California Ag Network

Tag: Oregon State University

  • Federal Funds Awarded on Behalf of West Coast Dairy Businesses

    Over $11 million in grant funding has been released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) to support dairy producers and businesses through the Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives (DBI) initiative. The allocation of $690,000 will strengthen small and mid-sized dairy businesses and university pilot plants in California, Oregon, and Washington – all served by the Pacific Coast Coalition – Dairy Business Innovation Initiative (PCC-DBII).

    “We anticipate a quick turnaround in distributing these funds so the awardees can see results,” said PCC Director Carmen Licon Ph.D. “Based on applications submitted in the recent Fall 2025 cycle, these resources will help dairy processors in the development, production, marketing, and distribution of dairy products,”

    According to Project Co-Director and “Cowkeeper” Susan Pheasant, PhD., many generational farms and new innovators will now be able to better produce cheese, ice cream, and additional higher value dairy products.

    Hosted by California State University, Fresno, The PCC-DBII is funded through the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service and is a collaboration with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Chapman University, Oregon State University, Oregon Dairy Council, Washington State University, and the California Dairy Innovation Center. For more information: https://www.dairypcc.net or nancyvanleuven@gmail.com.

    PCC grantee Cottage Hill Creamery goat milk products (Beavercreek, OR)

  • Hemp Hampered no More with Research Showing Potential as Cash Crop

    After decades of being relegated and regulated research on industrial hemp as a valuable crop is far behind. That’s because the United States banned the use of hemp in the 1930s. That means that all research about this crop stopped, too. Now that the Farm Bill allows for the growing and use of industrial hemp, that leaves researchers with a decades-long gap in knowledge.

    At the forefront of those trying to enter back into the hemp market – seed companies and potential growers – is seed quality after harvest.

    This is where Sabry Elias, professor of crop and soil science at Oregon State University, and his team come in. Elias recently presented his work at the 2021 ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meeting, held in Salt Lake City.

    “One of the challenges in growing industrial hemp is that the plants have an indeterminate flowering pattern,” Elias explains. “This results in seeds with different maturity levels and ages on the same plant at the time of harvest.”

    This poses a series of questions that Elias and his team investigate. What is the difference in quality between a seed higher on the plant versus one lower on the plant? How can they test for these quality differences? After harvest, do seeds go dormant? If they do go dormant, for how long and how can dormancy be broken?

    There are two fundamentals that impact seed quality that the researchers investigated: viability and vigor. Viability is the capability of seeds to germinate and produce normal seedlings. Vigor is the ability of seeds to germinate and grow under a wide range of field conditions. Elias explains that these qualities are controlled by genetic and environmental factors.

    “Improved varieties possess good traits such as high yield, seed quality, and disease resistance,” he says. “Seeds that develop and mature under optimum conditions develop quality seeds. On the other hand, seeds developed under moisture stress, nutrient deficiency, extreme temperatures, etc. often result in light, shriveled seed or collectively called poor quality seeds.”

    One of the viability tests used by the researchers was the tetrazolium test. It differentiates live from dead seeds based on color reaction to the activity of respiration enzymes in seeds. Photo adapted by Sabry Elias from an original by Yeaching Wu

    The researchers performed four different tests on two varieties of hemp seeds. Two measured seed viability by trying to tell the difference between live and dead seeds. Two others measured seed vigor by looking at how fast they germinated and how well they grew under stress conditions.

    “Two seed lots can have the same viability percentage (e.g., 85%), but one of them can be more vigorous than the other,” Elias explains. “It is like both a 90-year-old and 25-year-old are alive, but the person who is 25 is (usually healthier than the one who is 90 years old)”.

    One viability test used biochemical reactions and subsequent color changes of seeds to measure if a seed is viable. The other measured the capacity of seeds to germinate and produce normal seedlings. One of the vigor tests germinated the seeds to test how quickly they do so. The second placed the seeds in high-stress conditions and then germinated them.

    Their findings showed that all four of these tests were useful in measuring the quality of hemp seeds. The team’s experiments also showed that harvesting the seeds lower on the hemp plant seven to eight days later than those higher on the plant improved the overall quality of the seeds.

    “This makes the whole plant, upper and lower parts, available for harvest,” Elias says. “It increases the yield by one-third because the current practice of some hemp farming systems is to harvest only the upper two-thirds of the plants to avoid the underdeveloped seeds from the lower part.”

    Lastly, the scientists looked at the dormancy of the seeds. Elias explains that dormant seeds are viable seeds but will not germinate even under favorable conditions, until dormancy is broken. Seeds are most dormant right after harvesting.

    Dormancy slowly disappears over time or with treatments such as pre-chilling, dry heat, or hormonal treatments. Their research showed that a pre-chilling treatment at 10 degrees Celsius for five days was able to break dormancy.

    “I believe that hemp has great potential as a cash crop for growers in the United States and around the world because of its multiple uses in food, pharmaceuticals, and industrial products,” Elias says. “In addition, I have passion for the areas of seed physiology, quality, and dormancy, particularly because research in hemp had been put off for decades.”

    This illustration lists the many uses of hemp in food, pharmaceuticals, and industrial products. The industrial hemp industry was shut down in the 1930s due to prohibition and confusion with its cousin, marijuana. The 2014 Farm Bill allowed for the reintroduction of this valuable crop to the United States. Figure adapted by Sabry Elias from an original by Aaron Cadena

  • Grower Survey to Address Future Innovations in Weed Management

    Weeds can be a significant problem in berries, tree fruits, tree nuts, and vine crops (e.g. grapes, hops, etc.) especially after transplanting and during flowering and fruit and nut set. Herbicides are a primary tool for managing weeds, even though the evolution of herbicide resistance has limited the utility of many products and off-target movement can sometimes result in damage to trunks, shoots, leaves and flowers. Many growers are transitioning to organic systems to address changes in consumer preferences or satisfy the requirements set in place to enter export markets.

    Perennial cropping systems are exploring technologies such as automated harvesters and pruners, to reduce labor demands, and canopy sensing sprayers, to minimize the amounts of crop protection chemicals applied to shrubs, trees, and vines. Novel weed control tools that eliminate or reduce the need for herbicides are actively being developed for and marketed in the agriculture and horticulture industries. These new technologies could begin to play and increasingly large role in future crop production, particularly in high-value specialty crops that 1) have limited herbicide options, 2) are sensitive to herbicide injury, and 3) are heavily reliant on a labor market that is simultaneously growing more scarce and more expensive.

    A team of weed scientists from UC Davis, Oregon State University, and Cornell are asking berry, tree fruit, tree nut, and vine crop growers to take 5 to 10 minutes and answer this short and anonymous survey (link below) about your current weed management practices and your interest in novel technologies, like vision-guided sprayers and cultivators, and electric, steam, and pressurized water weeders. This will help us plan research and extension projects that will address stakeholder concerns regarding the future of weed management.

    There’s always a chance that we forgot to include some amazing tools that are emerging on the horizon; please feel free to e-mail Lynn Sosnoskie at lms438@cornell.edu and let her know what you think the future of weed control will look like.

    Thanks for your time. We appreciate your support of weed science research.

    Survey link: https://cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bEpfAijoP7puQDP

  • Why do we need to keep breeding new crop varieties?

    Global warming and changes in the amount – and location – of water, are key factors in the need to continue crop breeding programs. In addition, there are many diseases that affect crop yield and quality. We need to continue breeding new disease resistant crop varieties to ensure a healthy, adequate food supply. Below are examples of breeding programs at Oregon State University to portray why breeding new varieties is important.

    Barley

    Why do we need to keep breeding new crop varieties?

    Barley is one of the world’s oldest crops – a truly ancient grain. Today, most barley in the world is used for animal feed, and in some areas barley is a staple food crop. In the US, most barley is used for malting and brewing.

    Barley breeders are working to make barley more robust in the face of climate change. We also work to make it a more profitable crop for farmers, and more available to consumers. Breeders are working on a few innovative approaches. The first involves selecting for varieties that can be planted in the fall, survive the winter, and be ready for harvest early the next summer. At the same time, we are breeding varieties that will make best use of available precipitation, as we face increasing times of drought.

    Most barley grown today is “covered” when it is ready for harvest. A protective hull adheres tightly to the seed, and this hull needs to be removed before the barley can be consumed. However, we have successfully bred “naked” barleys, and continue to look for more naked varieties. Naked barley can be used without further processing after harvest. This qualifies naked barleys as a whole grain.

     

    Beer is an important beverage for many cultures, and barley will continue to be the base of beer. There is tremendous potential for barley to enter the food stream. It can also serve as a locally-available, premium, animal feed grain.

    Wheat

    Winter wheat is one of the major staple crops of the world. It is the primary cereal crop in Oregon.

    Wheat is adaptive across environments and can be used for multiple end-products. The reason behind this is that wheat’s genetic code is “allohexaploid.” That means it can have up to six copies of specific genes for every trait! So, if a disease or climate conditions stress the plants in one of their gene sets, another gene set can take over, and help that year’s crop succeed.

    Current challenges to the wheat are similar to other crops – increasing variation in temperature and moisture availability. These climate changes also expand the regions where diseases and insect pests of wheat are found. The challenge to breeders is to anticipate these climate-induced changes, which is a bit like predicting this year’s flu strains, or the stock market!

    By making better predictions, we can develop cultivars that are disease resistant, insect resistant and tolerant to drought and temperature while still being high yielding. To improve breeding efficiency, we are looking to molecular markers. We have a lot of data collected on wheat’s genetic code, which is shared in various databases. That helps us be creative and look at ways to cross-breed different varieties. The new higher-yielding varieties will carry the desired traits for disease resistance, temperature tolerance and end-use quality.

    Potatoes

    Unlike barley and wheat, potatoes store their nutrition in underground tubers. You might think of potatoes as only the source of chips, fries and other starchy snack foods. In reality, potatoes are the third most important food crop in the world. Potatoes (as a vegetable) are consumed by more than a billion people worldwide and can grow from sea level to 4700 m above sea level. That is a very flexible growing range! Potatoes are grown in over 150 countries. They are a significant dietary source of potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium. They also provide the micronutrients iron and zinc, fiber, vitamins C, B6 and B1, folate and essential amino acids.

    Red potato in Shelley Jansky Hand

    Potatoes, like other major food crops, face a range of abiotic and biotic stresses. Potatoes are a high input crop and need lots of fertilizer and pesticides for a productive crop. Further, potatoes are vulnerable for being regarded as an icon of “junk food” with changing consumer dietary preferences.

    Potato breeders are trying to develop improved varieties with pest and disease resistance with improved nutrient use efficiency. Further, breeders are developing specialty potatoes with increased phytonutrient content. Breeders are using molecular and genomic information to improve breeding efficiency. They are also looking at reinventing potato as a diploid crop. This may help us use genetic resources and minimize losses due to tuber-borne diseases.

    Potatoes are an important food crop for food security. They carry calories for energy, and many essential nutrients. They are a powerful delivery system for nutrition. Potatoes are one of the highest yielding crops per hectare of arable land. For all these reasons, and their delicious taste, the cultivated potato has the potential to address issues of food security.

    Answered by Patrick Hayes, Bob Zemetra, and Sagar Sathuvalli, Oregon State University

    To watch a video about barley breeding, or to read more, visit https://www.crops.org/about-crop-science/at-work/patrick-hayes.

    To watch a video about potato breeding, or to read more, visit https://www.crops.org/about-crop-science/at-work/shelley-jansky.

    About us: This blog is sponsored and written by members of the American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America. Our members are researchers and trained, certified, professionals in the areas of growing our world’s food supply while protecting our environment. We work at universities, government research facilities, and private businesses across the United States and the world.