While farmers are accustomed to paying for the water they use, growers in Madera Irrigation District have recently been getting their water for free for groundwater recharge purposes. While the snow melts and water is aplenty, growers are working quickly to set their farms up to be able to spread some of this water across their fields, in a ditch, or a basin to replenish their groundwater supply. This not only serves to benefit the farmer, but the entire community as well. Watch this video with Thomas Greci, General Manager of the Madera Irrigation District as he explains.
Please thank this video’s sponsor Ranch Systems for their industry support.
Imagine a devastating plant disease that sweeps the land, decimating crops. For Florida’s citrus growers, that apocalyptic vision is not a horror movie, but a reality: since it was first identified in the Sunshine State in 2005, citrus greening disease has reduced Florida’s citrus production by a whopping 70%, and threatened other major citrus producing states such as California and Texas. Without any treatment or cure available, desperate growers have cut down infected trees or abandoned their groves entirely. Scientists have been racing to come up with a solution. Now, one enterprising team believes it may have one, in the form of: stingrays.
Like other organisms, stingrays have an immune system. Unlike most organisms, however, the rays’ system produces an antibody with a functional domain that is both far smaller and more stable than most. These special antibodies, or nanobodies – termed “mantabodies” by the research team – are specialized proteins that can help other organisms fight off infection. Essentially, the researchers plan to treat the rays as a sort of all-purpose pharmacy, where they can introduce a novel pathogen like the citrus greening bacteria, and the rays will generate an immune response specific to that pathogen. The genetic material (gene) encoding this specifically-targeted antibody can then be placed in modified plant cells that grow as a symbiont – an organism that lives in a close, mutually beneficial relationship with the diseased organism.
Alternatively, researchers can culture the modified plant cells in large vessels and then harvest the antibodies that the cells produce for inoculation into citrus trees. The resulting antibody therapy would prevent or cure disease development in the trees. The approach could, in theory, be applied to other organisms too, and the researchers plan to use the technology to target pathogens that invade farmed fish, honey bees, and more.
This project was a 2022 winner of ARSX, an annual competition that asks ARS scientists to propose innovative, high-risk, high-reward ideas that cross disciplines and break boundaries to solve our most pressing challenges.
A southern stingray, Hypnum americanus, swims along the seabed. (Photo courtesy of Matt Ajemian, Ph.D., director of the Fisheries Ecology and Conservation Lab at FAU-HBOI)
The project team includes researchers from ARS, the Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, in Fort Pierce, FL, and the and U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Educationin Oak Ridge, TN. Team member and ARS research molecular biologist Michelle Heck is using USDA’s SCINet high performance computing clusters to analyze the stingray genomes, and she is applying a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) approach called AlphaFold to identify the mantabody genes.
“Using AlphaFold, which was just released two years ago, we can rapidly and accurately predict the shape of all the stingray proteins,” explained Heck, who works at ARS’s Robert W. Holley Center in Ithaca, NY, “And we can find the ones that look most like what we think a mantabody protein should look like.”
The researchers are also taking advantage of other advances in biotechnology, like the mRNA technique that was used to deliver Covid-19 vaccines. They believe that their project could, in turn, advance biotechnology even farther.
“You can modify almost anything with an antibody treatment,” said Joseph Krystel, a team member and research biologist at the ARS U.S. Horticultural Research Lab (USHRL) in Fort Pierce, FL. “You could stimulate the immune system of a citrus tree, or you could suppress a particular set of genes if you wanted to. The reason we don’t do it now is that it’s cost-prohibitive. But the mantabody platform could give us a more cost-effective way to do it.”
It could also provide farmers with more sustainable biological alternatives to many current practices. Robert Shatters, a team member and research molecular biologist at the USHRL, explained that, “Mantabodies could be applied to veterinary aspects of agriculture, and a number of plant pathogen issues. We think this project would have a really broad impact, and that’s why we’re excited about it.” – By Kathryn Markham, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
USDA Foreign Ag Service — We see them every time we purchase fresh fruits and vegetables: price look up (PLU) labels. The little coin-size stickers are stuck to everything from apples, bananas, and cantaloupes to watermelons, yams, and zucchini.
According to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition , PLU labels have been used globally for more than 30 years with the International Federation for Produce Standards issuing more than 1,400 PLU codes.
PLU labels offer many benefits to the agriculture, trade, and retail industries. The labels lower costs and optimize handling by digitizing supply chain management, minimizing packaging, and reducing time at the point of purchase – something we can all appreciate when rushing through the self-checkout lane. When it comes to agricultural trade, PLU codes also help exporters and importers consistently and quickly identify and track products across the globe. Whether you purchase a Red Delicious apple in the United States, Mexico, or Vietnam, the PLU code is the same.
USDA Research Chemist Dr. Gabriel Patterson pours one of the experimental home compostable adhesives to sticker backing during the research process. The team tested more than 100 formulas to determine the top three adhesive (photo by James McManus).
Unfortunately, PLU labels have also created a sticky situation for composters, the environment, and even U.S. exporters. Why? PLU labels are not biodegradable, which means they contaminate produce that’s tossed in the compost pile or sent to commercial composting facilities. As a result, the produce generally ends up in landfills, which creates more food waste, increases methane emissions, and negatively affects climate change.
Several countries, led by France and New Zealand, have enacted legislation that will require PLU labels to be certified home compostable. This has posed a challenge for U.S. exporters by creating a trade barrier that puts millions of dollars of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable exports at risk. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has stepped in to help solve the problem in an effort to help reduce trade barriers and mitigate climate change.
With research and development funds provided by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops Program, FAS and USDA’s Agricultural Research Service are working to produce compostable PLU labels. FAS and ARS are collaborating with the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) and Sinclair Systems International to meet the EU standards. The goal is to develop adhesives that are both food-safe and compostable. When achieved, this will allow American companies to export fruits and vegetables as usual while helping to decrease food waste and methane emissions.
Scientists at the USDA Western Regional Research Center in Albany, CA apply test and control PLU labels to grapefruits and sweet potatoes to evaluate their effectiveness (photo by James McManus).
To date, the research team has tested more than 100 formulas to determine the top three adhesives that produce the desired biodegradation process. The team is performing final tests to confirm that these bio-based adhesives pass the home-compostable degradation test. They will then tackle scale-up adhesive coating trials as a key milestone toward commercialization.
USDA has also coordinated closely with the IFPA on outreach and education to U.S. produce exporters to demonstrate the benefits of greener, environmentally friendly PLU labels and adhesives. Once implemented, the new PLU labels and adhesives will solve a sticky problem for U.S. exporters and ultimately help reduce methane emissions, another step towards more sustainable agricultural production and trade.
In the United States, blueberries are the second-most produced berry, and their popularity has grown exponentially in less than 30 years – up from 45,000 tons grown in the 1990s to 339,000 tons in 2019. ARS researchers are working hard to help farmers keep up with consumer demand.
“In blueberry, we focus on improving the shelf life of fruit so that it reaches consumers with consistently better texture and flavor,” said Claire Luby, plant geneticist with HCPGIR. “This also means developing new types of blueberries that are easier to harvest using mechanical harvesting equipment.”
Blueberries are notorious for being difficult to harvest with machinery because they bruise so easily.
Perhaps a larger challenge for Luby and her colleagues is developing a cultivar that is resistant to a disease known to be a scourge of the berry: blueberry shock virus.
“We’re studying diverse blueberry plants to understand the genetic basis for blueberry shock virus, which can significantly impact yields for farmers,” she said. “Our hope is to use the insights from this project to develop new cultivars that are resistant, or at least more tolerant to, the disease.”
Blueberry shock virus has caused annual crop losses of 34-90% in the Pacific Northwest.
“The fruits that we focus on in this project are some of the most consumed fruits in the United States and contribute important nutritional benefits to consumers,” Luby said. The fruits are also economically important to the region, with Washington and Oregon being the nation’s top two producers.
According to Luby, researchers combine traditional plant breeding with genomics to find the right genetic mix for their disease-resistant cultivars.
Their plant breeding programs use traditional techniques of taking pollen from one plant and using it to pollinate a different plant with complementary characteristics. They then determine if the progeny of these crosses have the new characteristics that meet the goals of the breeding programs. In general, these techniques have been used in one form or another by people trying to improve agricultural crops for millennia.
“Where the genomics piece comes in is to try to improve the accuracy and speed of the plant breeding process,” Luby explained. “We are now able to obtain a lot more genetic information about the plants and we can use that information to potentially predict whether an offspring of a given cross might have the characteristics we are looking for before we plant it out in the field. This is important because it can increase the speed of the plant breeding process.”
Traditional blueberry breeding can take more than 20 years from the time an initial cross is made to when a consumer might eat from a resulting cultivar.
“Our goals are to develop blueberries that require fewer chemical inputs to fight disease, which can be better for both the environment and for growers’ bottom lines,” Luby said. – By Scott Elliott, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
Announced by the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Division (CPDPD), the CDFA’s Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) quarantine program now requires all harvesters/farm labor contractors (FLCs) – referring to any person/establishment who employs people to perform work related to grove management and/or harvesting commercial citrus fruit – to have a valid compliance agreement to harvest citrus groves.
FLCs will have until June 15, 2023 to obtain and sign a compliance agreement. Any FLCs operating in citrus groves without a compliance agreement by the June 15th deadline will be in violation of quarantine requirements.
Compliance agreements can be provided to you by directly reaching out to your local CDFA ACP/HLB Program contact. Completed compliance agreements can be returned to CDFA via local regulatory staff or by email to ACPCompliance@cdfa.ca.gov. Contact details by region can be found below:
The 2022-23 Valencia orange forecast is 16.2 million cartons. This forecast was based on the results of the 2022-23 Valencia Orange Objective Measurement (O.M.) Survey, which was conducted from January 9 to February 28, 2023. Estimated fruit set per tree, fruit diameter, trees per acre, bearing acreage, and oranges per carton were used in the statistical models estimating production.
The season experienced scattered precipitation in some areas which caused a rainy start to the growing season. Survey data indicated an average fruit set per tree of 616, a 13.9% increase from the previous year and 12.2% above the five-year average of 549. The average March 1 diameter was 2.391 inches, down 2.8% from the previous year and 5.1% below the five-year average of 2.520.
SURVEY HISTORY
A Valencia Orange Objective Measurement Survey was conducted from the 1985-86 to 1993-94 seasons before suspension due to a lack of funding. The survey has been conducted since it was reinstated for the 1999-00 season, with the exception of the 2006-07 season due to a substantial freeze. The data from the first three years after the survey was reinstated were used for research purposes in developing crop- estimating models.
SURVEY SAMPLE
A sample of 375 Valencia orange groves were randomly selected proportional to acreage, county, year planted, and variety representation in the state, with 340 of these groves being utilized in this survey. Once a grove was randomly chosen and grower permission was granted, two trees were randomly selected for each grove. For each randomly selected tree, its trunk was measured along with all connected branches. A random number table was then used to select a branch, and then all connected branches from the randomly-selected branch were measured.
This process was repeated until a branch was reached with no significant limbs beyond it. This randomly-selected branch, called the terminal branch, was then closely inspected to count all fruit connected to it, as well as all of the fruit along the path from the trunk to the terminal branch. Since each selected path has a probability of selection associated with it, a probability- based method was then applied to estimate a fruit count for the entire tree.
In the last week of the survey period, fruit diameter measurements were collected on the right quadrant of four trees surrounding the two sampled trees of every third sampled grove. These measurements were used to estimate an average fruit diameter per tree. The sampled groves were primarily in the top Valencia orange producing counties of Tulare, Kern, Fresno, Ventura, and San Diego.
Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), a small fly native to Asia that first appeared in Michigan in 2010, isn’t like most pests. Populations of crop-damaging insects tend to have distinct generations. Not SWD. Several generations overlap and build through the year, attacking vulnerable agricultural crops and wild plants. The situation has created a major challenge for the Michigan berry and cherry industries.
Spotted wing drosophila in the lab.
Rufus Isaacs, a professor in the Michigan State University Department of Entomology, was one of the first to discover the pest in the state 13 years ago. While researchers didn’t know much about SWD then, they’ve had to get up to speed quickly.
Rufus Isaacs, professor of entomology at MSU.
“SWD is so destructive because it can insert eggs into ripening fruit,” said Isaacs, whose work is supported in part by MSU AgBioResearch. “Larvae can be present in harvested fruit, which can be a big problem for producers. It is also able to reproduce so quickly to build up the population, and it can infest wild fruit outside of farms, creating a reservoir population that continually invades crop fields after they’re treated.”
After hearing about SWD arriving in California in 2008 and then being detected in Florida in 2009, concerns began to mount.
“Shortly after SWD was found in Florida, I went to a conference in Oregon where we discussed measures we may need to take to get ready for the pest,” Isaacs said. “We expected it would be in Michigan before too long.”
Sure enough, Isaacs was right. He received a grant from Project GREEEN — a partnership among MSU AgBioResearch, MSU Extension and the plant agriculture industries of Michigan — in 2010 to monitor for SWD. Isaacs worked with members of the MSU Fruit Team to set small plastic traps with holes that were filled with a cider vinegar lure.
In late 2010, SWD was collected from a site in West Michigan. At that point, the difficult work began and persists today. Research in Isaacs’ lab has been performed in partnership with mostly blueberry and raspberry growers.
The team has tested already-registered pesticides to determine their efficacy, as well as non-chemical controls such as pruning, mulching and physical exclusion methods, where growers place netting around and on top of crops as they begin to ripen.
As a result of this research, online resources have been created to assist growers with SWD identification, pesticide timing and other management strategies.
“We want to ensure we’re responsive to grower needs, first and foremost,” Isaacs said. “That’s why the pairing of research and grower education programs through MSU Extension is so valuable to our team.”
Dennis Vander Kooi, a blueberry grower and owner of Woodland Enterprises Berry Farms in Zeeland, Michigan, and his family have been working with MSU researchers for many years. He is also a board member of the Michigan Blueberry Commission (MBC), helping to set research priorities for the industry.
“Rufus is one of the nation’s leading researchers on this issue, and we’ve worked with others at MSU as well,” Vander Kooi said. “He’s run several experiments on our farm, and we’ve learned a lot from them. The MBC has supported this work and will continue to in the future as we look for effective ways to manage this pest.”
Vander Kooi said the blueberry industry is undergoing a rejuvenation in Michigan, adopting newer genetics and planting varieties that meet the demands of today’s consumers. This, in conjunction with SWD, makes it a critical time for growers as they look to protect an industry that contributes nearly $132 million to the state’s economy, according to the Michigan Ag Council.
“With the creation of the MBC in 2017, we got the opportunity to start advocating for more dollars for research, and MSU has been instrumental in that,” he said. “To date, we’ve supported more than $390,000 worth of research, much of that going to MSU, and leveraged an additional $600,000 in other funding.”
In addition to the MBC, Project GREEEN has been a significant supporter of Isaacs’ SWD efforts, along with state funding through the Specialty Crop Block Grant program and national projects funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Assessing biological control options
One of the primary challenges for scientists is focusing on immediate grower needs while also investigating long-term management tactics. It’s a monumental task to balance both simultaneously.
Marianna Szucs, assistant professor of entomology at MSU.
Alongside Isaacs, Marianna Szucs, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology, has been exploring biological control to reduce populations in the long run. As she noted, when SWD came to the U.S., its natural predators did not.
“Anytime there is introduction of an invasive pest, one of the main issues is that the new landscape doesn’t have natural enemies for it,” she said. “They don’t come with the pest, and the native insects in the new place aren’t equipped to deal with it right away. What we wanted to know is if we exposed parasitoid wasps native to Michigan to SWD, would they begin to see them as a food source?”
A parasitoid insect lays its eggs in or on a host insect, and the developing larvae consume the host until it eventually dies.
Szucs and her team chose two parasitoid wasp species commonly found throughout North America. Researchers initially saw that attack rates in the wild were quite low, and the ability of native species to rapidly adapt to a new food source was unknown. In the lab, the parasitoids were exposed to SWD and forced to prey on them.
Within three generations of selection from a small number of parasitoids — 30 wasps or fewer — successful parasitism improved by 259% for one species and 88% for the other.
“Obviously this is an artificial scenario because we only gave them one option, and in the wild they only attack something if they know to do it,” Szucs said. “But this was a novel way to show that there is some potential to raise native parasitoids and influence their fitness to attack SWD.”
Besides improving native species, the other biological control option is to introduce natural predators. That’s what an MSU team including Isaacs has done with the samba wasp, which is native to Asia. After years of testing and applying for permits, the USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service and Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) approved the release of the samba wasp in SWD-threatened locations.
The samba wasp detects already-infested fruit and targets the smallest stages of SWD larvae. Laying its eggs inside its host, the growing samba wasp feeds and ultimately kills the larvae, emerging as a wasp in roughly a month.
The team will continue to evaluate the wasps’ success in the coming growing season, as well as assessing the ability to survive Michigan winters.
“Hopefully they’re able to survive the winter and the populations are robust enough to be successful next year,” Isaacs said. “We don’t expect results right away, but this is a long-term project for us to determine if this can help reduce the need for insecticides and other management strategies moving forward.”
‘Perfect conditions for SWD’
The northwest portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is world renowned for its cherry production. Growers in the Great Lakes State are responsible for 70% of the U.S. supply of tart cherries, about 80% of which are grown in the northwest Lower Peninsula. But the industry is under siege from a variety of sources, from invasive pests and climate change to competition abroad.
SWD, however, has hit the industry particularly hard. Nikki Rothwell, the coordinator of the NWMHRC and fruit specialist with MSU Extension, said this challenge affects every Michigan cherry grower.
Nikki Rothwell, coordinator of the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center.
“If an orchard starts with 100 flies in mid-June, and each female can lay 300 eggs each week, even the best growers with the best programs have a hard time controlling millions of flies,” she said. “Plus, cherries are so attractive that it’s hard to monitor the populations once the fruit get ripe, which makes it hard to make good management decisions based on traditional trapping and integrated pest management strategies we’ve successfully used with other pests.”
One of Rothwell’s initial studies showed that tart cherries create the optimal conditions for SWD. While the flies leave most cropping systems during the day to avoid the hot sun, tart cherry canopies provide a cool layer of protection for them to mate and infest fruit. She found that simply pruning the trees and keeping grass clipped helps immensely.
“We did a pruning study in which we removed different numbers of branches and found that if you remove six to 10 branches in a tart cherry canopy, you can reduce SWD infestation by 40% even without insecticides,” Rothwell said. “We also showed that mowing grass short between tree rows reduced infestation.”
Recent research includes modeling SWD in cherries. Rothwell hypothesized that flies seem to be in the orchard at all times during the summer and begin to lay eggs suddenly. She believed flies were present and waiting for the right time to infest ripening fruit.
To better understand this timing, Rothwell and her team have monitored tart cherries as they ripen over the course of the growing season and brought fruit back to the lab. There, they look at when flies begin infestation. Using this information, the team is producing a model for growers that will more precisely indicate ideal timing for pesticides and other management techniques.
“We’re refining the model now, but we’re hoping to have something soon that growers can use,” Rothwell said. “The industry really depends on MSU to help work through this problem.”
Rothwell’s work has been supported by the Michigan Cherry Committee, MDARD, Project GREEEN and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. — By Cameron Rudolph, Michigan State University
Westfalia Fruit, the market leader in growing, ripening, handling, and distributing quality avocados, announces the start of its 2023 GEM® avocado season, expecting a strong supply of fruit from mid-April through mid-July.
Westfalia Fruit US is excited to present the GEM® avocado to the United States market. GEM is a gourmet avocado that Westfalia holds exclusive marketing rights in Africa, the EU, and many other regions of the world. GEM® is truly a unique avocado with gold-flecked skin and a creamy, buttery texture. It is a larger piece of fruit with a slightly nutty flavor. GEM® is a gourmet avocado that will elevate the avocado category.
“The GEM® avocado has an exceptional flavor profile and is the darling of chefs, home cooks, and foodie fanatics alike,” said Raina Nelson, President/CEO Westfalia Fruit Marketing USA LLC. “Westfalia Fruit has successfully and exclusively marketed the GEM® in key markets across the globe to create a best-in-category avocado that drives consumers to a new avocado destination. We are excited to launch similar programs here in the U.S. and build upon the global GEM® successes we’ve designed with world class retailers.”
Westfalia Fruit US’s GEM® program will be supplied with California fruit but the variety is abundantly grown in other areas of the world like South Africa. The GEM® avocado is a sustainable cultivar with its high yield of fruit on compact trees that are protected from harsh environmental elements under a plush tree canopy. The post-harvest fruit quality is tremendous, and the fruit is hand-plucked at peak ripeness to deliver delicious fruit to consumer’s plates.
“We anticipate a healthy season for the GEM® variety this year. We are enthusiastic to build dazzling customer programs to drive GEM® awareness with consumers through innovative and proven methodologies that make avocado programs shine,” shares Nelson.
Westfalia markets prime-quality, ready-to-eat avocados across the globe through its vertically integrated supply chain as well as its technical and commercial expertise. Westfalia is committed to producing safe, exceptional quality food, all while ensuring sustainable, ethical, and responsible management of its bio-resources and the communities and environments across the globe.
Established over 70 years ago, Westfalia Fruit Group is a global, vertically integrated company and market leader in growing, ripening, processing, shipping, and distributing the product. The company is committed to sustainability by developing a thorough strategy, which prioritizes the environment, local economies, and most importantly, their people. Westfalia Fruit Group is devoted to producing safe, high-quality food whilst ensuring the sustainable and responsible management of its bio-resources, communities and environment in which they operate. The company is the global leader in varietal and root stock development, protecting the produce industry, now and for the future. To learn more about Westfalia Fruit Group, visit www.westfaliafruit.com/.
To teach PCAs about citrus mealybug (an emerging concern for citrus growers) this field day will focus on lectures on pest identification and biology, scouting/monitoring, and management, lecture on ant control. With this knowledge, PCAs can monitor the fields for mealybug infestation and develop informed management strategies. Attendees will receive instruction from Sandipa Gautam and David Haviland from the UC Cooperative Extension. The field day will take place in a citrus block in Ivanhoe, CA. Growers can register to attend by April 21 HERE, or by emailing sangautam@ucanr.edu. Attendees should bring a 10x hand lens. An email will be sent out with a location ping to registrants 1-week prior to the event. 3 hours of Other Continuing Education Units are pending approval with CDPR.
AGENDA
8:00 a.m. Registration: Ivanhoe citrus block
8:30-9:30 am
Introduction: The citrus mealybug problem and best management practices (chemical, biological).
Seasonal phenology and monitoring males using pheromone lure (Georgina Reyes)
9:30 am: Sugar-feeding ants and their management in orchard systems
10:15 am: Microscope time: Identification of mealybug stages, and parasitism.
