California Fruit and Vegetable

Tag: Vegetables West Magazine

  • Agriculturists Jeani and John Ferrari Recognized with CA Farmland Trust’s Vance Kennedy Award

    Local philanthropists and long-time supporters of farmland protection, Jeani and John Ferrari, were honored by California Farmland Trust (CFT) as the 2021 Vance Kennedy Award recipients.

    The Vance Kennedy Award was established in 2014 in honor of Dr. Vance Kennedy, a founding member of CFT, because of his extraordinary contributions and efforts to the organization. Recipients of this prestigious award demonstrate significant commitment and dedication to furthering the protection of farmland in our most valuable regions. The Ferraris are the third recipients to receive the Vance Kennedy Award.

    “Being recognized by California Farmland Trust, an organization we hold in the highest regard, is a meaningful recognition,” John said. “CFT does the work that our region desperately needs, protecting our most important farmland for the long-term. It’s an esteemed award, and Jeani and I are honored.”

    As second-generation growers of sweet potatoes, almonds, walnuts, and peaches, Jeani and John’s passion and dedication to agriculture and farmland protection runs deep through Stanislaus and Merced counties. In addition, the Ferraris almond orchard is home to the first agricultural conservation easement enacted by Central Valley Farmland Trust (CVFT), now CFT, and Jeani served as a founding CVFT board member.

    Jeani and John exemplify community engagement, spanning from the Farmland Working Group that Jeani spearheads to inform the public about land use policies, to the “new” Turlock and CSU Stanislaus libraries, and the arts including the Carnegie Arts Center. John served on the Emanuel Medical Center’s foundation board and fundraising committees in support of the Cancer Center and Cardiovascular Operating Suites, where his dedication throughout the planning and fundraising process was invaluable.

    “The contributions Jeani and John have made since CFT’s inception and within our communities are extremely worthy of recognition, and the Vance Kennedy Award is especially fitting,” said Charlotte Mitchell, executive director at California Farmland Trust. “We are honored and thankful to work with such amazing community supporters and farmland protection advocates.”

    The California Farmland Trust is a California nonprofit 501(c)(3). Our mission is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world. To date, we have protected 16,934 acres of farmland on 78 farms. To learn more visit us: www.cafarmtrust.org

  • Yeast and Bacteria Together Biosynthesize Plant Hormones for Weed Control

    Plants regulate their growth and development using hormones, including a group called strigolactones that prevent excessive budding and branching. For the first time, scientists led by UC Riverside have synthesized strigolactones from microbes. The work is published in the open-access journal, Science Advances.

    Strigolactones also help plant roots form symbiotic relationships with microorganisms that allow the plant to absorb nutrients from the soil. These two factors have led to agricultural interest in using strigolactones to control the growth of weeds and root parasites, as well as improving nutrient uptake.

    These root-extruding compounds don’t come without risks. They also stimulate germination of witchweeds and broomrapes, which can cause entire crops of grain to fail, making thorough research essential prior to commercial development. Scientists are still learning about the physiological roles played by this diverse group of hormones in plants. Until recently, manufacturing pure strigolactones for scientific study has been difficult and too costly for agricultural use.

    Yanran Li

    “Our work provides a unique platform to investigate strigolactone biosynthesis and evolution, and it lays the foundation for developing strigolactone microbial bioproduction processes as alternative sourcing,” said corresponding author Yanran Li, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering.

    Together with co-corresponding author Kang Zhou at National University Singapore, Li directed a group that inserted plant genes associated with strigolactone production into ordinary baker’s yeast and nonpathogenic Escherichia colibacteria that together produced a range of strigolactones.

    Producing strigolactones from yeast turned out to be very challenging. Although engineered yeast is known to modify the strigolactone precursor, called carlactone, it could not synthesize carlactone with any of the specific genes used by the researchers.

    “This project started in early 2018, yet for over 20 months there was basically no progress. The gatekeeping enzyme DWRF27 is not functional no matter how we try in yeast,” Li said. “Kang developed a microbial consortium technique to produce a Taxol precursor in 2015 and that inspired this wonderful collaboration.”

    The team turned toward E. coli, which had already been shown capable of producing carlactone. The carlactone it produced, however, was unstable and could not be further modified by engineered E. coli into any strigolactones. Li’s group managed to optimize and stabilize the carlactone precursor.

    To their delight, when the yeast and bacteria were cultured together in the same medium, the E. coli and yeast worked as a team: E. coli made carlactone, and the yeast transformed it into various final strigolactone products. The method also produced enough strigolactones to extract and study. Using this platform, the group identified the function of multiple strigolactone biosynthetic enzymes, showing that sweet orange and grape have the potential to synthesize orobanchol-type strigolactones.

    The team also engineered microbe metabolism to boost strigolactone production threefold to 47 micrograms per liter, enough for scientific study. Though commercial production of strigolactones is still a long way off, the new method for biosynthesizing them from a yeast-bacterium consortium will help scientists learn more about this important group of plant hormones, especially the enzymes involved.

    Enzymes are protein catalysts and are responsible for modification of carlactone by yeast. Because carlactone is unstable, it cannot be purchased from commercial sources. As a result, many plant scientists have difficulty studying new enzymes that may work to transform carlactone into strigolactones.

    “The new yeast-bacterium co-culture provides a convenient way for scientists to complete such works because the bacterium makes carlactone in situ,” Zhou said. “With discovery of more enzymes and optimization of the microbial consortium, we can manufacture strigolactones in quantity in the future.”

    Li and Zhou were joined in the research by Sheng Wu, Anqi Zhou, and Alex Valenzuela of UC Riverside; and Xiaoqiang Ma at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. The paper, “Establishment of strigolactone-producing bacterium-yeast consortium,” is available here. — By Holly Ober, UC Riverside

  • Tomato Trade with Mexico could Cost US Growers $250M a year

    As Mexico increases tomato exports across the world, including to the United States, prices plummet for American growers. That practice could cost American growers as much as $252 million per year — or 27% in revenue — if imports from Mexico increase by 50% in coming years, based on historical trends, new University of Florida research shows.

    That’s a huge loss for American farmers, who produced 1.3 billion pounds of fresh tomatoes in 2020, less than one-third the harvest from the year 2000.

    That decline is due to competition from Mexico and other challenges, said Zhengfei Guan, an associate professor of food and resource economics at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

    Zhengfei Guan, a UF/IFAS associate professor of food and resource economics at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, studies tomato trading and its impacts on American growers, among other areas of research.

    Guan just published a study on the consequences of intensifying Mexican competition for American growers. The market positions of Mexican and domestic tomato industries completely reversed over the past 20 years. Mexico now dominates the U.S. market, with three times more market share than the domestic industry. That change sparked Guan’s interest in pursuing the new study.

    “The two countries had a series of trade disputes over fruit and vegetables recently,” he said. “One reason is that surging imports from Mexico boosted by subsidies have depressed prices, and American growers are quickly losing market shares.”

    “The findings from our study will provide tomato producers and policy makers with important insights on the challenges and the sustainability of the U.S. tomato industry,” Guan said.

    In his study, Guan measured the potential losses the U.S. industry will sustain as a result of the increasing imports from Mexico, given the steep growth over the years. As a frame of reference, the volume of imported tomatoes from Mexico increased by about 60% over the years 2009-2019.

    Results of Guan’s research show that prices of domestic tomatoes are particularly sensitive to imports from Mexico in an increasingly saturated market. The imports are especially damaging to the Florida tomato industry which has about $400 million in sales and has the same harvest seasons as Mexico.

    The trade deficit complicates matters for farmers in several commodities – not just tomatoes. Specifically, fruit and vegetables — such as tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, cucumbers and melons – accounted for 50% of the total U.S. agricultural imports from Mexico in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “But all may not be lost, if the US fruit and vegetable industry could revolutionize the production technology,” said Guan. “Mechanization or automation will be a game changer and is the future for this labor-intensive industry.” — By Brad Buck, University of Florida Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences

  • Top Costly Legal Issues Ag Employers can Prevent

    At the Annual Convention of the Almond Alliance of California, Stacy Henderson, Almond Alliance’s go-to attorney for ag labor law, shared some of the top costly mistakes ag employers should know about that can be prevented. Watch this brief video with Stacy as she explains.
    Please thank this video’s sponsor Suterra for their industry support.

  • Researchers & Grower-Shipper Association Collaborate to Battle INSV

    Grower-Shipper Association of Central California (GSA) — Implementing effective disease and pest management strategies is a continual challenge for farmers. While these challenges are not new in agriculture, they impact more than just farmers. Lower yields due to disease and pest pressure affects farm employees and harvesting crews too and can also inhibit our ability to provide a steady supply of affordable and healthy produce to consumers.

    Unfortunately, farmers of leafy greens are now dealing with the re-emergence of a damaging disease called thrips-vectored Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus or INSV. According to local farm advisors this increase in INSV is often accompanied by Pythium wilt infections, which is a relatively new problem in the region.

    Lettuce fields are infected by INSV via thrips migrating in from infected host plants in the early spring. Fields infected by INSV cause stunting, yellowing, wilting of the outer leaves and eventual death for leafy greens. Currently, there are no effective treatments for INSV and Pythium wilt on organic and conventional lettuce farms.

    To support farmers as they battle INSV, GSA created a new task force to identify major research questions, examine treatment strategies, develop treatment efficacy trials and build a grower education program specific to these diseases.

    Mary Zischke, former Executive Director of the California Leafy Greens Research Board, was hired by GSA to lead and coordinate Task Force activities. In addition, to assist local farm advisors and help advance University of California cooperative research efforts, GSA added Jasmine Rodriguez to its team. Rodriguez is currently working toward her biology degree at California State University, Monterey Bay and also serves as a laboratory assistant for entomology research projects at the UC Cooperative Extension in Monterey County.

    “Mary and Jasmine will provide our industry with the additional personnel resources and experience as we combat this complex disease and pest control problem,” says Christopher Valadez, GSA president.

    To further expand resources and personnel, GSA has applied for a California Department of Food and Agriculture Specialty Block Grant. The grant would allow scientists to conduct multi-year field research trials assessing the effects of common crop rotation sequences, monitor Pythium wilt and INSV occurrence in commercial fields, conduct greenhouse studies to characterize the interactions between Pythium wilt and INSV in lettuce to understand their impacts on overall plant health and disease management.

    If awarded the grant, the GSA team will work with researchers from California State University, Monterey Bay and U.S. Department of Ag, Agricultural Research Service in Salinas. Grant outcomes would include knowledge of the impact of crop rotation on Pythium wilt and thrips populations as well as the interplay between Pythium wilt and INSV and how to jointly manage them.

    While GSA is hopeful the grant provides future resources, we will continue moving needed work forward to uncover potential answers and treatment strategies so farmers in our region can minimize losses. Farming equates to surmounting challenges and GSA is committed to supporting farmers as they face those challenges.

  • New Food Freezing Concept Improves Quality, Increases Safety and Cuts Energy Use

    Shifting to a new food freezing method could make for safer and better quality frozen foods while saving energy and reducing carbon emissions, according to a new study by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and University of California-Berkeley scientists.

    “A complete change over to this new method of food freezing worldwide could cut energy use by as much as 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours each year while reducing the carbon emissions that go along with generating that power by 4.6 billion kg, the equivalent of removing roughly one million cars from roads,” said ARS research food technologist Cristina Bilbao-Sainz. She is with the Healthy Processed Foods Research Unit, part of ARS’s Western Regional Research Center (WRRC) in Albany.

    “T­hese savings could be achieved without requiring any significant changes in current frozen food manufacturing equipment and infrastructure, if food manufacturers adopt this concept,” Bilbao-Sainz added.

    ARS scientists Cristina Bilbao-Sainz (right) and Roberto Avena-Bustillos demonstrate the use of isochoric freezing chambers. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    The new freezing method, called isochoric freezing, works by storing foods in a sealed, rigid container—typically made of hard plastic or metal—completely filled with a liquid such as water. Unlike conventional freezing in which the food is exposed to the air and freezes solid at temperatures below 32 degrees F, isochoric freezing preserves food without turning it to solid ice.

    As long as the food stays immersed in the liquid portion, it is protected from ice crystallization, which is the main threat to food quality.

    “Energy savings come from not having to freeze foods completely solid, which uses a huge amount of energy, plus there is no need to resort to energy-intensive cold storage protocols such as quick freezing to avoid ice crystal formation,” Bilbao-Sainz said.

    Isochoric freezing also allows for higher quality storage of fresh foods such as tomatoes, sweet cherries and potatoes that are otherwise difficult to preserve with conventional freezing.

    Another benefit of isochoric freezing is that it also kills microbial contaminants during processing.

    “The entire food production chain could use isochoric freezing—everyone from growers to food processors, product producers to wholesalers, to retailers. The process will even work in a person’s freezer at home after they purchase a product—all without requiring any major investments in new equipment,” said WRRC center director Tara McHugh, co-leader of this study. “With all of the many potential benefits, if this innovative concept catches on, it could be the next revolution in freezing foods.”

    UC-Berkeley biomedical engineer Boris Rubinsky, co-leader of this project, first developed the isochoric freezing method to cryopreserve tissues and organs for transplants.

    Since then, ARS and UC-Berkeley have applied for a joint patent for applying isochoric freezing to preserving food. The research team is now developing the best applications for this technology in the frozen foods industry, especially scaling up the technology to an industrial level. They also are seeking commercial partners to help transfer the technology to the commercial sector.

    UC-Berkeley mechanical engineer Matthew Powell-Palm, one of the lead authors of the study paper, noted that “isochoric freezing is a cross-cutting technology with promising applications in not only the food industry, but in medicine, biology, even space travel.”

    WRRC has also been designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2002 by the American Chemical Society for developing the Time-Temperature Tolerance studies, which made possible the production of stable, safe and high quality frozen food, revolutionizing the industry in the 1950s.

    This research was published in Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews.

    The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in agricultural research results in $17 of economic impact.

  • California Processing Tomato Crop Forecast Below May’s Expectation

    Contracted production for California processing tomatoes is forecast at 11.1 million tons, averaging 48.9 tons per acre. The current production forecast is 1.9% below last year’s contracted production, and 4.3% below the May forecast. The projected harvested acreage of tomatoes grown under contract is 227,000 acres, which 0.4% lower than in 2020.

    Drought concerns impacted planting decisions for the 2021 processing tomato crop and acreage has decreased significantly from early season intentions. Extreme high temperatures in May and throughout the summer lowered expected yields and slowed down operations at the canneries. Crop quality is reported to be average or slightly above average.

    Harvest began the first week of July and the flow of tomatoes has generally kept pace with the previous two years. The Processing Tomato Advisory Board published shipments through August 28, 2021, showing a 4.3% decrease compared to the end of August in 2020.

    This processing tomato estimate is funded by the California League of Food Producers.

  • Giving Strawberry Growers a Ray of (UV) Light at the End of Their Pest Tunnel

    For a few years, University of Florida (UF) plant pathologist Natalia Peres has used an ultraviolet light system to thwart strawberry pathogens. Peres even published a study this year that showed the system helps control powdery mildew. Two fellow researchers with the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) have now used the same robotic UVC applicator to show that it works well to slow the spread of one strawberry pest, but not a second.

    The three scientists and others at UF/IFAS are trying to tamp down pests and diseases for the strawberry industry. Joseph Dean Montemayor — working under the supervision of entomology assistant professor Sriyanka Lahiri — focused on whether a system that uses UVC radiation can control mites and thrips.

    Field technician Marissa Cassaway and master’s student Joseph Montemayor examine strawberries treated with UVC radiation at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (photo by Sriyanka Lahiri, UF/IFAS).

    They also studied whether UVC would interfere with biological control efforts of mites or thrips, both of which cause significant fruit loss if left untreated. In this case, they examined whether radiation would kill the predatory mites that eat these pest mites and thrips infesting strawberries.

    Results indicate that the eggs of the predatory mites, just like those of spider mites, die after irradiation with UVC. This indicates that biological control through predatory mites can be most effective only after a strawberry crop is treated with UVC radiation, rather than irradiating strawberries while the predatory mites are present in the field simultaneously.

    The research, part of Montemayor’s recently completed master’s thesis, shows that the system works well to control spider mite eggs but not chilli thrips. Specifically, the dosage of UVC radiation applied to strawberry plants in the field mostly suppressed spider mite eggs from hatching but did not deter chilli thrips infestations, said Lahiri, a faculty member at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC).

    The study’s results will become part of an integrated pest management system to help strawberry growers.

    “This information is useful to the strawberry growers of Florida, who have to constantly battle with chilli thrips and spider mites,” Lahiri said. “Also this information is relevant to strawberry growers across the world, industry partners and the small-fruit crops research and Extension community.”

    Montemayor, who will graduate in August with a master’s degree in entomology and nematology from the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, planted new UF/IFAS strawberries including ‘Florida Brilliance,’ ‘Florida Radiance’ and ‘Sweet Sensation’ in fields at GCREC.

    For his thesis, Montemayor also studied the potential impact of UVC radiation on predatory mites. Strawberry growers currently use a mite known as Phytoseiulus persimilis to keep the twospotted spider mite from harming their fruit, Lahiri said. Montemayor exposed this adult predatory mite to the same dose of UVC that was effective in  suppressing spider mite eggs.

    He found that P. persimilis remained unaffected and was able to actively feed on spider mite eggs.

    “Thrips and spider mites are the most economically damaging species affecting strawberry production in Florida,” Lahiri said. “Even though there is overwhelming reliance on the use of synthetic insecticides and miticides to manage these pests, biological control agents such as predatory mites can be effective in integrated pest management in strawberry. Another way is to use UVC irradiation, applied after sunset, to manage these entomological pests along with strawberry pathogens. Both these pest management tools can be used complementary to each other.”

    Lahiri, Peres and vegetable entomologist Hugh Smith, all faculty members at GCREC, served as members of Montemayor’s master’s thesis committee. — By Brad Buck, University of Florida Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences

  • Study Shows Pest Attack-Order Changes Plant Defenses

    The dining time of different insects impacts a plant’s defenses and nutritional quality—a complexity uncovered in new research with implications for pest management strategies.

    A piercing-sucking, virus-carrying aphid has long worried pea plant farmers, but a more innocuous-seeming weevil that only takes tiny bites from leaves was found to also play a significant role in plant health. Depending if the weevils eat before, or after, the aphids, they can increase or decrease the plant’s ability to fend off the virus.

    While many studies have focused on the impacts of a single pest, this study, published Aug. 4 online in Molecular Ecology, is one of the few to look at the interaction of several antagonists, in this case, two pests and a virus.

    “Plants in the field have a chance of being exposed to many different types of biotic stress elements, what we call antagonists,” said Saumik Basu, a WSU post-doctoral fellow and the study’s lead author. “Based on how these antagonists are coming to the plants, that can change the plant responses and ultimately leads to changes in their overall productivity.”

    Through a set of greenhouse experiments, Basu and colleagues from the Crowder Laboratory at WSU and Cornell University attempted to understand what happens to the pea plant fields of Eastern Washington’s Palouse area. In the field, plants face alternating infestations of pea leaf weevils, Sitona lineatus, and pea aphids, Acrythosiphon pisum, and a pathogen the pea aphids are also known to carry, Pea enation mosaic virus, or PEMV.

    The researchers created experiments where first the weevils feasted on the plants then the aphids, and others that reversed the order. They also included scenarios where the plants were infected with the virus and some where they did not as well as a control group.

    After removing the pests, the researchers let the plants grow for a week. Then, they ran plant samples through different sets of analyses to assess the plants’ defense hormone levels and associated defense genes as well as nutritional qualities.

    Saumik Basu (Photo by Bob Hubner, WSU)

    They found that when the weevil feasts first on the pea plants, it enhances some of the plants’ anti-pathogen defense responses, helping them become more resilient to a virus infection.

    If the weevil dines second, after the aphids, it usually reduces the anti-pathogen defense responses, so the virus spreads more easily.

    In turn, virus-infected plants had stronger anti-herbivore responses, putting out compounds that interfere with the plant-eating pests.

    Further complicating the issue, the study found that when the weevils helped induce the anti-pathogen responses it lowered the nutrition of the plant by reducing the plants’ available amino acids.

    These complex interactions hold important implications for pest management, Basu said.

    “If we know beforehand when these interactions are happening, that information gives farmers a best possible remedy to prevent their fields from the attack,” he said. “This kind of information is really important for designing sustainable pest and pathogen management strategies.”

    Pea aphids (Photo by Bob Hubner, WSU)

    This study is part of a series of investigations into the interactions among many organisms that plants encounter. An earlier study in Functional Ecology looked at the antagonism between a plant virus and nitrogen-fixing bacteria called rhizobia that live in the soil. An upcoming study looks at the interaction between the weevils and rhizobia.

    These complex relationships are critical to understanding plant responses, said Basu.

    “In a natural environment, a plant is exposed to different types of organisms, not just one or two, but many,” he said. “The order and the complexity—how many there are, what different types there are and their interactions—affect how the plant responds to all these attackers.” — By Sara Zaske, Washington State University

  • The Threat of Branched Broomrape for California Processing Tomato

    Branched broomrape (Phelipanche ramosa), a parasitic weed that was the focus of a $1.5 million eradication effort four decades ago in California, has recently re-emerged in tomato fields in several Central Valley counties. Processing tomatoes are important to the California agricultural economy; the state produced over 90% of the 12 million tons of tomatoes grown in the United States in 2018. Branched broomrape is listed as an “A” noxious weed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA); discovery of broomrape in California tomato fields leads to quarantine and crop destruction without harvest, resulting in significant economic loss to growers.

    In countries where broomrape is common, yield reductions caused by this parasitic weed can range from moderate to 80%, depending upon the infestation level, host and environmental conditions. Developing a detailed understanding of the biology of this weed under local conditions is an important step towards developing effective management plans for California. In the latest issue of California Agriculture (a University of California, Agriculture & Natural Resources publication), extension researchers discuss branched broomrape in the context of California production systems, particularly of tomato. They also discuss the potential management practices that could help to prevent or reduce the impacts of branched broomrape in tomatoes and other host crops. Read the full article HERE.