2021 Quarter 4 Newsletter

Small Grains Extension Specialist Drew Lyon posted Check Out These Weed Resources for Wintertime as a Timely Topic feature on the WSU Wheat and Small Grains website as the quarter came to a close. Timely, indeed, as this write-up includes links to a variety of publications and tools to help growers in their weed management planning for 2022.

• Best Management Practices for Managing Herbicide Resistance, a free downloadable 12-page publication. (For a deeper dive, check out additional Herbicide Resistance Resources on this subpage of the website.)
• Decision support tools including:
  • Herbicide Mechanism of Action (MOA) – Wheat
  • Herbicide Comparison Tool
  • Winter Wheat Herbicide Efficacy Tables
  • Ammonium Sulfate (AMS) Sprayer Mix Calculator
• The WSU Weed Control Reports, an annual summary of field studies
• For a little light reading, the Common Weeds List is a good refresher about the region’s more common weeds, or test your weed knowledge with the Weed ID Quiz.

The Small Grains website is also home to the WSU Wheat Beat Podcast and Weeders of the West Blog, both of which provide additional input to aid in planning for 2022.

Regional Vegetable Specialist Tim Waters, in partnership with Alan Schrieber of Agricultural Development Group, 14 Columbia Basin potato growers, three potato processors, and the Washington State Potato Commission, completed the 2^nd year of a 3-year project comparing standard grower practices with enhanced IPM practices. The purpose of the project, which began in the 2019 growing season, is to determine whether use of tactics such action thresholds, intensive scouting, and selective insecticides could reduce pesticide application while maintaining yield quality and quantity. After two field seasons, it appears that this is possible, particularly under conditions of significant pest pressure.

The results of this study, which have been communicated to the partner organizations and the industry in general, suggest that providing growers with supplemental scouting support and additional pest management expertise can result in managing potato insect pests with reduced insecticide use without any detectable reductions in yield or yield quality. Initial results are encouraging, and Waters and his cooperators believe that increased communication with growers can result in additional reductions in pesticide use, especially broad-spectrum pesticides.

The Washington State Grape Society held its annual meeting on November 18 and 19. Extension Viticulturist Michelle Moyer, her team, colleagues, and collaborators presented on a variety of topics.

• Graduate student Bernadette Gagnier’s poster, Nematode Management in Vineyards using Cover Crops (pdf), discussed how pre- and post-plant cover crops could be a potentially viable addition to nematode management programs.
• Graduate student Alexa McDaniel described how use of germicidal ultraviolet-C (UVC) light treatment shows promise for reducing disease severity without compromising fruit quality in Illuminating Alternative Grapevine Powdery Mildew Management (pdf).
• Moyer and Project Manager Charlotte Oliver presented a project update on the Fungicide Resistance Assessment, Mitigation and Extension (FRAME) Network The multi-state program provides fungicide resistance testing and education for growers of wine, table, and raisin grapes.
• Former WSU IAREC CPAAS graduate student Abhilash Chandel made a presentation highlighting Moyer’s Phylloxera Management Resources web page, a recent addition to the WSU Viticulture & Enology website.

Vegetable Horticulture Specialist Carol Miles and her team have renewed outreach focused on use of soil-biodegradable plastic mulch (BDM) as an IPM strategy in high-value fruits and vegetables. BDM is a sustainable alternative to polyethylene (PE) mulch, which has been an agricultural production tool since the 1950s. Miles has been involved in BDM research since 2004, and studies have shown it provides benefits equal to PE mulch, reduces labor costs for removal and disposal, completely biodegrades, and causes no harm to soil ecology or the environment.

A new fact sheet on Soil-Biodegradable Plastic Mulch in Organic Agriculture (PDF) was released by Miles and WSU colleagues Brenda Madrid and Lisa DeVetter in December. This fact sheet joins other fact sheets and articles about BDMs on the website, with information about:

• new rules for BDMs in organic agriculture proposed in October by the National Organic Standards Board,
• factors contributing to mulch biodegradation, including climate, soil type, pH, irrigation, and other production practices, and
• ongoing research characterizing BDM degradation in terms of fate, residence time, and potential for ecotoxicity in soil and aquatic environments.

Miles is collaborating with BDM suppliers in the 2022 growing season; contact her if you are interested in testing BDM on your farm

Additional information is available on the WSU Northwestern Washington (Mount Vernon) Research and Extension Center Small Fruit Horticulture Program’s Plastic Mulches website and on Twitter @Mulch_Matters.

Urban IPM Coordinator Carrie Foss and her team, in collaboration with the Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association, piloted the first virtual ecoPRO training via Zoom. The goal of ecoPRO is the training and certification of landscaping professionals in sustainable landscaping practices.

The virtual training was held October 25-28, with an online proctored exam on October 29. Nine experts presented topics including:

• Plant health care, IPM, and monitoring by Ladd Smith, Co-owner In Harmony Sustainable Landscapes
• Principles of sustainable landscaping by Jessi Bloom, Arborist and Owner, NW Bloom Ecological Landscaping
• Integrating sustainability into decision-making by Barbara DeCaro, Horticulturist and Senior Environmental Analyst, Seattle Parks and Recreation
• Water conservation best practices by Mark Guthrie, Landscape Water Conservation Manager, Seattle Public Utilities

Since this was a pilot training, the trainee group size was small. Sixteen people registered for the course, 14 took the exam, and six received ecoPRO Sustainable Landscape Professional Certification. To improve future courses, attendees were surveyed during the course using the Zoom polling feature and by email following the course and exam. Some of the feedback from the surveys: 85% liked training schedule (4 half days + plus exam) and 100% would recommend the training to others.

Regional Horticulture and IPM Specialist Laurel Moulton served small, diverse farms on the Olympic Peninsula and elsewhere in western Washington in a number of ways this quarter:

• On-farm visits to:
  • a vegetable producer seeking Certified Naturally Grown certification
  • a new cider orchard
• Consultations with farmers about:
  • disease diagnosis and preventative pest/disease management in dahlias
  • Canada thistle management in organic pastures
  • preventative pest management resources for a new farm
• Presented on the basic concepts and application of IPM in diverse farms for the 2021 Cultivating Success Whole Farm Planning course
• Presented a webinar on Integrated Pest Management of Clubroot, along with co-host Betsey Wittick, owner of Laughing Crow Farm and viticulturist at Bainbridge Vineyards, as part of the WSU Regional Small Farms Team’s “Dirt Talk” series.
• Recruited farmers to take part in wireworm-resistant sweet potato trials, a multi-year project involving fellow Extension IPM Team member Carol Miles at the WSU Mount Vernon Northwest Research and Extension Center.

The WSU Regional Small Farms Program provides IPM and other production support to small farms, primarily in Clallam, Jefferson, and Kitsap counties. Their outreach includes one-on-one farm assistance, workshops and classes, and an on-line learning library that archives presentations including the Dirt Talk series.

Tree Fruit IPM Extension Specialist Betsy Beers and her team discovered Ganaspis brasiliensis in a wild blackberry patch near Lynden, WA this fall. This parasitoid wasp is a natural enemy of spotted wing drosophila (SWD), a vinegar fly that damages sweet cherries, berries, and other Washington State crops. G. brasiliensis is native to South Korea and was found in British Columbia Canada in 2019, but this is its first documented sighting in Washington State. Known for its strong preference for SWD, the wasps were approved by USDA APHIS as an augmentative biocontrol agent in 2021. Along with Leptopilina japonica, another parasitoid of SWD documented in Washington State in 2020, G. brasiliensis could form the foundation of a biocontrol program for SWD. That’s great news for cherry and berry growers.

On the apple-growing front, Beers and her former graduate student Adrian Marshall (primary author and now a postdoctoral researcher at WSU), published “Exclusion netting affects apple arthropod communities” in the journal Biological Control. The article sheds light on the complexities of netting as amechanical control tactic in apple orchards. Nets (also known as exclusion cages) can be beneficial against pest herbivores such as codling moth, but detrimental with respect to predators.