SJC and Delta Field Crops

UC Cooperative Extension and UC Davis will host a Healthy Soils Program field meeting on compost. The meeting will take place on Thursday, July 28th from 10:00am to 11:30am. The meeting will take place off of S. Landi Road, on Roberts Island in the Delta.

I have been trapping armyworms in Delta rice since 2016, after the industry experienced an outbreak in 2015. Monitoring involves scouting for damage and deployment of pheromone bucket traps that catch the moths (Figure 1).

I have received a couple calls this year from growers and a PCA about root scarring in alfalfa fields. These observations were a bit of a head scratcher for all of us. At one of the fields, I noticed what looked to be a wireworm on the root, so that was throwing me off (Figure 1).

Over the last few years, I have been working on a project to characterize a suite of soil health properties in alfalfa receiving full and deficit irrigation.

I have visited a few fields - and have spoken on the phone about a few more - where the alfalfa has been slow to start growing this spring. Based on my observations, and some feedback from colleagues, we came up with the following thoughts on why this might be happening.