The dog days of summer have arrived in Eastern Washington – with daily temps reaching the high 90s every day. This is the second extended stretch of heat in the region this year. One of the critical concerns of high temperature days during the growing season is that irrigation and precipitation rates can’t keep up […]
I know that many residents of Washington were extremely concerned to learn about the discovery of glyphosate-tolerant wheat in an Oregon farm field this spring. WSU’s Agricultural Research Center released a news update today indicating that the glyphosate-tolerant gene was NOT discovered in any of the WSU breeding lines (commercialized or in development) nor in other […]
Here is the secret to building soils – manure and diverse crop rotation. Underwhelmed? Researchers in Iowa (Delate et al, 2013) came to this conclusion after conducting ten years of field research. Only this wasn’t…
At Klickitat Canyon Winery and Meadowlark Vineyard, designing a resilient farming system begins with native habitat restoration. Owners Robin Dobson and Kathleen Perillo say they will know they have succeeded when the Meadowlark returns to nest under their vines.
Perhaps the most important activity undertaken by CSANR each year is the selection of new BIOAg projects to fund. The goal of the BIOAg competitive grant program is to engage a broad, interdisciplinary spectrum of WSU faculty in projects that further the development, understanding, and use of biologically-intensive and/or organic principles, practices, and technologies to […]
A couple of weeks ago Dr. Jeff Ullman, formerly of WSU, gave a provocative seminar on the fate of various constituents of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment. He and his co-researchers have discovered that a wide range of chemicals from these products do not degrade when going through our bodies, animal bodies, […]
Organic tree fruit growers face a dilemma. The disease fire blight, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora, can infect apple and pear trees primarily through their blossoms during the flowering period when the bacteria are present and the weather conditions are right. It is a disease native to North America that has spread to other […]
A flurry of studies in recent years has reported that organic fruits and vegetables are, on average, more nutritious than conventional foods, while another flurry has reported little or no nutritional difference. While most review articles and meta-analysis conclude that Vitamin C, phenolic acids, antioxidant, and some mineral levels are typically higher in organically grown […]
Last summer, I visited an organic farm in the area. The farmer showed me various parts of his operation, one of which was a field that he had planted to a species of perennial grass…
Three studies on the relationship between agriculture and global carbon dynamics were released in the past couple of weeks that are relevant to Pacific Northwest agricultural systems. Two are studies published in a special issue of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation from CSANR’s Climate Friendly Farming Project (Brown and Huggins; Stöckle et al.) […]