SJC and Delta Field Crops

Please mark your calendar with the following fall outreach events.

I recently visited a bean field in the southern part of the county with a PCA. From a distance, the beans in certain areas of the field appeared to be drying up and dying. A closer look showed that the leaf margins were drying up first before the whole plants declined.

I have received armyworm traps from UC Davis entomology specialist, Larry Godfrey, and UCCE farm advisor, Luis Espino, to monitor populations in San Joaquin County rice fields. Luis has described 2016 armyworm pressure in a recent posting on the UC Rice Blog.

I was recently contacted by a PCA who was observing armyworm feeding in Delta rice fields. Over the last two years, both locally and in the Sacramento Valley, armyworms have been striking rice fields earlier in the season and in greater numbers.

On May 20th, we planted a grain sorghum seeding rate trial in the Delta to determine an optimum seeding rate for the unique Delta growing environment. Sorghum is a relatively new crop in the northern San Joaquin Valley and Delta region.