Soils & Fertility

This project addresses breeding, varietal selection, management practices, processing, or marketing practices to increase food quality, nutrition, safety or access. In a previous study, we demonstrated that tomato fruit grown under an organic fertilizer regime had higher phytonutrient content. Thereafter, using a comprehensive transcriptome analysis we tested the following hypotheses : 1. Growth under organic […]

WSU Mount Vernon and Skagit County Extension are hosting Soil Quality Network 2014, third in a series of annual soil quality workshops. This event will be limited to 100 participants, and targeted at farmers and agriculture professionals. In addition to providing training about the many facets of soil quality on the farm, this will be […]

Intercropped legumes can supply nitrogen to fruit trees and reduce the need for purchased nitrogen fertilizer, potentially reducing costs and environmental footprint. The project evaluated nitrogen isotope techniques (comparing the 15N and 14N signal from the legume N versus other sources) to monitor the degree of uptake by apple trees of legume N grown in […]

The proposed study will address the priority topic area of biologically-intensive and organic approaches to sustainable management of soil quality, particularly focusing on the economic valuation of soil improvement practices. To do this, we will combine information from producer focus groups, a literature search, and field measurements to estimate the benefits and costs of soil […]

Columbia Basin farmers and the people that supply and support them are very interested in how to build soil quality (a BioAg priority area) in irrigated cropping systems. The WSU irrigated ag email system has 433 subscribers to the soil quality/health topic area, more than all but one of the 42 available topics. We have […]

This planning grant proposal will bring together researchers from three states (WA, OR, CA) and British Columbia that work in small fruit production (red raspberries focus) from a diverse set of disciplines (pest, nutrient and cultural management) to develop improved integrated practices for red raspberries. Our first actions are to bring together these collaborators to […]

The project addresses the first FY12 program area for biologically intensive and organic approaches to sustainable management of fertility and plant nutrition. The objective of the project is to identify pea lines that can be fall planted and will fix the maximum amount of nitrogen by early spring. Such lines would be suitable for intercropping […]

Organic agriculture uses tillage for several purposes including incorporation of organic inputs. Tillage also speeds oxidation of inputs and soil organic carbon (SOC). In order to understand and model the potential of organic inputs to change total SOC, we need to better characterize the effect of tillage on the simultaneous mineralization and oxidation of inputs […]

Reduced tillage can improve soil quality and reduce fossil fuel use. Adopting reduced tillage in organic production poses challenges because farmers rely on tillage as a primary means of weed management and for incorporating soil amendments to maintain soil fertility and quality. Recent research on organic reduced tillage has focused on mechanically terminated and mulched […]

Research conducted in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 growing seasons had three main components: a winter wheat-winter pea intercropping study, developing an inter-row cultivator with precision guidance for in-season weed management, and a new pea breeding project. (1) Intercropping: The potential use of winter peas as a nitrogen (N) resource for winter wheat was evaluated in […]