're right. And then that gene can be not not only you find genes and not belong to the grapevine, which we considered as, you know, the background gene, by further analysis of that, that special gene, you can assign them to, to pathogens, basically, different types of pathogens. Craig Macmillan  5:30  Gotcha. Yeah, that definitely speeds up the process a lot and makes it possible to catch things in finer net than we ever would have been able to do before. So that's pretty exciting. Alan Wei  5:38  Yes, def definitely. Craig Macmillan  5:40  Coming to red blotch, this is continues to be, you know, a very hot topic, obviously, it continues to be an issue in the field and continues to be an issue in other places. Is there anything new that we've learned regarding the Red Blotch Virus in any realm, anything about how it moves, its symptomology, new means of detection, anything like that? Alan Wei  6:08  I have a list of articles that just simply published during the past a couple of years, and researchers from you know, several major universities have really dived deep into the physiology, the virology, their impact on wine quality, in aspect of, of a rather large virus. They're really fascinating. From a practical standpoint, though, the progress has been less because what was reported to us few years ago remain the same, which which you know, very well. Which means rogueing, you know, rogueing your infected vines as aggressively as possible. Sourcing for clean materials as diligently as possible to prevent any viruses infecting material being planted. And once they do present in your vineyard take them out as quickly as possible. And also, although we know the Threecornered Alfalfa Hopper is the vector for red blotch. And folks don't recommend you spray against this particular insect because it is not a very efficient transmitter of the virus. Grapevine is not its preferred host. So those information were already known through talks by various speakers in the past. Craig Macmillan  7:33  We were talking about spread. And this is something that is absolutely puzzling to me, in years of field checking, I had never once seen this Threecornered Alfalfa Hopper. But I have talked to people who have. And they apparently are very reclusive, they will move away from you, the signs of the damage and very subtle, they do this little kind of girdling thing in the leaves. I just feel like there's just kind of be another vector. I mean, just I just feel to kind of be another vector. I mean, is there is there anything new in that world? I mean, we've identified the one but it seems kind of mysterious. And I'm thinking about the spread at the Russell Ranch, that finish and plant services ranch where we've not only identified it, but they were able to see that was spreading, attributed to the Threecornered Alfalfa Hopper, correct me? Alan Wei  8:19  I completely agree with you. Yeah, we don't see too many of our tree hoppers in the field. Yet spread in Russell Ranch has been phenomenal. It's more like, more exponential increase year after year, since 2018. So it is a mystery. If some of you, listeners, went to the seminar by UC Davis in early December, particularly the presentation by Professor Kent Daane, then the entomologists have been looking at a number of potential hosts. But unfortunately, they either have not been proven yet or, most of them were disproven to be a potential host. So we're still in that regard., virtually in the context of Russell Ranch, it is a complete mystery. You would think through the very aggressive management by FPS, you know, any presence over vectors were eliminated. And any source of vectors were eliminated. We have but yet they see this exponential growth in terms of infected vines, which, which stopped Russell Ranch from operation, basically. Craig Macmillan  9:40  Yeah, exactly. And I was actually looking at a table for one of your publications earlier today, and it looks like it went from zero to exponential like there was no nothing was detected for a couple of years or two. Then blammo! And I've been thinking about the same thing happening in other vineyards, I'm familiar with. And obviously just underlines how big of a threat red blotch is because we don't understand, you know, a lot, there's a lot we don't understand about it. So that means you got to sample. That you should rogue vines when you see them. But also you got to be sampling. Are there any is there anything new in the way of sampling protocols? Because I know that the distribution of the virus varies quite a bit between different parts of the plant different times of year and whatnot. So it's easy to miss it. What's the what's the best recommendation these days, if I wanted to test some lines, asymptomatic vines for red watch? Alan Wei  10:31  Yeah, we still recommend growers to sample cane materials, because in our analysis, you know, relative concentration in different parts of the vine, the cane materials has highest concentration of virus tighter level. And we also suggest growers to consider combine cuttings from different vines to make a what's called a composite sample. Therefore, they can you know, cost, testing costs can be reduced, and their testing budget can be maximized. And of course, you know, the testing objectives dictate how high your sample. Sometimes growers want to test the individual vines to really zoom in to which vine is exactly is infected, that you can only do that by testing individual vines. But the composite testing gave you the first level of screening. To see if you composite ten vines into one sample, and the entire sample would be positive. But if you want to zoom in which vine, but you're gonna want to use positive so that you can take it out, then you will do individual testing after the first round over the course screen, if you will. Craig Macmillan  11:44  Yeah, so the strategy would be basically like test the vineyard. And then if you find that something, then you drill down, and you can get it down to decide kind of what area where the individual vines are. That's a very, very smart technique. It's a really great idea. How sensitive are the detection techniques these days? So like, if I've got a if I have 10 vines out of 1000, and I sample and I sampled 10 vines, and I hit one of them, one of the infected ones, is that enough to show up in in the in the analysis? Alan Wei  12:15  Yeah, definitely. So if there's only one out of 10 cuttings is positive, and that means practically you're diluting the by 10 times, it is very much detectable. Craig Macmillan  12:27  Is there a lower detection limit? Alan Wei  12:28  Yeah, when there's a theoretical detection limit, and then there's a practical detection limit. If we do a back of the envelope calculation, a PCR method would allow you to detect one copy without the problem. But then of course, practically, there are other considerations such as whether you know, the one copy, you can sample that one copy into your PCR tube to begin with, because you know, if there's a one copy per microliter, and the way you want to use a two microliter in a PCR mix, you may or may not be able to transfer that one copy from a sample to the PCR tube to begin with. And even if you do, there may be potential inhibitors that present in grapevine material that could potentially influence your sensitivity as well. So there's a practical detection limit, and there's their theoretical detection limit issues. But overall, you know, we have found the red blotch detection to be not a problem, because typically the virus titer is high enough to be detected, even if you compounded multiple vines or cuttings into one sample. Craig Macmillan  13:33  That's good. That's very, very useful, very, very useful. I would love to move on to kind of other viruses because it's red blotch is not the only game in town these days. Leaf Roll complexes and Leaf Roll viruses, there's still a problem correct? Alan Wei  13:44  Especially Leaf Roll Three is very much that the top of our problems still and because you know the vaccine is very well known. It's very prevalent. Inoculum widespread to the percentage of vines tested positive for Leaf Roll Three that are coming through our lab is roughly about 15 percent. So Leaf Roll Three is very much prevalent. There have been some really nice talks, organized before the pandemic was by the Lodi growers group. There are some talks from including from South Africa. Recently from Red Blotch symposium where there's some presentations on Leaf Roll Three as well. So Leaf Roll Three is very much a serious problem. And growers need to be very vigilant against the Leaf Roll Three from from new planting materials to management of existing vineyards. Craig Macmillan  14:37  So let's say I've got a vineyard and I'm seeing some symptoms. I'm seeing some red leaves or I'm seeing some bronzing or I'm seeing something, and I've looked at the nutritional situation, I've ruled out either toxicity or deficiency. So I'm not thinking hey, you know, maybe this is a virus issue. Can you take samples of vines and just bring them to a lab and say, please help me? Can you tell me what this might be? I know we just talked about the deep sequencing. Is that, I'm not gonna say that technology. But like if I brought you some material and I said this has got a problem, how would you go about diagnosing it? Alan Wei  15:14  Oh, definitely. That's what we do every day. Most of our work is focused on helping growers find out what is possible cause of a programmatic vine in their vineyard. They will send in the samples, either individual vines or composite samples. We have a panel, what's called a combo panel that covers the 11 viruses, 11 major viruses. Leaf Roll Roll 1, 2, 3, 4, and two or three viruses, and of course, Red Blotch, and Fan Leaf, Pierce's. And then also Pinot Gris virus. That is the most frequently requested a panel. And by doing that panel, we typically find out if it's a virus issue. Craig Macmillan  15:58  That's very useful. It's very, very good to know. In relation to grapevine viruses, or just diseases overall, what is the one thing you would recommend to the listeners that they should keep in mind? Alan Wei  16:08  I think that you already touched on this earlier. You know, one thing is, if they see problems in the vineyard, they should consider the sample and test to validate whether they're viruses or not. And if they're considering to plant new materials, they should be very vigilant to to ask questions of the nurseries, and also do their own independent homework. And the you will be interviewing Dr. James Samp in another session. He can tell you more about how he go about sourcing for cleaning materials for his clients, which are very quality conscious. Craig Macmillan  16:47  Yeah, we're really looking forward to that conversation, Much like I was looking forward to this one. You know, this reminds me of something. You hear the word tighter a lot. And I don't think I fully understand what it means. I know that it's important and seems to be coming up a lot. Can you explain the concept and why it's important and what it means for us practically? Alan Wei  17:09  Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this topic up. You know, you and I have been serving on AVF committee, Grant Review Committee for a number of years. And last week, we had our review meeting for this year, and the subject came up. You know, we can talk about different aspects of Red Blotch impact in wine quality, wine physiology, you know, readily and so on and so forth. If we want to contribute one single factor of all of this different symptomology, it would be the virus tighter level. The virus tighter means the number of particles in the vine. If the vine is only infected with a smaller number of particles, its response to the virus is going to be different than the vines that are infected with larger or large number of particles. In our experience, the virus level in different vines can be very much different. I'm not talking about different by you know, 50 percent, or two or three fold. I'm talking about several orders of magnitude. There is a poster right behind me, which you cannot see. But we did a measurement of three infected vines. One, with clean, non effective. Another one is chosen for medium Red Leaf symptom. Another one, it's very heavily Red Leaf symptom. And virus level, the obviously the non infected vine was zero. And then the mediumly infected vine was about one or 200. And then heavily infected vine, was one hundred thousand in relative copy numbers. So this tells you that you know, this virus kinda level concentration level in the vine, really affect symptomology as well as the vine performance and the barrel quality and obviously, eventually, wine  quality. If we read the scientific literature, lots of studies report Red Blotch positive, Red Blotch negative, they did not talk about the virus tighter level. That's why we were so glad to see last week one of the research proposes to study the virus tighter level on different aspects of vine physiology and berry quality. I just think it was so so so important because the virus tighter will make it make a huge difference. Craig Macmillan  19:39  So we may be moving from a world of infected or not, to not, to more sick, less sick. Alan Wei  19:47  Yes, absolutely right. That is actually how we protect ourselves against the human viruses as well. You know, our vaccine does not completely protect us from infection. But it does protect us from viruses being propagated in high numbers in our body. Therefore, our symptoms of the infection in the individual is much less. And the ability for that individual to infect others are much less. Simply because of the lower virus tighter level in an infected person and similarly is true in grapevines. Craig Macmillan  20:24  So plants and animals are obviously very different organisms and where an animal has an immune system plants do not, they do not have an immune defense system. Is that correct? Alan Wei  20:35  Yes, you're right, correct. But they do have basic defense system against foreign organisms. One of them is the RNAi system. So speaking of that, you know, the simple symptomology in response to Red Blotch, and most of it is a total response, as a result of virus infection. The RNAi defense system gets activated. For example, the accumulation of the sugar of the raisin should be gradually, in a normal process, will be gradually moving towards the berries. But in Red Blotch, in fact, in vines, they are accumulated in leaves. Not moving toward the sugars. And the same for anthocyanins. That's why we see this red leaf. And those red color should be you know, in the berries, but they're not. They get stuck together, accumulating in leaves. It's fascinating. Unfortunately, we are still at the beginning of understanding all of this. Some reports are gradually coming out. Craig Macmillan  21:40  And so I want to make sure that I understand kind of how this works. So there's a grapevine that becomes infected. However way. The virus is very, very tiny bits of genetic material. Unlike, unlike a bacteria, which has a cell wall. Viruses don't have that they're just genetic material. The plant recognizes that somehow. And then RNA is the material that is produced from genes, the genes or have a have a sequence and then when that is reproduced that goes out into the world as RNA. Is that right? Alan Wei  22:17  Yes, the RNA is inside the host. And in response to a virus infection. And the defense mechanism get activated, which involves what is called enzymes. These RNA into smaller pieces, typically 20 nucleotide long. And they are, they are the what's called the interference RNA, or RNAi which inhibit the host from propagation inside the plant. Craig Macmillan  22:48  This is just, we need to wrap up for time, but I just have been thinking about this for years. And that is, where do these viruses come from? Where, how do they, how do they show up? What are these plant viruses? What? Are they jumping from other plants as a mutation of one into another? Or...do we know? Do I have any idea where these things come from? Because it seems like it's not just a question of finding it. Seems it's got to come from someplace. Alan Wei  23:14  Yeah, that's that's a really good question. I you know, you have biology, you have a load viruses, and obviously, RNA. Some viruses are readier to evolve, to change, to mutate. And that's why we see so many different mutants in the COVID virus family. And this is Red Blotch, is a DNA base virus, which have shown less mutation. And so far, we only seen two mutants, two clay types. And they practically they don't have much difference. As far as the, you know, the origin and the evolution. We need to have folks like Mark Fuchs to answer that. Craig Macmillan  23:55  At Cornell. Well, that's fantastic. That's that's our future. That's where, that's where we're going. Well, I think we've covered everything. Where can people find out more about you? Alan Wei  24:03  We have a website, agri-analysis.com. And then they could call us or email us anytime. We're here to help growers to build a better and clean vineyard so that they can make the best wine possible for the for their clients. Yes, sorry, Craig for the background noise. I think folks who are preparing samples as we speak. Craig Macmillan  24:26  I want to thank you Alan, our guest today has been Alan Wei, Owner and Lab Manager at Agri-analysis, David California. Thanks so much. This is really fascinating conversation. Alan Wei  24:35  Thank you very much Craig for hosting me. Continue to the great job. I'm so glad you're back at the Vineyard Team. You guys. You guys are wonderful team and doing great job. I'm very pleased to be here. Craig Macmillan  24:44  Thank you. I appreciate that.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lets Go Back And Play Those Old School Music... On ( iTunes ) & (SoundCloud) Completely free...Don't Forget To Subscribe,Follow,Like, and.....Click on your Notification for the NEW Uploads have a Great Day. New Music Every Friday

הַמְזַנֵּב בִּגְפָנִים וְהַקּוֹצֵץ קָנִים, רַבִּי יוֹסֵי הַגְּלִילִי אוֹמֵר, יַרְחִיק טֶפַח. רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא אוֹמֵר, קוֹצֵץ כְּדַרְכּוֹ, בַּקַּרְדֹּם אוֹ בַמַּגָּל, וּבַמְּגֵרָה, וּבְכָל מַה שֶׁיִּרְצֶה. אִילָן שֶׁנִּפְשַׁח, קוֹשְׁרִין אוֹתוֹ בַּשְּׁבִיעִית, לֹא שֶׁיַּעֲלֶה, אֶלָּא שֶׁלֹּא יוֹסִיף

dear livejournal, i’m here in davis california in case you forgot. i mean i’ve been living here physically. but also i’m feeling more like i’m here… spiritually (?) now. i’ve been playing music with people and i’m super happy and excited about it. i’ve been participating in some community/art spaces and excited about those too. covid is over (jk). feeling pretty good. thanks for asking.i’m still doing this show for kcsb remotely from my bedroom. i’m hoping to continue it through the spring quarter. also, i’m planning to head down to santa babs the last weekend of april for the kcsb 60th anniversary reunion. see you there???DOWNLOAD RECORDINGsubscribe to the podcast here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/5432fun(intro by omar)Halfsour “Values” Left My Hair in Detroit b/w ValuesLa Dee Da “Archimedes Please” Under WeatherNap Eyes “Have You Seen the Light” Too BadPatrick Elkins “THAT SAND” 21 HITSPeaer “the dark spot” the eyes sink into the skullThe Gift Machine “Thumbed Your Way Back” New TanglesRaf S. “Worried About A Friend” Early WorkMaggie France “Feel Me” DazeWe Can All Be Sorry “Anymore” Grand DesignMister Goblin “Option Vampire” Final BoyJ. McFarlane’s Reality Guest “What Has He Brought” TA DAU.S. Highball “Roppongi Hills, On The Roof” Think AgainDyke Drama “Maniac” Hard New PillsPeony Rad “what city?” Peony RadTrauma Harness “Hatchet Through My Heart” The Slab That Seals My BonesLaser Background “Wasting Away” People Person EPSneaks “And We’re Off” Highway HypnosisBright Ideas “A Hope Between Us” GrapevinesPouty “Adulting” Adulting / Not For YouTera Melos “Treasures and Trolls” Treasures and Trolls

Dan, Randy and Pawl help listeners with info on trimming fruitless Mulberry trees and grapevines. Also, is it time to turn on your sprinklers? Plus, info on the upcoming "Straw Bale Gardening" class.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Italian grapevines can no longer withstand heat and drought, so many wines will soon no longer exist. But some winemakers are using hybrids and ancient Roman grapevines that can tolerate climate changes.

Since chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon grapes can no longer withstand heat and drought, many Italian wines will soon no longer exist. Ancient Roman grapevines are different because they can withstand climate change.

Halliday Wine Companion 'By the Glass' EP 17: Rowly Milhinch, Scion, Rutherglen Rutherglen is one of Australia's oldest wine regions. Grapevines came to the region in the 1850s during the gold rush and Rutherglen, as many of you will already know, became Australia's unchallenged capital of fortified wines. The future of regions like Rutherglen rely heavily on either new blood moving in or subsequent generations, from existing wine families, continuing to carry those legacies into the future. Rowland Milhinch, known as Rowly about town, is a descendant of George Francis Morris - one of Australia's pioneering vignerons of the mid 19th century. Formerly a graphic designer - Rowly applied his creative mind to the art of wine making and is now, arguably, one of the most progressive and playful wine makers in the region. To chat about the importance of new age thinking...in regions steeped heavily in tradition....please welcome Rowly.  Any thoughts or suggestions for upcoming episodes? Please email us at bytheglass@hardiegrant.com and don't forget to follow Halliday Wine Companion over on instagram here. Want to know what wine we were drinking?  Scion After Dark Rutherglen Durif 2018 Looking for a little more wine inspiration? For more information on Australian wines and wineries, including tasting notes, head over to winecompanion.com.au. Interested in becoming a Halliday Wine Companion member? Click here. Hardie Grant acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the country on which we work, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and recognises their continuing connection to the land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. Support the show: https://www.winecompanion.com.au/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Taylor Chalstrom sits down with Kent Daane, UCCE IPM specialist, at this year's Crop Consultant Conference to discuss biology of and management strategies for vine mealybug in grapevines.

John 15:1-8

Speaker: Pastor Raleigh Sims Scripture Focus: John 15:1-8 Description: One agricultural crop that is becoming better known in our days is the grape. Grapevines are everywhere in America, from New York and Virginia on the East Coast to California and Washington on the West Coast. Driving by a vineyard and seeing row after row of flourishing vines is a visually pleasant experience. Jesus speaks to the disciples and us that He is the true vine and we are the branches. He says that God looks for us to be fruit-bearing as we are grafted into our life-giving Lord. Through our worship together, we are nourished in fruitfulness by the Holy Spirit.

The Bartolomiol Ius Naturae DOCG Prosecco 2018, Ius Naturae translaties to Natural Law, is farmed in certified organic Estate vineyards in the DOCG Valdobbiadene district of the Prosecco region of Veneto in northern Italy.This is a vintage Prosecco, from the 2018 vintage, which is a bit different from the usual seemingly available everywhere non-vintage Prosecco. While a non-vintage Sparkling wine is blended from several vintages, that allows the winemaker to maintain a "House Style" that can be replicated year after year.A vintage Sparkling wine will express the growing season of a single particular year. Sparkling wine producers often produce a vintage-dated Bubbly in years where the conditions were just right in the vineyard.Bartolomiol was founded in the 1980s and has converted all their estate vineyards to organic farming. The Valdobbiadene DOCG section of Prosecco is a hilly region in the center. Grapevines love hillsides since the vines are staggered and each vine gets the same amount of sunlight. When it rains the water rolls downhill, the vines gat a drink, but water does not pool around the roots of the vines which can cause issues mold and disease.The Bartolomiol Ius Naturae DOCG Prosecco 2018 is a DOCG designated wine which indicates the vines were planted in prime growing locations and the farming the wine production adhered to strict standards. The G in DOCG translates to guaranteed. They are not guaranteeing that you will like the wine, but are attesting to the quality of the wine.I am actually pretty happy with the good old regular DOC Prosecco, it is priced right and tastes great. But I am very interested to try a Prosecco with all the bells and whistles. Organic estate vineyards, vintage-dated, and a three-month-long 2nd fermentation (typical Prosecco is in the autoclave for a few weeks or so). The alcohol content is a mild 11.5%.Bartolomiol Ius Naturae DOCG Prosecco 2018 tasting NotesThe color is gold with a hint of silver the bubbles keep coming and coming. The nose is ripe crisp apple, lemon chiffon, pear, grapefruit, and a little melon.This is a Prosecco that engages your palate, it definitely has body. This is a sleek, balanced fruit-forward Bubbly. It tastes of a blend of apple, lemon, and melon, with a streak of sharp spice.The mid-palate adds a little sweet peach, apricot, and soft tangerine.The acidity of the Bartolomiol Ius Naturae DOCG Prosecco 2018 sizzles through-out the length of the Bubbly, but does not bite, it is very well-balanced.The SummaryMy first thought after tasting the Bartolomiol Ius Naturae DOCG Prosecco 2018 is that if I had tasted the Bartolomiol as my first Prosecco it would have helped in choosing my favorite go-to value-priced Prosecco.Tasting an exquisite Prosecco first would have told me what I need to look for in a quality Prosecco.Then again it may have ruined me for value Prosecco and doomed me to pay twice the price for the vintage stuff.

Join Shannon and Nick on a beverage-filled adventure as they discuss wine, reading tea leaves, and why it's questionable to put armpit nutmeg into a mulled beverage for your prospective lover (we're also surprised this needed saying). The deity profile focuses on the host with the most, the king of debauchery, and Nick's personal fave, Dionysus. To contact these witches, you can email WandsandFrondsPod@gmail.com or message them on Instagram @WandsandFrondsPod.

Since 1756, the area surrounding the Douro River in northern Portugal has been a renowned wine region. It’s home to the world famous port wine. Here, the grapes are still stomped by foot!

Join us as we continue "Winetober" and we discover the Napa Valley Wine Region! We'll share our fun experiences and give you tips to use on your trip there as well!

Plant Talk with Dave Decock - taking all your fall lawn & garden questions. In this episode: Planting Grass in the Fall, How to Tell When Apples are Ready, When to Divide vs Cut Down Day Lillies, Cutting Back Grapevines and more... Plant Talk with Dave Decock is live every Thursday (during the growing season) from 1-2pm on KFGO 790 AM & 94.1 FM.  See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Hope & AJ sit down to discuss how they met, fingerwaves, parental control, Ghost of Tsushima, anime spoilers, and much more! How they met (5:46), Entanglements (20:15), Parental control (24:46), Ghost of Tsushima (53:38), AC: Valhalla (1:05:20), My Hero Academia spoilers(1:12:16), Black Clover spoilers (1:16:28), Fire Force spoilers (1:23:22), TV shows (1:33:36) Artwork by: @lostgirlart

Heidi Kühn is Founder and CEO of Roots of Peace, a humanitarian-nonprofit organization founded in September 1997 with a vision to transform MINES TO VINES--replacing the scourge of landmines with sustainable agricultural farmland. In today's episode, Heidi shares her quest to eradicate landmines from the face of the earth, and to plant the roots of peace worldwide. From landmines to grapevines, Heidi is on a mission to heal the world, and that healing started with herself. To learn more about Heidi and Roots of Peace visit their website www.rootsofpeace.org, and on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and you can find her new book Breaking Ground: From Landmines to Grapevines, One Woman's Mission to Heal the World at booksellers nationwide and online retailers including amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Stories of Inspiring Joy is a production of Seek The Joy Media and created by Sydney Weiss. To learn more and submit your story, visit www.storiesofinspiringjoy.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sydney-weiss/message

SPEAKERS Heidi Kuhn Humanitarian; Founder, Roots of Peace Michael Pappas Executive Director, San Francisco Interfaith Council In response to the Coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, this program took place and was recorded live via video conference, for an online audience only, and was live-streamed from The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on July 1st, 2020.

Heidi Kuhn, a former CNN reporter and producer, will share her extraordinary journey as a peace activist and how she created Roots of Peace a nonprofit organization that removes landmines and replaces them with vineyards and orchards. Roots of Peace has removed more than 100,000 land mines and unexploded ordinances in Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank Croatia, and elsewhere, and it has helped more than a million farmers and their families. Kuhn who has received numerous humanitarian awards and praise from Queen Noor of Jordan, Nancy Pelosi and Jane Goodall, among others, will discuss her new book, Breaking Ground: From Landmines to Grapevines: One Woman's Vision to Heal the World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Heidi Kuhn, CEO and Founder of Roots of Peace, was raised with a pioneer spirit, love for the earth and humanity. Heidi’s commitment to peace was further strengthened during her time attending University of California Berkeley in the 1970’s. After a cancer diagnosis, Heidi made a promise to God to help others. Inspired by Princess Diana’s commitment to the removal of landmines, Heidi recovered, and lived up to her promise by founding Roots of Peace with a vision of turning “Mines to Vines” – replacing the remnants of war with bountiful vineyards and orchards of peace around the world. Heidi saw the landmines as a cancer of the earth, and devoted herself to saving lives while preventing people and children from tragic death or crippling injuries. In Heidi’s new book, Breaking Ground: From Landmines to Grapevines, One Woman's Mission to Heal the World, Heidi shares the story of starting Roots of Peace 22 Year ago from the basement of her home in Marin County, California. For two decades, Heidi straddled her role as a mother to four children, while growing support for the Roots of Peace Vision. With help from local Napa Valley Vinters, her friends, a community of supporters, the United States Government, the United Nations, World Bank and other organizations. Roots of Peace has planted seeds of hope and peace in eight countries around the world. In our conversation, Heidi shares the faith and mindset that gave her the courage and resilience that helped Roots of Peace thrive and allowed Heidi to overcome her fears. “Faith not fear”, was the belief that allowed Heidi to walk through live minefields, make difficult decisions and keep Roots of Peace alive through multiple hardships. Heidi has been recognized for her work by numerous world leaders including Kofi Annan, HH Pope Benedict XVI, HH Pope Francis and many heads of state and government.  Heidi’s faith, vision and personal story is likely to give you inspiration to pursue the goals that are calling you. Heidi says “I believe that once we commit ourselves wholeheartedly to a noble cause, there are higher forces that steer us in a certain direction and that come to our aid when we are in need.” After listening to Heidi’s story, and reading her book, you may decide it is time to pursue your calling and this is exactly what Heidi is seeking with her book. Heidi’s unwavering belief in a world where children are free to walk without fear of death or injury is a mission we can all support.  We hope you enjoy this conversation, read Heidi’s book and join her on the mission of restoring mines to vines. To contact the show reach out to: podcast@iwantherjob.com  Follow us  @iwantherjob Sign up for our newsletter and find more interviews:  www.iwantherjob.com  

We react to The Grapevines episode on #BlackAF and colorism and we have a guest. Sit back listen and as always rate us five stars and let us know how you enjoyed this episode. A very full podcast that we hope you enjoy. Be sure to rate us 5 stars on Itunes and reach us through https://www.instagram.com/itsalookpod/ Khari's Socials: https://www.instagram.com/artiskhari/ Elyonna's Socials: https://www.instagram.com/elyonna_mone/ Elizabeth/Izzy's Socials: https://www.instagram.com/undertheoven/ https://twitter.com/VortexPussy KNOW YOUR RIGHTS ask: "why am I being stopped" ask: "am I free to go, or am I being detained?" ask if there is a search warrant and ask to see it Say: " I do not consent to a search" Ask: "am I free to go?" Say: "I will not talk. I want my lawyer" Remember: Remain silent; and you do not need to show ID Call 1-800-LAW-REP-4 www.AssatasDaughters.org/Copwatch If you are in any domestic violent situation and need someone to call or help: https://www.thehotline.org/help/ **All of our podcast are recorded a week prior to release so some dates we mention may have past** --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/itsalook/support

Josefina, better known as Josie, gives us an inside look into the working day of a field worker picking cherries, grapes and oranges. At just 9 years old she immigrated from Michoacán, Mexico to Porterville, Ca and quickly started working in the Grapevines. Josie describes working conditions as extreme but as a child she found working in the fields as an enjoyable experience and attributes her character and work ethic to all the early mornings and long hours. Today she is a first grade teacher and in school for her Master's degree. She has also reached a debt free life by living a Minimalism life style, which turned into a Spanish blog Minimalisatodo.

The Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel 2018 is sourced from vineyards in the Lodi AVA of Northern California. Gnarly Head is one of Delicato Family Vineyard's portfolio of wines.Click on the link above to see their family of wine. Delicato has been around since 1924, they are the sixth-largest winery in the United State. They control 6,000 acres of grapevines in Lodi, Napa, Sonoma, and Monterey.The term Gnarly Head refers to a style of pruning the vines. The branches are trained to come out of the stalk three or four feet off the ground. The branches are pruned back to keep them in shape. After several years, these are Old Vines, the vines become gnarled and twisted.Old vines are not a legal term each winery can come up with their definition, but Delicato says some of the vines are over 80 years old. Which brings us to the next question, "what's the big deal about old vines?Grapevines need to suffer to produce great wine grapes. By suffer I mean they do not need to get too much water or be planted in too fertile soil. Most vineyards are planted on rock-strewn sides of hills on land not suitable for crops.So, the struggle for nutrients and moisture is an integral part of the development of the grapes. Old vines naturally struggle, they do not need to be situated on perfect (well perfect for grapevines, kind of bad for most commercial crops) ground to get the full benefits. The struggle is already built-in.Grapevines such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay are pulled out and replanted in commercial vineyards when they no longer are in their prime. These grapes are in demand and the vineyards are constantly being renewed. A new vine may take four or five years to produce wine worthy grapes.Zinfandel has been planted in Lodi for over 100 years and for most of its history there was never the demand for Zinfandel wine to cause the vineyard owners to renew their vines. Vines as they get older, maybe around 25 to 30 years, start to slow down their yield, but few vineyards needed to go through the time and expense to replant.That is a very good thing for the Lodi vineyard owners because these old vines are now in demand and sought after. What may have been good vineyards but not standout vineyards are now exceptional vineyards. Good things come to those who wait.The Gnarly Head label was started in 2004 and includes a full line of drink-it-now wines, both Red and White. The Gnarly Head Old Vines Zinfandel 2018 was aged in/on French and American oak. I am always confused when the tasting notes say racked on oak rather than racked in oak barrels. Racked is a wine term about moving the wine from one barrel or tank to another using gravity rather than some sort of pump. So exactly the sort of oak aging isn't specified, but in a wine that I purchased for $8.99 fancy French oak barrels isn't of too much importance. The alcohol content is 14.5%.Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel 2018 Tasting NotesThe color is a dark but still see-thru black cherry red. The nose is rich and weighty, a nice surprise in a sub-$10 wine, there is depth to the aromas. There is ripe blackberry, a hint of herbs, black licorice, smoke from the BBQ, black pepper, black cherry, and spice.

Joel uses a recent calamity in the nation of Judah to teach his hearers a prophetic lesson. A locust plague had invaded the land, destroying every green thing in its path. Grapevines were stripped clean; grain fields lay bare; fruit trees stood leafless and unproductive. The devastation was so complete that even grain offerings to God were impossible. Joel uses the locust invasion as the starting point of his sermon. As bad as the locust plague was, it would pale by comparison with what God was about to bring upon His people. An army from the north would come to attack the nation, leaving behind devastation even more complete than that of the locusts. The only hope for Joel's hearers: heartfelt repentance before that terrible day arrives. Joel 1:1 “The Word of the Lord that came to Joel” – this underscores that this is the very word of God, and I don't think we can be reminded of this too often. What Joel received, Judah heard, and today we're reading it. Join us as Michael teaches on Joel, a small but influential text which calls us to repentance.

Changes are coming to the Joshua and Caleb Report podcast! Listen to today's show for details, and send us your feedback. We'd love to hear from you. Zac Waller joins the show as we dive into the physical and spiritual correlation to pruning grapevines. John 15 and the actual definition of pruning are almost parallel! They also discuss why cattle farmers are important in Israel and how, out of the top ten biblical archeology finds in 2019, nine were found in Israel. Listen in for an upbeat show bringing you the positive story from Israel. Make sure to comment, follow and leave us a review!

Now a guy who calls himself John Fucking Caldwell is likely to be brash...probably be a risk taker, and likely one of a kind. In John's case, yes, he could be described by each of those descriptors, as well as pleasant, inventive, philanthropic, and one who can make the best of a situation. So it may come as no surprise that he's the kind of person who would consider, and accomplish, smuggling grapevines into the U.S. And that's just half of the story. Join us in his kitchen in south Napa Valley as John shares the compelling tale he's told many times...because it's one worth hearing. 

Did you know, in the right conditions certain grapevines don’t need to be watered at all? In this episode of the Sustainability Matters Today podcast, my guest is Brad Alper, owner of Square Peg Winery in Sonoma County, California. Square Peg is a unique winery Brad does not use irrigation or any herbicides in his vineyards and is able to grow delicious and award-winning Pinot Noir. We discuss the dry farming technique, which is location-specific, requires farmers to grow vines using the St. George’s rootstock, and needs the farmer to care for each vine by hand. We cover Sonoma County’s goal of having 100% certified sustainable vineyards and wineries by the end of 2019, and they are well on their way to this accomplishment. Brad clarifies a misconception that sustainable and organic farming are the same, when really sustainability encompasses farming, energy consumption and production, the health of the soil, and paying your workers a fair wage. This is a much greater achievement and makes a broader positive impact on the environment than just checking a few boxes that qualify your farm as organic. If you know someone who’s passionate about wine, unique farming techniques, or sustainability, share this episode with them! You can find us at sustainabilitymatters.today. If you’d like to learn more about Brad and the Square Peg Winery, visit the website https://squarepegwinery.com/ And let us know you’re listening to this episode on Instagram! Tag us - @sustainabilitymatterstoday and @squarepegwinery. We’d love to hear from you! Topics Covered in this Episode: · Square Peg Winery’s history · What is dry farming? · The difference between sustainable and organic farming Resources: Square Peg Winery Website: https://squarepegwinery.com/ Sonoma County Winegrowers: https://sonomawinegrape.org/ St George’s Rootstock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_rupestris “Science of Grapevines” by Markus Keller: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Grapevines-Anatomy-Physiology/dp/012374881X “General Viticulture” by Albert Julius Winkler: https://www.amazon.com/General-Viticulture-J-Winkler/dp/0520025911 Watch the full episode: https://sustainabilitym.at/Youtube-Brad-Alper

Santorini Series

Do you have pet names for your plants?   Amy the Amaryllis.   Jerry the geranium.   Once I bought some dahlias at a private plant sale.   Before I drove away, I rolled down the window to ask for the sellers name; they’ve been my “Doris“ dahlias ever since. Doris and I have stayed in touch over the years, and I have to say; she’s as lovely as the bloom on those dahlias.   So whether they are called Howard or Bertie, Harry or Liz; if you’ve named your plants, you are not alone. The gesture of honoring a loved one or the little laugh evoked from a cleverly name to plant all add it to the joy of gardening. There’s nothing wrong with that.   Brevities #OTD On this day in 1855 Paul de Longpré (Books By This Author)was born.   Known as the "King of Flowers", de Longpré painted exceptional portrayals of roses (his first love), and wildflowers (his second love).  If you look at his work, you'll find somewhere in his composition his signature accent – a bumblebee. After exhibitions of his work on the East Coast, reviewers praised,  "No one but a poet could paint as he does."   "De Longpré has the rare gift of reading down to the heart of his loved flowers." De Longpré was raised in northern Paris. His father left the family early one - a hurt that de Longpré hid from reporters; telling them that his father was dead. De Longpré's family was artistic and he helped his mother financially by painting silk fans with his brother. (The fans were quite fashionable at the time).   After marrying the delightful Josephine Estievenard, de Longpré was mentored by Francois Rivoire. Like Rivoire, de Longpré’s mastery of watercolors are said to rival the richness of oil painting.   When de Longpré lost his savings in a Paris bank crash, he immigrated with his wife and their children to the United States - ultimately calling Hollywood their home in 1900.  At the time, Hollywood was a brand new development just west of Los Angeles -   De Longpré built a lavish Mission Revival style villa and it quickly became the most famous estate on the boulevard. He bought an additional three blocks of property from socialite Daeida Wilcox Beveridgein exchange for three of his flora watercolors. On the property, de Longpré planted over 4000 rosebushes the muses for his work – and he turned the main level of his magnificent home into an art gallery. The place became a sensation; a hub for elites, as well as a tourist destination, with over 8,000 visitors a month. De Longpré’s guests were greeted by a very courteous Japanese butler who would hand them a list of the paintings titles and prices.   Pauls daily habit was to get up in the morning and pick flowers with his youngest daughter, Pauline, by his side. After creating more than 2,000 paintings, de Longpré died in 1911. Josephine and the girls sold the house and sadly agreed to a final exhibition of de Longpré's work, which included his masterpiece the Cherokee Rose. It was a Josephine's lifelong regret to part with these paintings. Thirteen years later, the architectural wonder of the de Longpré's villa and the lavish gardens were all destroyed to make room for commercial buildings and parking lots.   #OTD On this day in 1734, Elsa Beate Bunga was born.   She was a pistol. Married to the handsome Swedish Count Sven Bunga, Elsa was a passionate amateur botanist. At her Beataberga mountain estate, she had many large greenhouses.    Bunga wrote a book called, "About the Nature of Grapevines", which brought her notoriety and authority. She even  corresponded with fellow Swede Carl Linnaeus (who is almost 30 years older than her).   Bunga also drew attention because of her way of dressing. Like the women of her time she wore a skirt, but she distinguished herself by dressing as a man from the waist up. When King Gustav III (1771 - 1792), inquired about a peculiarly dressed woman at the Royal Swedish opera, Bunge boldly replied,  "Tell his Majesty that I am the daughter of statesman Fabian Reder and married to statesman Sven Bunga". Unearthed Words #OTD Maryland selected the Black-Eyed Susan as the State Flower.   This was after much debate. The Baltimore Sun, among many others, was not in favor of the Black-Eyed Susan selection, writing dismissively: "Susan came to Maryland, not on the Ark or the Dove, but a migrant from the Midwest mixed in clover and hayseed." Before the plant received it's popular common name, there was a song by John Gay called Black-Eyed Susan - popular in British maritime novels.    The song tells of a love story between Susan and her Sweet William. As the two say their final farewells before his departure on a long sea voyage, Susan had crying and had black circles around her eyes.   Today, their stories continue; folklore sharing that Black-Eyed Susans and Sweet William share the same bloom time to celebrate their undying love for each other.     Here are a few verses:   All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd, The streamers waving to the wind When black-eyed Susan came on board; Oh! where shall I my true love find? Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true, If my sweet William sails among your crew.   William, who high upon the yard, Rock'd with the billows to and fro, Soon as her well-known voice he heard,; He sigh'd, and cast his eyes below; ;- The cord glides swiftly through his glowing hands, ' And quick as lightning on the deck he stands. '   So the sweet lark, high pois'd in air, Shuts close his pinions to his breast, If chance his mate's shrill call he hear, And drops at once into her nest, The noblest captain in the British fleet, Might envy William's lips those kisses sweet.   O Susan, Susan, lovely dear, My vows shall ever true remain; Let me kiss off that falling tear;  We only part to meet again. . Change as ye list, ye winds, my heart shall be The faithful compass that still points to thee.   Believe not what the landsmen say, Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind; They'll tell thee, sailors, when away, In every port a mistress find. Yes, yes, believe them, when they tell thee so, For thou art present wheresoe'er I go.   If to fair India's coast we sail,  Thy eyes are seen in di'monds bright; Thy breath is Afric's spicy gale, Thy skin is ivory so white. Thus, ev'ry beauteous object that I view, Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.   Though battle calls me from thy arms, Let not my pretty Susan mourn; Though cannons roar, yet safe from harms. William shall to his dear return. Love turns aside the balls 'that round me fly; Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye. I   The boatswain gave the dreadful word, The sails their swelling bosoms spread; No longer must she stay aboard They kiss'd she sigh'd; he hung his head Her less'ning boat unwilling rows to land; Adieu! she cries, and wav'd her lily hand.   Today's book recommendation  Studio Oh! Hardcover Medium Capture Life’s Moments Cactus Journal Studio Oh offers inspired collections of finely crafted and cleverly designed journals and other decorative home accessories.  Their new cactus line of products will be a sure hit with gardeners. Today's Garden Chore Plan how you will honor Arbor Day Find the best place to source saplings in your area. Increase your tree diversity by planting a Kentucky Coffee Tree. Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart The story of de Longpré is quite enchanting. There are two images in particular about de Longpré that stuck with me. The first is such a quintessentially French image. De Longpré is riding his bicycle, peddling out to the garden with an easel on his back, a hat on his head, on his way to paint the flowers he loved so much.   The second image is a photo of de Longpré in the garden with his little daughter Pauline. In an article in the Overland Monthly, we get a little glimpse into their relationship. "de Longpré’s youngest daughter, is a bright little miss about eight years old. If you ask for her name, she will say it is Pauline; but the only name she has ever called at home is “Joujou”; the French word for toy or plaything.  She is idolized by her famous father, and when he walks in the garden she is always by his side."   Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

Just when you thought you had winter beat… You thought wrong.   Surprise.     Unpredictable weather.   Dicey temperatures.   Gardeners need resilience.  If Spring’s arrival is dashing your hope,  start to look for the survivors in your garden. In your neighborhood. In your city.  On your social media feed.   Every Spring - no matter the conditions, there are successes.  Hardy Daffodils. Forsythia.  Lungwart.  Snowdrops.  Magnolias. Look for the plants that survive and thrive despite the challenges of Spring.  Plant more of those plants.  Find joy in those plants.  Improve your resiliency by mirroring the resilience of your garden. Brevities #OTD Born today in 1854, the extraordinary floral still life painter and teacher Mary Hiester Reid (Books By This Author).     Born in Pennsylvania, Mary Augusta Hiester met George Reid(who was six years younger than her) at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts during school sketching trips. George later recalled that the trips were not only great for art’s sake, but they also gave him the chance to be with, “the beautiful Mary Hiester on their expeditions”.    After that, they often worked together and that winter, Mary invited George to accompany her back home for a weekend of sketching on the Schuykill (“Sk-ooh-kill”) River.  Their fates were sealed together when they married in 1885.   The Reids spent every summer from 1891 to 1916 at Onteora(“Aunty Aura”), a private literary and artistic club founded by American artist Candace Wheeler in the Catskill Mountains near Tannersville, N.Y. They had a house and a studio, both designed on arts and crafts principles by George. They spent their time painting and teaching, their studio having accommodation for ten students, some of whom came from as far away as Toronto.   "A self-adopted Canadian who loved Canada", Mary was very humble.  In 1910, a reviewer wrote in The Globe, “Nothing can tempt her to talk about her pictures.”  Mary was one of the first women accepted into the Ontario Society of Artistsand the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.     Her painting, Hollyhocks, is a personal favorite.    Reid was the preeminent female artist of Canada when she died.   She was celebrated for her, "study and interpretation of Nature in those aspects that appealed most to her...glimpses of spring and autumn woodland, moonlit vistas, gorgeously colorful gardens, lovely skies, divinely tinted ends of evening, and the countless flowers of the fields….” In 1922, a year after her death, Reid was the first female to be featured with a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto    She willed her husband to her friend and rival - the younger painter and printmaker (24 years her junior) Mary Evelyn Wrinch.   It’s the birthday of landscape architect David Darrell. A semi-retired Harford County landscape architect.  Darrell was born and raised in Claymont, Delaware, and was raised on his family's farm. Some of his commissions included the prayer garden at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, the Largo Animal Preserve in Prince George's County, and Little Lithuania Park near Hollins Market among others. He also designed courtyards and tennis courts. His wife Edna said  "David came into my life in August 2006; I was looking for someone to create a new garden. I looked in the Yellow Pages and five people came to interview. There was something about him. He studied the plants with big, gentle hands, he trimmed and shaped them. He was hired on the spot.”   David Darrel died of brain cancer in 2015. Unearthed Words Here’s a memorial poem for Mary Hiester Ried written by Canadian newspaperman and a native son of Scotland, Duncan Sutherland Macorquodale - reprinted in the 9th Volume of The Canadian Theosophist (Toronto) November 15, 1921 Vol 9. There’s a reference to Wychwood; the Reid's house, Upland Cottage, was located in Wychwood Park - an artist’s enclave of 60 homes tucked away in a private ravine setting atop the rolling wooded hills of the Davenport Ridge in Toronto.   MARY HIESTER REID  Obit. Oct. 4, 1921.    Free from the thrall called life,  Palette and brush laid down;  Off with achievement’s strife,  Donned the immortal’s crown;  Yet hovers she near ’neath the Wychwoodtree,  This, the roses she painted, tell to me.    Knelt not to gods of dress,  Knew naught of gossip’s blight,  Lived she to work and bless;  This was her heart’s delight.  And the smile of welcome to all she gave,  Would fashion a knight from the meanest slave.    Why mourn we our loved, laid low?  We also our time abide.  Are they lost because they go?  Nay! for they have not died.  The body rests, but the soul is free  To charm as of old with it’s melody.   Queen, both of roses and hearts,  Her mortal course well run;  Her’s ‘both the good and the better parts;  Martha, and Mary, in one.  Still reigns she here, while there her body lies.  The good, the pure, the noble, never dies.  Today's book recommendation  The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves By Mary Reynolds   An award-winning garden designer's practical how-to book with stories and philosophy.   The Garden Awakeningis a step-by-step manual to help create a garden in harmony with the life force in the earth; addressing not only what the people in charge of the land want but also asking what the land wants to become. Mary Reynolds demonstrates how to create a groundbreaking garden that is not simply a solitary space but an expanding, living, interconnected ecosystem. Drawing on old Irish ways and methods of working with the land, this beautiful book is both art and inspiration for any garden lover seeking to create a positive, natural space. Today's Garden Chore April is the perfect time to prune grape vines. Remove dead vines.  Guide vines along trellis, arbors, or fences.  Now is a great time to repair support structures as well. Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart #OTD The first Arbor Day in the US was observed in “treeless Nebraska” on April 10, 1872.  It was established for the state of Nebraska by the Honorable J. Sterling Mortonof Nebraska - later secretary of agriculture.  The most memorable stat from that first Arbor Day is that around a million trees were planted in Nebraska on this day in 1872 – the first Arbor Dayin America. Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: for a happy, healthy life - garden every day.

Brandan walks us through how we are the vine and there are times in our life where God chooses to prune us. Not because its easy or it feels good, but because it is good for us. Brandan talks through some of the prunings of his past to show there are blessings when we are pruned.

On this episode I’m out in the garden preparing for and conducting my first pruning of a two-year-old muscadine hybrid grapevine. I give some backstory on why I began the garden, how it was constructed and arranged, and how I began growing grapes in my Central Florida backyard. Hopefully this is good practice for when I retire to own and operate a beautiful, sprawling vineyard. To spend my days in hours of deep, meditative care of my vines, before pulling corks that evening. In preparation I learn about spur vs. cane pruning styles, and that grapes are a tough and tenacious plant. Ever grow any grapes?  Thanks for downloading!

We got some new equipment and new editing software! It's almost like we're professionals or something lol.

Dr. Justine Vanden Heuvel, Associate Professor of Viticulture at Cornell University, describes how controlling vine vigor is difficult in regions with high organic matter soils and plentiful summer rain. Growing certain cover crops in the vine row can devigorate vines by as much as 30%. Others do not devigorate vines, but do keep soil in place. In vineyards on slopes under-vine cover crops can reduce or eliminate the need for herbicide applications preventing the off-site movement of soil, pesticides, and nutrients. References: 10: Vineyard Weed Management |Grant Cremers (Podcast) 18: Next Steps in Grape Sampling |Justine Vanden Houvel (Podcast) Floor Management for Soil Health |Dr. Craig Macmillan Impact of Under-Trellis Cover Crops Justine Vanden Heuvel’s web page Listen to 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.

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) is a grant program of the U.S.D.A. to find solutions to problems identified by growers. By providing funding to growers for original research, demonstrations, and other projects new sustainable innovations are discovered and promoted. Western SARE Communications Manager Stacie Clary discusses the program and some of its many successes. References: 20: Dr. Mark Fuchs | Red Blotch Virus in Grapevines (podcast) Conventional vs. GMO-free Broilers Video Sustainable Ag Expo Western SARE website Western SARE Learning Center  Listen to 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.

Dr. Marc Fuchs researches the biology and ecology of the Grapevine Red Blotch associated Virus. His work investigates the transmission and spread of the virus, its possible vectors, how the virus affects vines, and optimal management strategies. References: A Long and Winding Road: The Discovery of the Red Leaf A Long and Winding Road: The Discovery of the Red Leaf Viruses, the Leaf Rolls and Red Blotch - Deborah Golino, Sustainable Ag Expo 2015 Presentation A Short History of Red Blotch Disease Episode 3 Grapevine Red Blotch-associated Virus Fact Sheet Grapevine Trunk Diseases and Red Blotch Virus Management Episode 4 Sustainable Ag Expo Listen to 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.

Do you enjoy a cluster of grapes or a nice wine?  Viticulture is the cultivation of grapevines.  Grapevines grow best in specific geographical locations blessed with a particular climate.  They...

Ken Freeze is the spokesperson for the GWSS/PD Board, which is part of the CDFA. He explains how area-wide control of GWSS is helping to keep populations down and prevent the spread of Pierces Disease

A vineyard can be a beautiful sight. And as its grapes are harvested for wine, the results can be highly prized. The source of that value is underground, where roots collect qualities from the soil, moisture and minerals below. A family is a lot like that. What appears on the surface is the result of behaviors planted in past generations, often hidden from our understanding. Psychologists often use genograms to trace family patterns, and determine what makes us tick. Join Horizon for FINE WINE as we study God's "genograms" and learn how to harvest a prized vintage from your family's vineyard.

Today’s guest in the hot seat is CHRIS KERN A graduate of Princeton University, President & CEO of wine retailers ForgottenGrapes.com and PasosBestWines.com, a self-taught wine expert and an experienced wine and culinary entrepreneur, Chris Kern travels across the country, educating wine drinkers of all ages (though always 21 and older, of course) with his encyclopedic knowledge of wine … Read more about this episode...

Viticulture - the process of growing grapes - is an inherent collaboration between people and place. "Napa Valley Rocks: Viticulture" shares some of the secrets from the vineyard that help Napa Valley's grape growers and winemakers produce consistent quality wines, vintage after vintage.

Carol Marks reads her poems "Grapevines," "Humility," "Belfry," and "You Know Where We Were."