California Ag Network

Category: Citrus Industry

  • NIFA Invests $21.7M in Emergency Citrus Disease Research and Extension

    USDA-NIFA’s Emergency Citrus Disease Research & Extension (ECDRE) program brings the nation’s top scientists together with citrus industry representatives to find scientifically sound solutions that combat and prevent citrus greening (HLB)​ at the farm-level. For the first time in the program’s history, NIFA is supporting an HLB-focused Coordination Network (CN) Project led by an interdisciplinary team of scientists representing all three major citrus producing states. This CN project will benefit the US citrus by providing a much-needed synthesis of existing HLB research in an easily accessible online database as well as developing region specific decision support tools for citrus industry stakeholders, the HLB-research community, and research organization administrators.

    Among the funded research includes virus-induced gene silencing at UC Davis using insect specific viruses to manipulate psyllid as a strategy to control HLB in citrus. Read about all the funded research projects HERE.

  • New Commercial HLB Detection Response Guide

    To ensure California citrus growers are well prepared in the event of a potential commercial grove detection of Huanglongbing (HLB), the deadly citrus plant disease that can be spread by the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Program (CPDPP) has developed a response guide for growers to utilize and educate themselves on the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) action plan.

    The Response Guide for a Confirmed HLB Positive Detection in a Commercial Grove details the steps taken by CDFA and actions required of the property or grove owner, as outlined in CDFA’s Action Plan.

    The actions in the response guide represent the most effective tools known to the citrus industry at this time and are meant to protect California’s citrus groves and support CDFA’s current required regulatory response. While, as of today, there have been no positive detections of HLB in a commercial citrus grove, the CPDPP recognizes the importance of proper preparation.

    In addition to the requirements outlined in the guide, growers are encouraged to use as many methods as feasible for their operation in order to limit the spread of the ACP and HLB.

    To read or download the response guide, please click HERE. If you have any questions or would like to order physical copies of this response guide, please visit our Resources page. — By the California Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program

  • Organic Fruit Grower Workshop, Dec. 8

    The UC Cooperative Extension is hosting an in-person Organic Agriculture Workshop on December 8 from 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. The workshop is designed for growers, CCAs, PCAs and other agricultural professionals interested in organic agriculture. The session will cover regulations, assistance programs, fertilization, irrigation, and managing pests, diseases and weeds.

    The workshop will discuss the specifics of organic production as related to avocados, citrus and berries. The sessions will include group instruction followed by discussion and questions. Presentation topics of interest to California avocado growers include the following:

    • Overviews of organic production in San Diego County and California
    • Lessons from the field (organic growers panel discussion)
    • Nitrogen management
    • Weed control alternatives
    • Updates on organic regulatory issues
    • Insect pest management options
    • Water and irrigation efficiency
    • Mulching and compost effects on good soil quality and health

    Registration is required for this event and registration is limited to 60 persons. Early registration (November 17 – November 27) is $60 per person. Late registration (November 28 – December 5) is $75 per person.  The workshop will take place at the Farm Hub-Farm Bureau Conference Room, 420 South Broadway, Escondido, CA.

    The complete agenda is available online. For additional information, contact Jan Gonzales at jggonzales@ucdavis.edu.

  • Upcoming SJV Avocado Meeting And GEM Grove Tours

    The San Joaquin Valley Avocado Meeting, which will occur on December 5, will feature a variety of guest speakers and visits to two local GEM avocado groves. The meeting will take place from 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. at the UC Lindcove Research and Extension Center located at 22963 Carson Avenue, Exeter, California.

    The meeting will include the following:

    • A presentation by Sam Santander, CDFA-Avocado Inspection Program
    • A presentation by Ken Melban, California Avocado Commission vice president of industry affairs and operations
    • A question and answer session concerning avocado growing in the San Joaquin Valley
    • Visits to two local GEM avocado groves (directions to the grove will be provided at the meeting)

    If you are interested in attending the workshop, please RSVP with Mary Lu Arpaia at mlarpaia@ucanr.edu with the subject line: 12/5/22 Avocado Meeting.

  • Fumigation Considerations Before Replanting an Orchard

    It’s that time of the year when orchards are being pulled and growers begin preparing their soil for future plans.  For growers looking to replant their orchards, watch this brief interview with UC Riverside Nematologist Andreas Westphal as he shares some considerations to take for fumigation when it comes to nematode pressure.

    Please thank this video’s sponsor Suterra for their industry support.

  • New UCCE Advisor to Serve Tree Fruit & Nut Growers in Merced and Madera

    The UC Cooperative Extension is pleased to introduce one of their newest Orchard Crops Advisors, Cameron Zuber, who will be serving tree fruit and nut growers in Merced and Madera Counties. Watch this video interview to get to know Cameron, his history with California agriculture, and what his research and extension focuses are.  Cameron can be reached at (209) 385-7403 or cazuber@ucanr.edu.

    Please thank this video’s sponsor Suterra for their industry support.

  • California Citrus Growers Optimistic for the Upcoming Navel Orange and Mandarin Season

    The California Citrus Mutual Marketing Committee (Committee) – comprised of growers, shippers, and marketers – anticipates the 2022-23 Navel Orange crop will be approximately 10% over the previous season’s utilized production.  At below average, the upcoming season crop is expected to be very similar to the previous season with excellent fruit quality and sizing. Preliminary maturity tests show that the crop is progressing very well with high sugar content that well exceeds the “California Standard” for sweetness.

    The Mandarin crop – including Clementines, Tangos, Murcotts, and other seedless varieties – is also progressing well in terms of quality and fruit size. The Committee estimates that the Mandarin crop will be up by as much as 30% over the previous season, but still well below average production levels and nearly 30% below the 2020-21 record-breaking large crop.

    “The high quality of this crop is the silver lining of a very costly growing season,” says CCM President Casey Creamer.

    “Like many Americans, growers are faced with rising inflation and increasing costs. The cost to grow and ship California citrus has more than doubled in the past ten years.  Since 2020, growers’ costs have increased over $1,000 per acre and in the last year alone, costs have gone up 25% with fertilizer, fuel, and water being the main drivers. We also expect higher costs on the packing and shipping side this season largely due to increased transportation and labor costs.

    “Despite these challenges, the industry is optimistic for the season ahead.  The 2022-23 crop will deliver what consumers have come to love and expect from California citrus – a delicious, sweet Navel orange and Mandarin that is unrivaled by the rest of the world,” says Creamer.

    The California Navel orange crop will start by the end of October followed by Mandarins in early November.

  • California Prunes Partners with Renowned Chefs for CA Farmer and Farmworker Month

    October is California Farmer and Farmworker Month – a specially designated time to recognize the remarkable contributions of the people who power California’s food and farming community. Consider this: California supports 1.2 million agriculture-related jobs and produces 400 different crops, roughly 50 percent of the overall U.S. produce supply, and nearly all domestically grown prunes.

    To help celebrate the hardworking farmers and farmworkers of the Golden State, California Prunes is partnering with a line-up of accomplished chefs around the United States to showcase the delicious, dried fruit that is grown by about 600 California Prune growers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. The chef partners are featuring a range of California Prunes dishes that consumers across the country can enjoy, including:

    • Aliza Sokolow of This is What I Eat is an accomplished food stylist and author based in
      Los Angeles, Calif. Sokolow regularly bakes for charitable organizations and for the first part of October she will offer Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Prunes that can be enjoyed when ordered directly through the This is What I Baked Order Form (proceeds donated to California Farmworker Foundation).
    • Bronwen Wyatt of Bayou Saint Cake in New Orleans, La., offers a Chocolate Walnut Chiffon Cake with Prunes and Chicory Cream available for New Orleans residents throughout October. Local ingredients are a mainstay of her Instagram-famed cakes. California Prunes are not only local for those in New Orleans since California supplies the country’s prunes, but the premium fruit also adds depth of flavor to the other California-grown ingredients, like California Walnuts. Additional California Prunes recipes from Wyatt include a Prune Upside Down Cake and Almond Cake with Prune-Raspberry Butter.
    • Kat Turner of Highly Likely Cafe in Los Angeles, Calif. has come to love California Prunes in several recipes and currently features A Good Turkey Sando with Prune Mostarda on the menu at the
      Los Angeles eatery. The Prune Mostarda recipe is an incredibly versatile condiment that anyone can make at home and use for sandwiches, grazing boards, or to elevate a variety of proteins.
    • Mica Talmor of Pomella restaurant in Oakland, Calif. will feature California Prunes that have come from orchards in the surrounding area in her Chicken + Prune Tagine menu item all month long.

    “As a chef, coming from Wisconsin to California – with its surreal year-round growing season – it’s like winning Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket,” said Chef Kat Turner, Highly Likely Cafe. “And, thanks to the tireless efforts of farmers and farmworkers, we have wave after wave of delicious, healthy, gorgeous food grown right here in the state, including those sensual, premium quality prunes whose flavor can truly transform a dish with their uniquely craveable taste, texture, and versatility.”

    In addition to featuring California Prunes on their menus, the chefs will also serve up tasty California-grown ideas and inspiration on their respective social media platforms throughout the month.

    California is the ideal place to grow prunes due to its alluvial soils, abundant sunshine, and the fresh water that runs off the nearby mountains. The multi-generational farming families who grow California Prunes have honed their craft for more than 100 years and are dedicated to cultivating their orchards with sustainability in mind for the next generation.

    “We honor the contributions of growers who work so hard to ensure we have delicious, healthy food every day,” said Kiaran Locy, California Prune Board, Director of Brand & Industry Communications and Buy California Marketing Agreement board member. “It’s inspiring to partner with chefs who use locally and responsibly sourced ingredients and appreciate the versatility of California Prunes because they runes are good every day in so many ways – from delivering exceptional nutrition that supports a healthy gut and bones – to adding big flavor and natural sweetness.”

    Always in season, California Prunes ideas and inspiration can be found anytime @CAPrunes onInstagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter and at www.californiaprunes.org.

    ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA PRUNE BOARD

    Created in 1952, The California Prune Board aims to amplify the premium positioning and top-of-mind awareness of California Prunes through advertising, public relations, promotion, nutrition research, crop management and sustainability research, and issues management. The California Prune Board represents approximately 800 prune growers and 28 prune, juice, and ingredient handlers under the authority of the California Secretary of Food and Agriculture.

  • Produce Veteran Jeff Oberman To Lead California Avocado Commission

    The California Avocado Commission Board of Directors has selected produce veteran Jeff Oberman to become the organization’s new president, effective October 10, 2022. Mr. Oberman’s produce industry career has spanned 25 years so far. From 2020 to the present he served as vice president of sales – business development for PRO*ACT and was their vice president strategic programs for the prior two years. From 1997 to 2018 Mr. Oberman worked for the produce trade association United Fresh in successively more responsible roles. For more than half his tenure at United Fresh he served as vice president, trade relations.

    “We are very pleased that Jeff Oberman has accepted the position of California Avocado Commission president,” said Rob Grether, chair of the Commission Board of Directors. “Jeff’s broad network, non-profit association leadership and fresh produce business experience, including an end-to-end understanding of the needs of growers, handlers, distributors, foodservice operators and retail customers makes him exceptionally well-suited to lead the California Avocado Commission.”

    Mr. Oberman has extensive experience in trade association leadership, strategic planning, and management of customer and government agency relations. He has received numerous accolades and awards including being named to Produce Business Magazines “40 under Forty” list in 2005 and to The Packer’s “25 Profiles in Leadership” in 2017.

    “Having the opportunity to take the helm and build on the California Avocado Commission’s well-deserved reputation for innovative marketing and grower advocacy is exciting, said Oberman. “Like most agricultural producers, California avocado growers face a host of ever-changing challenges, and I look forward to steering the Commission in support of long-term grower success.”

  • Irrigation Stress and Early-Navel Orange Fruit Maturity

    To maximize profits in the early navel orange market, growers need to have large fruit size and sufficient yellow-orange color and a high enough sugar-acid ratio to meet or exceed the legal minimum harvesting standards. Growers of early-maturing navel oranges in Kern County use different strategies to produce these oranges. Some growers irrigate at full evapotranspiration rates nearly up to harvest with the belief this will maximize fruit size, while others begin deficit irrigating a month or two prior to harvest to maximize development of sugar and color to promote earlier maturity. Little information exists in the literature to assist growers in making decisions related to producing early maturing navels such as Beck, Fukumoto and Thompson Improved. To determine the effects of late season irrigation stress, I, along with two University of California co-researchers Blake Sanden and Dr. Mary Lu Arpaia, participated in an experiment to elucidate some of the trade-offs that relate to irrigation strategies and early navel fruit production. The research was conducted from 2006 through 2008 in a cooperating grower’s Beck orchard at the extreme southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. Our generous and patient cooperating growers were George and Colby Fry.

    Three different irrigation treatments, defined as low, mid and high, were developed based on the relative amounts of irrigation water applied to the test plots. Each plot consisted of 10 trees in a central row, bordered by ten similarly irrigated trees in the two adjacent rows. Each treatment was replicated five times. The same irrigation treatment was applied to the same plots for the first two years, while in the third year the low treatment was changed to the high treatment to provide information on how rapidly the trees would recover from stress. The different irrigation treatments were administered by using irrigation emitters with different flow rates and by differentially shutting off water to some treatments as needed to achieve desired stress levels. Between growing seasons, the top three feet of soil profile was refilled with water during the winter and differential irrigation began in early August. Measurable differences in tree shaded stem water potential among treatment usually were noted by early September. In the second year of the experiment (2007), the low and mid-irrigation treatments applied approximately 38 and 71 percent, respectively on average, of the water of the high treatment. Water potential measurements made mid-day on shaded, interior leaves demonstrated that good separation was achieved among the three differential treatments. In 2007, for example, shaded stem water potential measurement in early September were about -9, -12, and -18 bars for the high, mid and low irrigation treatments, respectively and at harvest in mid-October were -12, -18, -24, respectively. Neutron probe measurements also demonstrated that trees differentially depleted available water stored in the soil as the season progressed (data not shown). In 2007, differences in applied water among the treatments were large. Including the increased quantity of water applied to refill the soil profile in the winter, 3.55, 2.58 and 2.11 acre feet of water on a per acre basis, were applied to the high, mid and low irrigation treatments respectively, from October 30, 2006, to harvest, October 15, 2007. Rainfall was minimal.

    Again, using 2007 as an example, as the level of applied water decreased, soluble solids (i.e. sugars) and titratable acid, were greater at harvest, although the sugar acid ratio was not different (see Table 1).

    Rows in the experimental orchard were oriented east and west. Fruit on the south side of the tree had higher soluble solids concentration and sugar/acid ratio than fruit on the north side of the tree, regardless of irrigation treatment. Fruit juiciness, either measured as weight of juice to weight of fruit (see Table 1) or volume of juice per weight of fruit (results not shown) were not different among irrigation treatments, suggesting the increase in sugars and acid was the result of osmotic adjustment and not fruit dehydration. We were also interested in seeing if the differential irrigation treatments influenced eating quality of the fruit. To test this idea, we provided fruit from the highest and lowest irrigation treatments of 2007 and 2008 to volunteer panelists at the UC Kearney Ag Center and asked if they could detect any differences between the fruit. Results from both years showed that the panelists could not detect differences between the two irrigation treatments. This suggests that the increase in soluble solids in the low irrigation treatment was not sufficient to influence eating quality.

    In 2007, yield and grade decreased as the amount of applied water decreased (see Table 2).

    Fruit in the high and mid irrigation treatments peaked on size 56 per carton and on size 72 per carton in low treatment (data not shown). The decrease in fruit grade at pack-out appeared to be largely due to a more oblong shape. The negative yield, fruit size and grade effects measured in the low and mid treatments in 2007 were probably the cumulative result of deficit irrigation in Years 1 and 2 and not just Year 2 alone. Reduced rates of irrigation hastened development of fruit color compared to the high irrigation treatment (see Table 3) and this occurred every year.

    The deleterious effects on yield, and grade on the trees in the low-irrigation treatments suggested that not much would be gained by continuing this level of stress for a third season in the same plots. In 2008, the low irrigation treatment was replaced by a high irrigation treatment and, at harvest, yield by weight and fruit numbers were not different from the control high-irrigation treatment. This observation demonstrated that the Beck navels rebounded quickly from the low irrigation stress of 2006 and 2007. The mid-level irrigation stress of 2006 and 2008 was less severe than that of 2007, and yield and fruit quality was not as adversely affected as in 2007.

    This study provides information on some of the trade-offs that might be expected among fruit yield, size, grade, sugar and color in relation to reduced irrigation as harvest approaches. More detailed information from the trial can be found at the following link: https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTSCI.46.8.1163. How growers respond to this information will depend on their approach to profiting in the early navel market and how much water will be available for irrigation. If reducing water use is the primary goal of the grower, while minimizing effects on yield and fruit quality compared to fully irrigated orchards, work by Dr. Goldhamer, UC irrigation specialist, demonstrated that regulated deficit irrigation in the mid-May through mid-July time period would be the best strategy. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Citrus Research Board for its financial support of this project. — By Craig Kallsen, UC Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor, Subtropical Horticulture & Pistachio, Kern County