Agriculture

I just discovered that there are 993 blog post on our Topics in Subtropics Blog Site posted as UC Ag & Natural Resources. And you can read them all, if you have some down time this season.

Move over, teddy bears. There's a new bear in town to covet, cuddle and cherish--a water bear or tardigrade. The plush stuffed animals are hot items in the gift shop of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.

Back in July of 2016, a team of researchers affiliated with the University of California, Davis, wrote in the journal Phytopathology that the three-cornered alfalfa leaf hopper, Spissistilus festinus, transmits the virus that causes grapevine red blotch virus.

UC Davis scientists, in collaboration with UC Berkeley and Oregon State University researchers, are leading a $3 million federal grant targeting the grapevine red blotch virus and its vectors. The disease threatens the $162 billion grape industry and is described as an "urgent problem.

Congratulations to community ecologist Rachel Vannette of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, recipient of two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants involving flower microbes.

As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, I have a certain affinity for cover crops. Mostly it is because I see enormous potential to increase the soil health and climate resiliency in Ventura County agriculture by incorporating cover crops.

Drones... If you're thinking of apiculture, you might be thinking of drones (male bees). But if you're thinking of agriculture--more specifically sustainable agriculture practices in the 21st century--you ought to be thinking of the importance of unmanned aerial robots.

When we first started using livestock guardian dogs nearly 15 years ago, I often joked that we our sheep operation was "predator-friendly" because our dogs were not.

Sustainable agricultural practices in the 21st century should increasingly depend on drones and other innovative technologies, says an international team of scientists, including UC Davis entomologist Elvira de Lange, in a newly published article in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

They met the mantids, walking sticks, beetle-mimicking roaches, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, tarantulas, silkworm moths, a butterfly, a dozen caterpillars and a chrysalis. It was a great day to get acquainted with insects and arachnids and learn how to raise them.