June 30, 2025 • 57 mins
The UCCE Rice group discussed various agricultural topics including no-till rice field demonstrations, pest management challenges, and new tools for detecting tadpole shrimp, followed by updates on ongoing research projects and planting trials in the 2025 rice season.
Upcoming Events
- Rice Production Workshop - July 23-24, 2025, Davis, CA - an introductory course in rice production to cover the basics of rice farming
- Weedy Rice Workshop - August 5, 2025, 10:00 AM - 1:15 PM, Roberts-Union Farm Center, 4925 Howard Rd, Stockton, CA 95206
- Rice Field Day - August 27, 2025, Rice Experiment Station, Biggs, CA
Other Resources
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sarah Marsh Janish (00:00):
Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a
podcast hosted by the Universityof California Cooperative
Extension Rice Advisors.
I'm one of your hosts, SarahMarchionish, and I'm a rice farm
(00:21):
advisor for Colusa and Yolocounties.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (00:24):
I'm Whitney from the forest.
I'm the Cooperative ExtensionRice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba,
Placer, and Sacramento counties.
Luis Espino (00:31):
My name is Luis Espino.
I'm the Rice Farming SystemsAdvisor for Butte and Glynn
Michelle Leinfelder-M (00:38):
counties.
I'm Michelle Leinfelder-Miles.
I'm a farm advisor in the Deltaregion.
I work on all sorts of fieldcrops, grains and forages, but
one of those is rice.
And the counties that I coverare San Joaquin, Sacramento,
Yolo-Solano, and Contra Costacounties.
Sarah Marsh Janish (00:57):
Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek
to provide relevant topicalresearch-backed information
relating to California riceproduction.
Welcome back to Thoughts onRice, and I'd just like to thank
you all in advance for stickingwith us through this hiatus we
(01:18):
had recently.
As I'm sure everybody in therice industry understands, it
was planting season, and thatpretty much takes precedence
over anything else.
But Kind of to remedy that,we've actually got a great group
of people on here today, apretty collaborative effort of
rice specialists and riceadvisors getting together to
talk about kind of a riceroundtable, what we're working
(01:41):
on this summer, some of ourrecent field days, and then what
some of the farm calls we'vebeen getting look like.
So to start off, I think we'regoing to start with a round of
introductions just to matchnames with voices as it were.
But again, my name is SarahMarchionish, rice farm advisor
for Colusa YOLO.
Luis Espino (01:58):
Luis Espino, Rice Farm Advisor for Butte and Glynn
Counties.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (02:03):
I'm Whitney Brim-DeForest.
I'm the Rice Advisor in Sutter,Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento.
Bruce Linquist (02:08):
Hi, I'm Bruce Lindquist.
I'm the UC Rice Specialistbased in Davis.
Ian Grettenberger (02:13):
Ian Grettenberger, Cooperative
Extension Specialist based outof Davis, working on entomology
and arthropods.
Sarah Marsh Janish (02:20):
Thanks for making the time, guys.
planting system of plantingno-till drilled rice.
(02:44):
And so I'd love to hear yourguys' perspectives of that
event, because for me, being inthe audience, it seemed like,
well, one, it was very wellattended.
Maybe the weather had a littlebit to do with that.
It was a lovely day.
But also, there seemed to be alot of interest in this new
planting system.
Would you say that that seemedaccurate?
Bruce Linquist (03:04):
Yeah, I believe there was a lot of interest as
demonstrated by a very good andinterested crowd.
I really appreciated just theinsights of Josh and Kim.
You know, we're looking atstuff a lot just from a research
perspective.
I really appreciated what theyhad to say, kind of how it fits
(03:26):
on their farms.
And, you know, it's a bit of areality check on the system too.
I think they both saw somepromise on it.
But I like their perspectivethat, you know, planting time,
that is an issue.
It takes a while to plant thesefields.
And so, you know, if that comesat a really busy time of year,
that could be a tough thing toaccomplish.
(03:49):
It requires wider equipment.
And, you know, just theeconomics, I think, of it.
I think Josh said he's probablygoing to come close to breaking
even.
He didn't see...
He was hoping maybe to get backby with some cheaper herbicides
or fewer herbicides.
He didn't realize that thisyear.
So I really appreciated thatkind of perspective.
(04:12):
And I think it kind of pointsto the need for some economic
analysis on this.
Sarah Marsh Janish (04:17):
Yeah, I think that's a great point,
Bruce.
And yeah, just for those whoweren't there, we had the great
opportunity of having twogrowers who have actually done
this in their field on a fieldsetting in two very different
microclimates and geographicareas, different types of soil.
And I think we did see thatvariation.
Would you agree, Bruce?
Bruce Linquist (04:36):
Yeah.
The other thing that reallystuck out, we don't research
soil.
seeding depth, but I thinkthat's a huge component of that
system, being able to prepare afield so that you can get that
seed in at the right depth.
I think that's a reallycritical thing that stuck out
for me.
Again, we don't do research onthat at the station, but
(04:56):
certainly the growerexperiences, I think that was a
big part of the story betweenJosh and Kim.
Sarah Marsh Janish (05:02):
Now, Whitney, I know you got this
question a lot, especially thisyear.
But since Bruce touched onJosh's herbicide options, do you
think you could give us just aquick briefer on the talk you
gave about the options forherbicides in terms of no-till
drill-seeded rice?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (05:18):
Sure.
So one of the big things, and Ithink Bruce can touch on this
as well, but winter weed controlis going to be a big issue in
these drill seeded systems.
Most folks aren't going to bewinter flooding because it kind
of doesn't work well with theno-till system.
And so as a result, we'regetting a lot of winter weeds.
And I would say the biggestone, biggest problem that we
(05:39):
noticed was Italian ryegrass.
So that was popping up.
I would say I didn't see Josh'sfield, but I saw it in Kim's
field and in our fields at thestation.
And the problem with Italianryegrass for folks that aren't
familiar with it is that it isvery hard to control with
herbicides.
And so we're very limited onour winter herbicide options.
(06:01):
And so it made it so that webasically were not able to
control it going into theseason.
So we planted the rice in somecases like over the ryegrass.
And so that caused some issuesfor, I think, One of the
growers, and I think a littlebit, we saw our drill seeded up
at the experimentation as well.
So the ryegrass, I don't knowhow competitive it is, but I
(06:24):
will say that we saw some holesas the season went on, once the
field was flooded.
So wherever there was ryegrass,there was a hole.
So whether that's fromcompetition, I'm not sure, or if
it's from simply the ricewasn't able to be planted over
the ryegrass.
But I think that's going to bethe biggest winter weed problem.
There were some other ones, butI would rate them a lot less
(06:47):
problematic.
Ryegrass is really the one Ithink that's going to be the
most problematic for us in thissystem.
Sarah Marsh Janish (06:53):
Yeah, I think that's a really good
perspective because, I mean,especially in the no-till
drilled system, you're notgetting that tillage that might
chop up and destroy your winterweeds.
So that's something that's anadded factor, right?
Right.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (07:06):
Yeah.
And I mean, I didn't reallytouch on the in-season weed
control, but Sarah, you and Iare working on a drill seeded
trial up at the station to tryto get some programs together.
And then also like the otherbig issue that we have, I guess,
is for pre-emergent herbicideapplication options.
We really only have one rightnow and that's pendimethalin.
(07:28):
And it's a great product, but Imean, There's only one.
So it would be nice to be ableto rotate with another
herbicide.
It does provide pretty goodcontrol of grasses and sedges,
but it's not going to providecontrol through the season.
So it's good early seasoncontrol, but again, not going to
(07:50):
provide control all the waythrough the season.
So I think what Josh wastouching on about maybe using
the same amount of herbicides ornot reducing those herbicides,
kind of tracks with what I wouldguess would happen in these
systems.
So you'll need a pre-emergentand then a follow-up at like the
two to four leaf stage beforeyou put on your permanent flood.
(08:10):
And then maybe something afterthe permanent flood, which
sounds like that's what Joshended up having to do.
So we're having to apply awinter herbicide program plus,
you know, between two to threeherbicide applications during
the season.
And then another thing Imentioned at the field day is
that we have We have, you know,pendimethalin is an added
(08:31):
option, which is a new mode ofaction for us, but we're
actually reducing the number,the total number of modes of
action that we have availablebecause we're not able to use
granular herbicides at thebeginning of the season.
So I think it's a good system,but it may not save us on
herbicide costs.
And I would see it as like, Ithink Bruce has stated this as
(08:53):
well, but as a good rotationaloption to kind of shift the you
know, from having a completelywater-seeded system.
Sarah Marsh Janish (09:01):
I think that's really valuable because I
think that's part of one of themost important things people
are wanting to know going intothe system is, okay, what's my
weed control going to look like?
Because we don't have a lot ofthat information.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (09:13):
Yeah, and I did mention this as a field
day too, but there is a shifttowards grasses.
So that's a definite thing thatwill happen.
So you're going to have mostlywater grass and spangled top as
the two biggest areas weedgroups, I would say.
The broadleaves don't reallycome up.
We might get red stem later inthe season, but like early
season broadleaves don't reallycome up.
Might get some small flower,but much fewer plants per area
(09:38):
and likely no bulrush.
I haven't seen bulrush in drillseeded system.
Could again be a goodrotational option for folks that
have heavy bulrush or broadleafpressure.
Sarah Marsh Janish (09:48):
Well, speaking of pests, let's go to
you, Louise.
I know In part of your talk,you might have said it best with
an example of showing thebacchané that we saw in the
grower's field later on.
Would you care to expand alittle bit more on that?
Luis Espino (10:03):
During the field day, so I was mentioning what
pests could be an issue,arthropods or diseases.
And so we know weevil could bean issue.
Shrimp and mitch won't be anissue because those are from in
flooded situations only.
And then on the disease side,so, you know, bacony, we use the
(10:27):
seed treatment to controlbacony on water-seeded rice, but
on drill-seeded, because you'reusing dry seed that's not
soaked, so it's not treated.
So you could have bacony.
And in fact, in the field,there were two or three plants
that had bacony.
(10:48):
And so it was a good examplethat, yeah, you could see it in
drill seeding.
And then, you know, at thatpoint, we couldn't see anything
else.
But, you know, other diseaseslike stem rot and agar-garci
spot, I suspect are going to bethe same.
The one that could be an issueis blast, right?
Because blast tends to be worsewhen it's dry seeded or drill
(11:11):
seeded rice.
We haven't had a good blastyear to kind of look at That in
our experiments, but there aresome experiences from a few
years back that, you know, somepeople that were drill seeding,
you know, in areas wheretraditionally there's no blast
(11:32):
were seeing or saw blast in a, Ithink it was three or four
years ago.
Sarah Marsh Janish (11:38):
And so in that case, I mean, I think your
best option just to stave offanything, any blast might be
just to plant M210, right?
Luis Espino (11:45):
Right, yeah, that's what I like to do.
tell people is if you're gonnatry these systems, maybe M210 is
the best, you know, or thesafest option.
But you know, you can't alwaysdo that.
Like we have done M206 at oursites.
And I think some of the growersthat are testing the systems
(12:09):
are using other varieties aswell.
So M209, M206.
So we'll see.
Sarah Marsh Janish (12:16):
Any other notes you want to make on the
no-till field day before we moveon?
Luis Espino (12:20):
I think a big driver for growers is the weed
control, you know, and trying toreduce costs.
But I think there are, so thereare other benefits.
You know, you can plant earlierif you do the no-till.
And there's savings in water.
And maybe Bruce can discussthat a little bit more.
Bruce Linquist (12:41):
Yeah, we're seeing about a, 15% overall
savings in water in thosesystems.
And all of those savings arecoming during the establishment
phase where your field is dryfor a lot of the times.
So those have been measured atthe RES where we do a single, we
do a flush, and then we don'tdo any flushes until permanent
(13:04):
flood about a month later.
The plants do very well.
And so we're seeing that sortof It's about five inches of
water of ET that we save.
But if you do multiple flushesto get that, to establish that
rise during that period, really,you're not going to see that
type of water savings.
(13:25):
It's going to be somewhatcomparable to a water seeded
system.
Sarah Marsh Janish (13:29):
So a grower who might need to do more than
one flush to try and encouragetheir seed to get up out of the
ground might not see the samewater savings effect.
Bruce Linquist (13:38):
Correct.
And...
Again, that gets to seedingdepth.
I think if you can keep yourseed depth shallow, you can
potentially avoid having toflush again.
Some of that deep seeding whereit just takes longer to get out
and then you've got a crustforming on the top, it can make
it hard for that seed to comeout.
Sarah Marsh Janish (13:59):
Great.
Thanks for clarifying that.
With that, I think we're goingto move on to our next main
topic, which is going to be abit about our individual
projects or the collaborativeprojects that we're working on
in the 2025 season.
And so I'd like to ask Ian totalk first about some of the
projects that you're working on.
But before I ask you to getinto that, I'd love for you to
(14:22):
describe a bit about your latesttadpole shrimp catcher, which I
know you teased at our growermeetings and I'll say this here,
our rice team has actually hadthe opportunity to use it and
we've been pretty excited aboutit.
Ian Grettenberger (14:36):
Well, that might've been the only thing I
talked about regardless, butyeah, so as part of that, we're
finishing up a DPR funded grantfor tadpole shrimp management.
And part of that was developingscouting, better scouting
methods.
Basically, how do we betterfind the shrimp in the field,
both from an efficiencystandpoint, being able to
(14:57):
collect them, but then alsoideally finding them when
they're smaller so that we canbe a little more proactive about
management and also enablescouting more.
Because if we're only able tofind shrimp when they're already
very large at that point, it'susually pretty obvious that you
have them.
And some of the insecticidesdon't work as well for large
shrimp.
And so you may have missed theboat a little bit to get the
(15:20):
best bang for your buck out ofsome of the insecticides or even
just logistically best plan outyour applications as well.
But yeah, so we're trying tocome up with something that was
better than just simply staringinto the water or sticking your
head in a clear bottom bucket.
And we were working to developa scoop based method that
started with the fact that weknew we could scoop them
(15:40):
somehow.
I mean, it was simple pool, apool net would work, but the
problem there is you get a lotof mud and then The shrimp do
move around when you scoop themup, but if they're coated in
rice mud, they do not.
And so finding them would behard and especially if they're
small.
And so basically we startedfrom the ground up and design
modeled and then 3d printed ascoop.
(16:01):
scoop that attaches to a polebasically um that will kind of
move through the move throughthe water column that you can
kind of just um pull and scoopup the shrimp and yeah it will
catch shrimp and thenimportantly we've been able to
catch shrimp when they're prettydarn small as well which is
something that is very hard todo i think with our current
management or current options oris just pretty inefficient if
(16:23):
you're to use you know thevarious other tools that are
available
Sarah Marsh Janish (16:26):
yeah i mean well selfishly speaking here
it's been an absolute delight tojust be able to pull this large
scoop through the water andthen easily sift through the
shrimp instead of trying to digthrough the soil or trying to
catch it when it's very small Ithink I might throw to Luis here
but I think as far as the sizeof the shrimp that this is able
(16:49):
to catch we've noticed that it'spretty on par catching the
small shrimp
Luis Espino (16:53):
well yeah maybe it seems to be that way but you
know it depends on what you'recomparing it with right so The
way I was doing it, I was tryingto catch as many shrimp as
possible with one method, likelet's call it the absolute
method.
And so, you know, we can catchall kinds of shrimp, but it
takes a long time.
(17:13):
And I wouldn't expect a groweror a PCA to do that.
And so if you compare that withthe scoop that Ian designed,
yeah, you end up catching lessof the bigger ones, maybe.
But, you know, if you're...
Trying to find those, you cansee them, one.
And two, it's too late, right?
At that point, the shrimp mighthave already caused their
(17:36):
damage.
So you really want to focus onthe little ones.
And I think that's where thebenefit is because you can see
them easily.
It's really nice.
Sarah Marsh Janish (17:45):
Ian, I think it's doing what you designed it
to, is catching the shrimp whenit's important to catch them.
Bruce Linquist (17:51):
Ian, can you set up a little video of how it
works?
Ian Grettenberger (17:55):
Yes, I am.
either going to do that shortlyor definitely can.
We already, I shot a little bitof video on, yeah, showing how
it works, plus a few photos.
Bruce Linquist (18:04):
Yeah, it'd be nice to have up on our website.
Sarah Marsh Janish (18:08):
Sorry, Ian, got a little sidetracked there.
I did want to just quickly askyou, I think we saw a little bit
of seed midge in high numbersat the Rice Experiment Station.
Is that something you can touchon a bit?
Ian Grettenberger (18:22):
Yeah, generally speaking.
I mean, I think...
There's been issues with riceseed midge.
I think what happens at thestation is a little bit driven
by the interesting dynamicsthere in terms of, you know, a
small field will get flooded ata timing that is different than
everything surrounding it.
So you can get someconcentrations of adults that
will lay eggs that can leadto...
(18:44):
potentially abnormal damage insome of those areas.
And that's actually what weare, that's what we try to
foster when we're doing ourinsecticide trials or any sort
of trials in that we plantlakes, we figure the midges are
going to be, the midgepopulations will be developing.
And also if we're one of thelast fields to flood our little
(19:06):
research plots, research trialarea, then we should be able to
concentrate whatever midges arearound and don't want to
over-posit in the alreadyestablished rice.
We'll come find our plot.
Sarah Marsh Janish (19:15):
So what are some of the other insecticide or
trials that you're working onthis summer?
Ian Grettenberger (19:19):
Yeah, on our end, the focus has been, the
last several years, on tadpoleshrimp and rice seed midge now.
And so tadpole shrimp, like Isaid, we're sort of finishing up
that one project.
I think I'd like to continuetaking some of these things
forward, like the scoop and thescouting side of things.
And then otherwise, we'recontinuously evaluating
(19:42):
available insecticides, anythingnew that we have.
There's not a lot that's on thehorizon in terms of evaluating.
Luis can touch on that, maybethings that he's been trying.
But basically looking atdifferent materials for
different modes of action, givenregulatory concerns, as well as
pyrethroid resistance, and thenincluding aspects around
timings.
So potentially treating thesoil pre-flood, as well as kind
(20:06):
of different timings withdifferent strip sizes as well.
And then on the rice seed midgeside of things, we're
evaluating materials, includingmaterials that are relevant
early season, you know, relevantfor rice water weevil, tadpole
shrimp, registered, as well asmaterial.
We're also looking at aBT-based product that's looked
pretty good for several yearsnow.
And so continuously evaluatingthat, looking at different
(20:28):
rates.
Sarah Marsh Janish (20:28):
Right.
That sounds like some veryimportant work here when it
comes to just studying pests inrice.
Yeah.
Well, Anne, thank you forgiving us that information.
We will stay kind of in thisthematic area and go back to
Luis Espino.
And Luis, we kind of touched onthis when we were giving the
summary of the drilled riceproject, but I wanted to ask you
(20:53):
about rice water weevil and ifyou're seeing an increase in
that in the drilled rice fields.
Luis Espino (20:59):
Well, no.
So what happened is we havethese basins where we're testing
our drill seeded, no-till drillseeded rice.
And so it's interesting, butwe've noticed that we have some
rice water we will injury thisyear in the no-till drill
seeded.
Now we have different systems,right?
We have the fallow, which isthe summer prep.
(21:22):
basin and then we have thechopped and the disc where the
straw has been either removed orchopped we don't know if the
weevil is equally distributed inall these plots you know but
yeah we typically don't see thismuch or we haven't seen this
much weevil at the station inBiggs for a few years.
(21:44):
And so it's interesting thatthis year, you know, we're
seeing quite a bit on our plots.
And so it could be one of thepossibilities is that, you know,
on our drill seeded no-till,especially on the chopped and
the removed, the stand is not100%.
It's more like maybe 80% and70% in some spots.
(22:06):
And so we know that the weevillikes to go into fields that
have low stands.
And so maybe that could be areason why we're seeing weevil
there.
But yeah, I think we'recertainly going to plan on
looking at this more closelynext year and maybe set up some
plots so that we can determineif really the weevil is an issue
(22:30):
in these systems.
Or it's maybe just because Isaid that we shouldn't be an
issue in drought and drillseeded rice.
Definitely happens that whatyou said, the opposite happens
in real life.
Sarah Marsh Janish (22:44):
Just keeps things interesting, right?
Let's talk about the otherproject you have going on in
this 2025 season.
Luis Espino (22:52):
So we have the army worm traps, you know, and
everybody should be gettingthose emails and we're seeing
the moth numbers go up.
And so we know that once we'rethe peak, you know, one, two
weeks after that, that's whenthe armyworms are going to start
showing up.
We're going to do somefungicide trials in that stem
(23:14):
rot.
You know, if we get some blast,we'll evaluate that as well.
Part of that, we're looking atsome of the induced resistance
products.
You know, this is the second orthird year we're looking at
those in combination with someof the fungicides we have
available.
And then also we're doing somemore of the sampling of stem
(23:36):
rot, trying to find a bettertiming for stem rot sampling so
that you can go earlier aboutgood time and assess how much
stem rot you have and decide ifyou need to do a treatment for
stem rot or not.
Because right now, the best wayto do that would be to wait
till drain time, then you canlook at that and make a decision
(24:00):
for next year, but not, youknow, there's nothing you can do
at that point.
So we're going to continuedoing that, that, that project
this year.
Yeah.
And that's, that's, I thinkthat's about it.
Sarah Marsh Janish (24:12):
But yeah, I've been slowly watching the
army worm numbers jump up on thearmy worm trapping network and
it's, Do you have any idea?
I know it's different everyyear, but do you have any idea
when the peak would generally beat?
Luis Espino (24:27):
So, yeah, it's interesting.
So in late planted years, wehave seen the peak.
It's a little late.
It's typically at the end ofvery late June, early July.
That's, you know, when the peakwould happen.
So this year, you know, and Ithink we've talked amongst
(24:47):
ourselves, you know, we'reseeing that there's a broad...
window of planting.
And so there's fields that wereplanted early May, and there's
fields that were planted verylate May.
So it's going to be interestingwhen we're going to see that
peak.
You know, we'll see.
Probably sometime at the end ofJune, most likely.
Sarah Marsh Janish (25:05):
Makes sense.
Whitney, I think we're going tomove on to you now and talk a
bit about the trials that you'redoing.
First off, would you mind, Iguess, explaining a bit about
the watergrass trials?
Because I know this is severalyears of work that you've been
doing, and I've been getting acouple of people asking me about
them.
So would you mind going intodetail about that?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (25:25):
Oh, sure.
So I guess this is maybe thefourth year officially, but
we've been looking foralternatives to the double
propanol application.
So everyone's been doing doublepropanol, I would say, at an
increasing rate over the pastfew years.
And the reason is, is becausewe're struggling to control
(25:46):
water grass at the cleanuptiming, sort of at the, you
know, five leaf slash tilleringtiming.
And I've been testing varioustank mixes and sort of like
follow up, you know, or closelyspaced timings of different
products.
We don't really have anythingnew coming down the pipeline for
the foliar timing.
At least nothing that I'm awareof.
(26:08):
And so this is kind of, to me,becoming a bigger and bigger
problem.
We also do have propanolresistance in watergrass And so
we're trying to get people awayfrom doing the double propanil.
Even though it is working, Iwill caveat that it is working.
And it's working in my trialsas well.
But we don't want to lose thatproduct because it is very
(26:31):
effective.
It's probably the mosteffective product we have for
watergrass control.
And since we do haveresistance, doing two
applications in a row or threeapplications in a row is only
going to hasten that selectionfor more resistance.
So I'm really trying to getpeople into the habit of not
using it every single year.
(26:51):
So if they're going to dodouble propanol, I would caution
them to not do that multipleyears in a row and use something
else, you know, in off years.
Or the other thing I've beentelling folks is that if you're
going to do double propanol, tohave one of those propanol
applications be a tank mix withsomething else.
So whether that's we've beenusing Abolish, that one's
(27:15):
working pretty well, thepropanol-abolish tank mix.
Another good one ispropanol-alloyant or
propanol-clencher.
But that way we're not justapplying propanol, propanol,
propanol.
We already know how that wentwith our sedges, and we have
widespread propanol-resistantand sedge populations.
So we really don't want to gothere with the water grass.
So we're trying to do our bestto provide folks with some
(27:38):
alternative applications.
Sarah Marsh Janish (27:41):
Yeah, I mean, like you said, propanol's
a great product.
We'd like to try to keep it aslong as possible, but...
Yes.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (27:48):
Yeah.
And I will say the other thingthat's been happening as to is
because it hasn't always beenworking, even with the double
propanol.
People have been, in somecases, applying propanol over
the label rate or at moretiming.
So three or four applicationsof propanol.
And we really, really don'twant to head down that pathway
(28:08):
either.
but we want to make sure we'refollowing the labeled rates and
not going over the labeled ratesfor applications in a season,
both for safety as well asherbicide resistance.
So, you know, there's multiplereasons we don't want to do
that.
Sarah Marsh Janish (28:21):
Yeah, lots of reasons there.
So I know the watergrass trialstake up quite a bit of your
time throughout the season, butwhat are some of the other
projects that you're working
Whitney Brim-Deforest (28:31):
on?
Well, definitely looking atdrill seeded programs.
So like I mentioned earlier, sosome options hopefully for for
both pre-emergent where I'mlooking at a product that we
might be able to get labelednext year for pre-emergent and
then also just programs.
So people have more sort ofoptions for, and more guidance,
I guess, on what they should beapplying in sequence to make
(28:54):
sure that they have good weedcontrol in those drill seeded
programs.
And then there is a hedgerowproject that we've been working
on for a couple of years inColusa.
So that's, that's, The firstever hedgerow project that I
know of in rice.
And it's been interestingworking with both you, Sarah,
(29:14):
and Luis on that.
And then let's see, what elsedo I have going on?
Finishing up a cover crop workthis year.
So we'll have hopefully datapublished this fall.
Let's
Sarah Marsh Janish (29:23):
talk about this new work on Ludwigia.
Is that something you can talkabout?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (29:29):
Yeah, so we are trying to...
with you guys, so Luis andSarah, and we have some
collaborators from USDA as well,and of course the county and
commissioners and stuff.
We're trying to do a bigger,better mapping program for
Ludwigia, which is wingedprimrose willow.
It was found, I believe, in2010, which you can correct me
(29:50):
here if I'm off on my timing,but that's when it was first
discovered.
It is invasive.
It is from the southern UnitedStates, and it is considered to
be an A-rated pest.
So it is not allowed to be inseed fields.
So if you had it in a seedfield, your seed field could not
be harvested.
So we've really kind of decidedthis year that we noticed it
(30:11):
moving down some canals in ButteCounty in the past couple of
years.
And so we're doing a biggersurvey this year.
And then myself and mycolleague Jens Beetz from USDA
is going to work on the aquaticside of things.
So he's going to work on someherbicide options for aquatics.
And I'm going to work on somefor rice.
And so hopefully we'll havesome better herbicide control
(30:34):
options for folks for next year.
And then also we're doing theWeedy Rice five-year survey this
year as well.
So I forgot about that as well.
So Weedy Rice five-year surveycoming down the pipeline
probably in July.
We'll be reaching out to folksthat have either had Weedy Rice
in the past or have it now.
And we'll be surveying thosefields as well.
(30:55):
We're going to see, hopefully,a reduction.
I'm assuming there's areduction.
It seems like there is, but nowwe'll be able to document.
Hopefully that there is one.
Sarah Marsh Janish (31:04):
You heard it here.
Well, not first, but recently.
Whitney says there's going tobe a reduction of weedy rice.
I
Whitney Brim-Deforest (31:10):
mean, I think there is.
I mean, Luis, you can commenttoo, but it feels like there is.
So this year will give us anupdate as to whether or not our
management practices are workingfrom the last time we did it,
which was in 2020.
Luis Espino (31:22):
It's either that or people are just less concerned
about it, you know, and they'renot reaching out because we were
getting...
calls from PCAs and growers,like, you know, concerned about
the weedy rice, if they thoughtthey had it, you know, if they
saw a suspect plant.
So either they're, because Ihaven't gotten very many calls
in the past, maybe a year ortwo.
(31:42):
So either it's not as much orpeople are not concerned.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (31:49):
Yeah, well, hopefully we'll be able to
tell because we'll be goingback and surveying all fields
that have previously had aninfestation, so.
I'm hoping that'll give us ahandle on whether or not, yeah,
whether it's what Luis is sayingor if we're actually seeing
reduction in the fields.
I've heard anecdotally fromgrowers that their management
practices or the managementpractices we've been
recommending have been working.
So I'm hoping that we're seeingan actual reduction.
(32:12):
But we'll know.
We'll know later.
Later this year, hopefully.
Sarah Marsh Janish (32:17):
Whitney, thanks for, I guess, giving us
that rundown.
That is hopefully good,optimistic news.
I'm hopeful.
I don't think I've gottenhardly any.
I think I've gotten one callabout weedy rice in the last
year.
And so I'm optimistic thatwe've seen an effective
management, hopefully.
Me
Whitney Brim-Deforest (32:35):
too.
Yeah, I got a few last year,none yet this year.
But the ones last year, I willsay, all were not weedy rice.
So in the end, it was justinfestations with, like, mix ups
of seed or something like that.
So yeah, so I'm optimistic aswell.
Sarah Marsh Janish (32:51):
All right, Bruce, save the best for last
here.
But I'm wondering if you couldgive us a rundown on some of the
multitude of projects you'reworking on, maybe starting first
with the variety trials, sinceeverybody always wants to hear
about the variety trials.
Bruce Linquist (33:07):
Yeah, so we've got eight different variety
trials around the state.
And all of us advisors and havebeen very helpful with setting
those up.
It's interesting.
We actually have a new siteover by Winters, so kind of in a
cooler area to kind of look atsome of that cold adaptation.
(33:27):
So we're really looking forwardto seeing results from that.
I mean, it was kind ofinteresting.
You know, we're looking at justadaptability and just with the
spread of the season, we thoughtthese variety trials were all
going to be spread out.
across the growing season.
But apart from one early one,all of our variety trials were
(33:49):
planted within the span of about10 days.
So it was a very busy time forus, kind of all in the middle
part of May, trying to get thesevariety trials in.
So a very rather narrowplanting window this year.
Sarah Marsh Janish (34:04):
What other projects are you working with,
Bruce?
Bruce Linquist (34:07):
Yeah, obviously with a number of you guys
working on the no-till and sothat's already been largely
spoken about.
You guys are doing differentaspects.
I'm looking at water use andnitrogen fertility in those
systems as well as greenhousegas emissions.
So that's all going well.
(34:29):
The other project that we havethat's new is we have two large
nitrogen by variety trials wherewe have nine commercial
varieties that are quite varied.
A lot of them are mediumgrains, but we have some
specialty rice and long grainrice.
And we're looking at a range ofnitrogen rates, looking at how
Is there different nitrogenrequirements for these different
(34:52):
varieties, as well as lookingat the effect of nitrogen on
maybe some of the qualityparameters of those varieties?
So very large experiments andvery excited about that.
And then, yeah, we're doingsome of the AWD work.
It's not...
We have two...
(35:12):
two sites on farm where growersare testing it really at a full
farm or not a full farm scale,a full field scale and seeing
how that works.
And so we're measuring some ofthe greenhouse gas emissions.
I think Whitney might belooking at maybe some impacts on
weeds and we're also looking atthe impact on arsenic
(35:36):
concentration in the grain.
So yeah, we're excited aboutthose.
And they're actually both,starting in a drain or about to
start a drain right now.
Sarah Marsh Janish (35:47):
And so that drain, that'll be, is that
approximately seven to 10 daysof a drain there?
Bruce Linquist (35:53):
Yeah, it's a seven to 10 day drain.
Usually around, it starts 35 to45 days after planting.
So before PI, you want to startthat drain.
And then once it Once it getsdrained, you go for, yeah, seven
to 10 days.
Sarah Marsh Janish (36:13):
And can you explain, I guess, why you're
looking at alternate wetting anddrying or AWD as a practice?
What kind of influenced that?
Bruce Linquist (36:22):
Yeah, it initially started with the
California Rice Commissionasking us to look at ways to
reduce arsenic in rice grain.
And so that was the initialimpetus of that.
California doesn't have a hugeproblem with arsenic in rice.
But then it got to be theimpact on greenhouse gas
(36:43):
emissions, particularly methane.
We were looking to see also,and so before, yeah, it does
reduce.
We can reduce greenhouse gasemissions by about half with
that practice.
But then the other thing, wewere hoping to see a reduction
in water use.
And there is a small reduction,but it's not large.
We're also wondering if there'dbe a yield bump with it because
(37:07):
a mid-season drain is somethingthat's been practiced for
centuries in Japan, China, orthey do it for increasing
yields.
So we haven't seen astatistically significant yield
increase, but we haven't seen adecline in yields, and it might
(37:29):
be a small increase.
Luis Espino (37:30):
So, Bruce, yeah, you talked about the AWD, you
know, during our GRRRR meetings.
And I got a question, and thequestion was, so we've always
recommended not to drain toavoid losing nitrogen.
And so how does that work withthe AWD?
How come we're not, you know,losing a bunch of nitrogen when
(37:50):
we do that?
Yeah, that's a
Bruce Linquist (37:52):
really good question because we're
recommending– the drain to occurwhen the amount of soil
nitrogen is low.
So by about 45 days afterplanting, all of your nitrogen
that you applied pre-plant hasbeen taken up.
(38:12):
So your levels of soil nitrogenare very low at that time.
So there's really little tolose at that time period.
So if you were to drain veryearly on, when there's still a
lot of nitrogen in the soil,yeah, you'd have huge problems
with nitrogen loss.
But because we're draininglater, the ideal time really to
(38:36):
drain is about 40 days, maybe45.
But the practice that's beendeveloped allows for as early as
35 days.
There's still a little bit ofnitrogen in that soil.
And we might be getting intothe weeds here a bit, but When
you drain a field at 35 days,even if there's a lot of
nitrogen, it's going to nitrifyor it's going to turn into
(38:57):
nitrate.
That nitrate's available forplant uptake.
So the plant can still take upnitrate.
Where you lose it is when youreflood it.
And that's going to happen 10days later.
So a lot of that nitrate, mostof that nitrate will have been
taken up by the plant before youreflood and get that loss.
So That's a maybe in the weedsanswer to.
Sarah Marsh Janish (39:21):
Actually, I think it's great that you went
to detail about that because Ithink the nitrogen cycle as a
whole is really interesting andnot altogether well understood.
I mean, especially in our riceflooded anaerobic conditions.
Bruce, anything else you wantto add here?
Bruce Linquist (39:40):
Broadly, I would just say I was looking at, I
mean, Louise brought it up, kindof the very extended planting
season that we had.
We were roughly 20% planted inCalifornia by April 27th.
And then everything from thenon, you know, it was just go,
go, go.
There was a little lag, maybebecause of wind and some
(40:04):
forecasted rain.
But it's a very stretched outgrowing season this year.
And I think it's going tostretch out the harvest season.
And I'd be interested to know,I mean, Luis said maybe there's
some impact on army worms orother things, but I think it's
going to be a bit of an unusualyear in that way.
Because we have rice well intoPI right now and rice that's
(40:30):
very just coming out of thewater.
I mean, this year we were 50%planted, even though we started
really early, our 50% plant datewas a little, it was about
three days later than an averageyear.
So it was kind of interestingjust with that, but whether
that's really true or not basedon how they collect their stats,
I'm not really sure.
(40:52):
Also, when you talk about 100%,at the beginning of the year,
you don't know how many acresyou have.
You could have a lot ofprevented planting acres, And so
all of a sudden, you have a lotof acres out.
So what is that 95% or 20% apercentage of?
I don't actually know what itis.
(41:13):
Because early on, it would be apercentage of your total acres.
But when you get to 95% ofplanted acres, I think at the
end of it, you're looking at,well, that's actually the amount
of acres that are going to beplanted.
Sarah Marsh Janish (41:29):
Shifting goalposts.
Bruce Linquist (41:31):
I think it is a bit.
Yeah.
Hey, Sarah, you've asked usabout all our projects.
Are you just going to bail andnot talk about your projects?
Sarah Marsh Janish (41:41):
Don't worry.
I was going to slip it in hereat the end.
But yeah, I have a couple ofprojects that I'm working on
this year.
One at a grower collaboratorfield and then a couple up at
the Rice Experiment Station nextbase and over from everybody
else.
But one of the ones that I'mreally starting a pilot study on
is uh it's it's a starting workon seeing the effect of
(42:06):
reseeding or delayed planting onrice essentially if there's any
kind of effect on plant standestablishment if we delay
seeding after the flood waterhas been put onto the field
frankly there's just not a lotof data or past information on
this subject so At least inCalifornia, the last research
(42:28):
done on this was in the 60s.
So it's a lot of new factorsinvolved in this, new varieties,
different measuringtechnologies.
So far, I actually justfinished my final planting date
today, which is June 18th, whichis February.
way behind the recommendedplanting date for rice in
(42:50):
California.
So it'll be really interestingto see how that project turns
out.
But yeah, that one's with theend goal of trying to create
some kind of recommendation forgrowers who might have to have,
for reasons beyond theircontrol, some kind of delayed
planting or maybe a necessaryreseeding projects.
And For better or for worse,unfortunately, one of Whitney's
(43:14):
basins had a bit of a problemwith stand establishment due to
predation by tadpole shrimp andmidge.
And so luckily, she's let metake some measurements in there
after we reseeded.
So we'll be able to kind ofcompare and contrast what a
grower standard for reseedingmight be as compared to just
seeding into a standing flood.
(43:35):
But yeah, unfortunate forWhitney, but lucky for me.
And I do promise I did not seedher basin with tadpole shrimp
eggs to try and get this result.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (43:51):
Sure, Sarah.
Are you sure?
It is rather suspicious, rightnext to mine,
Bruce Linquist (43:56):
yeah.
Sarah, you planted your lastseeds today.
Yes.
How long has that field beenflooded?
Sarah Marsh Janish (44:02):
That field got flooded May 27th.
So today we are 21 days out,which is way beyond the current
recommended time period betweenflooding and seeding.
Yeah, I think we'reanticipating some challenges
with weed controls, especiallyin these later planted plots.
(44:24):
And then one thing I noticedtoday when I was out there is a
lot of my seedlings that are atapproximately one to two leaf
stage were actually uprooted andI've seen a lot of feathers in
my plots.
So I'm a little bit afraid thatthere might be some kind of
waterfowl predation that mighthave some kind of effect on
(44:45):
results.
But I guess we'll see whathappens when the yield map comes
through.
With that, folks, I think we'regoing to use this last bit of
time to kind of go around ourvirtual table here and talk
about some of the farm calls andquestions we've been getting so
far.
Does anybody want to start offwith maybe an interesting
(45:06):
question that's come acrosstheir desk?
Luis Espino (45:09):
I can start.
So, yeah, I've got a couple ofcalls about bacchani again.
And actually this morning I wasjust driving around and saw a
field that looked like it had alot of bacony in it.
And so, yeah, and I, you know,I stopped and ran into the
grower and we chatted for alittle bit.
(45:30):
And so, yeah, there's somefields with some heavy bacony.
I don't think it's going to beany economic effect of what
we're seeing.
But, you know, there's talkabout some varieties being more
susceptible than others.
Some of these fields have beentreated with bleach before
(45:53):
seeding.
I wrote a blog post about this.
I'm thinking probably what'sgoing on is the bleach
treatments might not be reachingthe concentration needed, and
that's why we see bacony comethrough.
(46:14):
That's my theory.
I mean, it could be a, there'sother possibilities, but that's
probably what the mostplausible, given for what I've
seen in previous years, wheresome fields had heavy bacony,
then they, you know, thewarehouse started doing a better
job of doing the bleachtreatments, checking the
concentration, and we don't seemto have bacony from in these
(46:38):
fields.
So that's something that's comeup.
I think we'll, you know, we'llhave to do a little bit more
digging around to see what'sgoing on.
Sarah Marsh Janish (46:48):
Louise, I also had people calling me about
Bacchanet in treated fields,fields that have been treated
with bleach.
And so we, I think the group ofus actually talked about using
bleach testing strips in thesoaking tanks to make sure that
that concentration is where itneeds to be.
So that might be something welook into to make sure we can
(47:09):
standardize some kind ofsanitation protocol.
Luis Espino (47:12):
And yeah, the strips works.
But it's tricky because thestrips, you can buy strips for
up to 2,000 ppm.
And those would work for onewhen you bleach for 24 hours.
But then the next level is10,000 ppm.
And I don't know how well theywould work for when you bleach
(47:34):
two hours.
So I was thinking I might buysome and try them out and see.
But yeah, I don't know ifthere's a handheld probe that
you can use that will tell you.
I'm sure there is, but it'sprobably expensive.
Sarah Marsh Janish (47:49):
Bruce, what about people calling about going
without starter fertilizer?
Are you starting to hear a bitmore about the outcomes of those
decisions?
Bruce Linquist (48:00):
No, that was really the bulk of my calls was
related to that.
kind of looking to cut costs byputting their, not their
starter, but their top dressnitrogen into their aqua.
And I think a lot of growersdid that this year.
Again, we're kind of gettinginto that time of year when, you
(48:23):
know, we're getting into PIwhen they'd want to start
thinking about a top dress.
The few growers that I knowthat have done it aren't
thinking that they need to, topdress because of that.
But, you know, that's a few ofmany.
So we do recommend that theystill evaluate to see if they
need it.
They shouldn't, but you stillwant to check.
Luis Espino (48:46):
Maybe, Bruce, maybe you can mention that, you know,
method that we were discussingto check if you would need a top
dress, you know,over-fertilizing an area.
Bruce Linquist (48:56):
Yeah.
So if you have Before theseason starts, you can put out a
small over-fertilized area intothe field.
Sometimes it's a cup of ureainto a 10 by 10 foot square area
in a representative part ofyour field.
When it comes to PI, either inthat section or maybe you know
(49:17):
you have some aqua overlaps orsomething where we have excess
nitrogen.
If you don't see a differencebetween that enriched area where
there's extra nitrogen and therest of the field, you're not
going to need to apply topdress.
And so that's an easy way totell if you don't need to apply
(49:38):
top dress.
The question then becomes, doyou need to apply top dress?
You may need to do it if you dosee a very visible difference
between those two treatments.
And that's where the greenseeker or maybe the leaf color
chart can come in and help makethat decision.
(49:59):
But certainly if you can't seea difference where you've
applied excess nitrogen and therest of the field, you won't
need to be applying a top dressnitrogen.
Sarah Marsh Janish (50:09):
I had on my list here, a couple of the
calls, actually all of the callsI've had so far have been about
stand establishment issues,funnily enough.
The two calls that I've gone onthis year to check it out, it
was kind of inconclusive, but Ithink together the PCA and I
decided that it was most likelydue to geese pressure.
Tons of feathers in the field,lots of problems with just like
(50:33):
stand establishment and a singlecheck in a field rather than
spread across the entire check.
So that's something I think wesaw at least in a couple of our
fields last year, but it lookslike it might also change.
a problem in some fields thisyear maybe due to the extended
planting period the geese areable or geese or waterfowl are
(50:55):
looking for places to go i don'tknow if any of you guys have
heard tell of i guess predationfrom geese or other kinds of
birds
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:04):
not this year but yeah i mean i seem to
have a lot of issues in a lot ofmy trials in the past
Bruce Linquist (51:09):
this year maybe with the earlier start that at
least some growers had.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:14):
That could
Sarah Marsh Janish (51:14):
be.
Bruce Linquist (51:15):
There may have been some extra geese pressure,
especially maybe on the westside.
Sarah Marsh Janish (51:19):
It was definitely on the west side.
I think at least in theReclamation District 108, we saw
a ton of birds there whileplanting was going on.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:30):
Were they earlier planted fields of
curiosity?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Luis Espino (51:36):
Well, Sarah, we visited that field that
definitely had some geese orducks you know, damage.
It was kind of planted a littlelater, more towards the end of
the month.
It wasn't a big area, but youcan tell that they had been
there.
You know, you can see all thefeathers.
Sarah Marsh Janish (51:52):
Any other calls we want to bring up here?
I
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:55):
mean, I'll just say that I've been
getting a lot of calls aboutwater grass control.
So, but that doesn't really,it's not new.
So, but it's, yeah, a lot ofcalls, just people wondering how
to control their grasses andwhat they should put on.
Luis Espino (52:08):
So one question I got from at least two people
was, what's the benefit or thedifference between Cliffhanger
and Butte?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (52:18):
Just the AI is different.
So Butte has a halosulfuronmixed in.
So it's halosulfuron plusbenzoyl cyclone.
So that's one difference.
But Cliffhanger can go on a lotlater in the season in
comparison to Butte.
So the timing can be later withCliffhanger.
So that's one of the benefits.
But I think both products aregreat.
(52:38):
But yeah, cliffhanger allows alittle bit more flexibility and
timing.
But it is not a foliar product,just to re-clarify with
everyone.
Somebody else asked me thattoday.
Not a foliar product.
It's meant to be applied intothe water.
It does not work on establishedweeds out of the water.
So it's an into-the-waterproduct as well.
Sarah Marsh Janish (52:59):
Yeah, and if you're going to use
cliffhanger, you need to makesure you're going to be able to
keep that water up at least fourinches, preferably higher.
But that's, I think, in caseswhere I've seen, I guess, a
failure of control, it's usuallybeen because of a lack of water
or a lack of depth of water ora lack of time of keeping the
(53:21):
water on.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (53:22):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Sarah Marsh Janish (53:25):
Great.
Well, thank you guys again somuch for taking the time to be
here.
A lot of really good stuff.
A lot of really goodinformation.
Glad to be back recording afterour planting hiatus and let's
have a good season.
Thanks,
Whitney Brim-Deforest (53:38):
Sarah.
Bye.
Bye, guys.
All right.
Thanks, Sarah.
See you guys.
All right.
Bye, folks.
Sarah Marsh Janish (53:55):
We've got a couple of upcoming events that
are rapidly approaching.
The first event that's up onour schedule is the rice
production workshop.
which is a workshop we holdevery two years to cover the
basic principles and practicesof rice production in
California.
This event will take place July23rd and July 24th, 2025.
(54:17):
This is a two-day workshop.
These will be two all days, soit will start at 8.30am and go
till 3.30pm and take place atthe UC A&R building on 2801 2nd
Street in Davis.
Registration is required forthis event and if you go to our
UC Rice website, there is a linkfor that registration.
(54:40):
Our next upcoming event will bethe Weedy Rice Workshop, which
will take place August 5th,2025, from 10 a.m.
to 1.15 p.m.
at the Roberts Union FarmCenter in Stockton, California.
This will be a workshop devotedto the history and current
management practices of weedyrice in California.
(55:01):
Registration is not requiredfor this event.
Our final upcoming event forthis season is the annual Rice
Field Day, which takes placeevery year on the last Wednesday
of August, which is August 27,2025.
It starts promptly in themorning, so be sure to get your
coffee and donuts when the fieldday starts.
(55:21):
And it will take place at theRice Experiment Station at 955
Butte City Highway in Biggs.
And as always, stay tuned forsome great talks and delicious
lunch.
For more information aboutthese and other upcoming events,
feel free to check out ourresources, which include the UC
(55:42):
Rice blog and the UC AgronomyRice website.
In terms of other resources youmay want to take advantage of,
you can also look at ournewsletters, which include Rice
Briefs, which covers Colosiolo,Rice Notes, which covers Yuba
Stutter, Rice Leaf, which coversButte and Glen, and Field
Notes, which covers rice in theDelta region of California.
(56:05):
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thoughtsonrice.buzzsprout.com.
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(56:28):
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Thanks for sticking with usover this planting hiatus
(56:50):
earlier this spring.
Rice season is well underwayand we hope you stay safe this
season.
And remember, like the growerslike to say, have a rice life.
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(57:10):
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(57:30):
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Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a
podcast hosted by the Universityof California Cooperative
Extension Rice Advisors.
I'm one of your hosts, SarahMarchionish, and I'm a rice farm
(00:21):
advisor for Colusa and Yolocounties.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (00:24):
I'm Whitney from the forest.
I'm the Cooperative ExtensionRice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba,
Placer, and Sacramento counties.
Luis Espino (00:31):
My name is Luis Espino.
I'm the Rice Farming SystemsAdvisor for Butte and Glynn
Michelle Leinfelder-M (00:38):
counties.
I'm Michelle Leinfelder-Miles.
I'm a farm advisor in the Deltaregion.
I work on all sorts of fieldcrops, grains and forages, but
one of those is rice.
And the counties that I coverare San Joaquin, Sacramento,
Yolo-Solano, and Contra Costacounties.
Sarah Marsh Janish (00:57):
Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek
to provide relevant topicalresearch-backed information
relating to California riceproduction.
Welcome back to Thoughts onRice, and I'd just like to thank
you all in advance for stickingwith us through this hiatus we
(01:18):
had recently.
As I'm sure everybody in therice industry understands, it
was planting season, and thatpretty much takes precedence
over anything else.
But Kind of to remedy that,we've actually got a great group
of people on here today, apretty collaborative effort of
rice specialists and riceadvisors getting together to
talk about kind of a riceroundtable, what we're working
(01:41):
on this summer, some of ourrecent field days, and then what
some of the farm calls we'vebeen getting look like.
So to start off, I think we'regoing to start with a round of
introductions just to matchnames with voices as it were.
But again, my name is SarahMarchionish, rice farm advisor
for Colusa YOLO.
Luis Espino (01:58):
Luis Espino, Rice Farm Advisor for Butte and Glynn
Counties.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (02:03):
I'm Whitney Brim-DeForest.
I'm the Rice Advisor in Sutter,Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento.
Bruce Linquist (02:08):
Hi, I'm Bruce Lindquist.
I'm the UC Rice Specialistbased in Davis.
Ian Grettenberger (02:13):
Ian Grettenberger, Cooperative
Extension Specialist based outof Davis, working on entomology
and arthropods.
Sarah Marsh Janish (02:20):
Thanks for making the time, guys.
planting system of plantingno-till drilled rice.
(02:44):
And so I'd love to hear yourguys' perspectives of that
event, because for me, being inthe audience, it seemed like,
well, one, it was very wellattended.
Maybe the weather had a littlebit to do with that.
It was a lovely day.
But also, there seemed to be alot of interest in this new
planting system.
Would you say that that seemedaccurate?
Bruce Linquist (03:04):
Yeah, I believe there was a lot of interest as
demonstrated by a very good andinterested crowd.
I really appreciated just theinsights of Josh and Kim.
You know, we're looking atstuff a lot just from a research
perspective.
I really appreciated what theyhad to say, kind of how it fits
(03:26):
on their farms.
And, you know, it's a bit of areality check on the system too.
I think they both saw somepromise on it.
But I like their perspectivethat, you know, planting time,
that is an issue.
It takes a while to plant thesefields.
And so, you know, if that comesat a really busy time of year,
that could be a tough thing toaccomplish.
(03:49):
It requires wider equipment.
And, you know, just theeconomics, I think, of it.
I think Josh said he's probablygoing to come close to breaking
even.
He didn't see...
He was hoping maybe to get backby with some cheaper herbicides
or fewer herbicides.
He didn't realize that thisyear.
So I really appreciated thatkind of perspective.
(04:12):
And I think it kind of pointsto the need for some economic
analysis on this.
Sarah Marsh Janish (04:17):
Yeah, I think that's a great point,
Bruce.
And yeah, just for those whoweren't there, we had the great
opportunity of having twogrowers who have actually done
this in their field on a fieldsetting in two very different
microclimates and geographicareas, different types of soil.
And I think we did see thatvariation.
Would you agree, Bruce?
Bruce Linquist (04:36):
Yeah.
The other thing that reallystuck out, we don't research
soil.
seeding depth, but I thinkthat's a huge component of that
system, being able to prepare afield so that you can get that
seed in at the right depth.
I think that's a reallycritical thing that stuck out
for me.
Again, we don't do research onthat at the station, but
(04:56):
certainly the growerexperiences, I think that was a
big part of the story betweenJosh and Kim.
Sarah Marsh Janish (05:02):
Now, Whitney, I know you got this
question a lot, especially thisyear.
But since Bruce touched onJosh's herbicide options, do you
think you could give us just aquick briefer on the talk you
gave about the options forherbicides in terms of no-till
drill-seeded rice?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (05:18):
Sure.
So one of the big things, and Ithink Bruce can touch on this
as well, but winter weed controlis going to be a big issue in
these drill seeded systems.
Most folks aren't going to bewinter flooding because it kind
of doesn't work well with theno-till system.
And so as a result, we'regetting a lot of winter weeds.
And I would say the biggestone, biggest problem that we
(05:39):
noticed was Italian ryegrass.
So that was popping up.
I would say I didn't see Josh'sfield, but I saw it in Kim's
field and in our fields at thestation.
And the problem with Italianryegrass for folks that aren't
familiar with it is that it isvery hard to control with
herbicides.
And so we're very limited onour winter herbicide options.
(06:01):
And so it made it so that webasically were not able to
control it going into theseason.
So we planted the rice in somecases like over the ryegrass.
And so that caused some issuesfor, I think, One of the
growers, and I think a littlebit, we saw our drill seeded up
at the experimentation as well.
So the ryegrass, I don't knowhow competitive it is, but I
(06:24):
will say that we saw some holesas the season went on, once the
field was flooded.
So wherever there was ryegrass,there was a hole.
So whether that's fromcompetition, I'm not sure, or if
it's from simply the ricewasn't able to be planted over
the ryegrass.
But I think that's going to bethe biggest winter weed problem.
There were some other ones, butI would rate them a lot less
(06:47):
problematic.
Ryegrass is really the one Ithink that's going to be the
most problematic for us in thissystem.
Sarah Marsh Janish (06:53):
Yeah, I think that's a really good
perspective because, I mean,especially in the no-till
drilled system, you're notgetting that tillage that might
chop up and destroy your winterweeds.
So that's something that's anadded factor, right?
Right.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (07:06):
Yeah.
And I mean, I didn't reallytouch on the in-season weed
control, but Sarah, you and Iare working on a drill seeded
trial up at the station to tryto get some programs together.
And then also like the otherbig issue that we have, I guess,
is for pre-emergent herbicideapplication options.
We really only have one rightnow and that's pendimethalin.
(07:28):
And it's a great product, but Imean, There's only one.
So it would be nice to be ableto rotate with another
herbicide.
It does provide pretty goodcontrol of grasses and sedges,
but it's not going to providecontrol through the season.
So it's good early seasoncontrol, but again, not going to
(07:50):
provide control all the waythrough the season.
So I think what Josh wastouching on about maybe using
the same amount of herbicides ornot reducing those herbicides,
kind of tracks with what I wouldguess would happen in these
systems.
So you'll need a pre-emergentand then a follow-up at like the
two to four leaf stage beforeyou put on your permanent flood.
(08:10):
And then maybe something afterthe permanent flood, which
sounds like that's what Joshended up having to do.
So we're having to apply awinter herbicide program plus,
you know, between two to threeherbicide applications during
the season.
And then another thing Imentioned at the field day is
that we have We have, you know,pendimethalin is an added
(08:31):
option, which is a new mode ofaction for us, but we're
actually reducing the number,the total number of modes of
action that we have availablebecause we're not able to use
granular herbicides at thebeginning of the season.
So I think it's a good system,but it may not save us on
herbicide costs.
And I would see it as like, Ithink Bruce has stated this as
(08:53):
well, but as a good rotationaloption to kind of shift the you
know, from having a completelywater-seeded system.
Sarah Marsh Janish (09:01):
I think that's really valuable because I
think that's part of one of themost important things people
are wanting to know going intothe system is, okay, what's my
weed control going to look like?
Because we don't have a lot ofthat information.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (09:13):
Yeah, and I did mention this as a field
day too, but there is a shifttowards grasses.
So that's a definite thing thatwill happen.
So you're going to have mostlywater grass and spangled top as
the two biggest areas weedgroups, I would say.
The broadleaves don't reallycome up.
We might get red stem later inthe season, but like early
season broadleaves don't reallycome up.
Might get some small flower,but much fewer plants per area
(09:38):
and likely no bulrush.
I haven't seen bulrush in drillseeded system.
Could again be a goodrotational option for folks that
have heavy bulrush or broadleafpressure.
Sarah Marsh Janish (09:48):
Well, speaking of pests, let's go to
you, Louise.
I know In part of your talk,you might have said it best with
an example of showing thebacchané that we saw in the
grower's field later on.
Would you care to expand alittle bit more on that?
Luis Espino (10:03):
During the field day, so I was mentioning what
pests could be an issue,arthropods or diseases.
And so we know weevil could bean issue.
Shrimp and mitch won't be anissue because those are from in
flooded situations only.
And then on the disease side,so, you know, bacony, we use the
(10:27):
seed treatment to controlbacony on water-seeded rice, but
on drill-seeded, because you'reusing dry seed that's not
soaked, so it's not treated.
So you could have bacony.
And in fact, in the field,there were two or three plants
that had bacony.
(10:48):
And so it was a good examplethat, yeah, you could see it in
drill seeding.
And then, you know, at thatpoint, we couldn't see anything
else.
But, you know, other diseaseslike stem rot and agar-garci
spot, I suspect are going to bethe same.
The one that could be an issueis blast, right?
Because blast tends to be worsewhen it's dry seeded or drill
(11:11):
seeded rice.
We haven't had a good blastyear to kind of look at That in
our experiments, but there aresome experiences from a few
years back that, you know, somepeople that were drill seeding,
you know, in areas wheretraditionally there's no blast
(11:32):
were seeing or saw blast in a, Ithink it was three or four
years ago.
Sarah Marsh Janish (11:38):
And so in that case, I mean, I think your
best option just to stave offanything, any blast might be
just to plant M210, right?
Luis Espino (11:45):
Right, yeah, that's what I like to do.
tell people is if you're gonnatry these systems, maybe M210 is
the best, you know, or thesafest option.
But you know, you can't alwaysdo that.
Like we have done M206 at oursites.
And I think some of the growersthat are testing the systems
(12:09):
are using other varieties aswell.
So M209, M206.
So we'll see.
Sarah Marsh Janish (12:16):
Any other notes you want to make on the
no-till field day before we moveon?
Luis Espino (12:20):
I think a big driver for growers is the weed
control, you know, and trying toreduce costs.
But I think there are, so thereare other benefits.
You know, you can plant earlierif you do the no-till.
And there's savings in water.
And maybe Bruce can discussthat a little bit more.
Bruce Linquist (12:41):
Yeah, we're seeing about a, 15% overall
savings in water in thosesystems.
And all of those savings arecoming during the establishment
phase where your field is dryfor a lot of the times.
So those have been measured atthe RES where we do a single, we
do a flush, and then we don'tdo any flushes until permanent
(13:04):
flood about a month later.
The plants do very well.
And so we're seeing that sortof It's about five inches of
water of ET that we save.
But if you do multiple flushesto get that, to establish that
rise during that period, really,you're not going to see that
type of water savings.
(13:25):
It's going to be somewhatcomparable to a water seeded
system.
Sarah Marsh Janish (13:29):
So a grower who might need to do more than
one flush to try and encouragetheir seed to get up out of the
ground might not see the samewater savings effect.
Bruce Linquist (13:38):
Correct.
And...
Again, that gets to seedingdepth.
I think if you can keep yourseed depth shallow, you can
potentially avoid having toflush again.
Some of that deep seeding whereit just takes longer to get out
and then you've got a crustforming on the top, it can make
it hard for that seed to comeout.
Sarah Marsh Janish (13:59):
Great.
Thanks for clarifying that.
With that, I think we're goingto move on to our next main
topic, which is going to be abit about our individual
projects or the collaborativeprojects that we're working on
in the 2025 season.
And so I'd like to ask Ian totalk first about some of the
projects that you're working on.
But before I ask you to getinto that, I'd love for you to
(14:22):
describe a bit about your latesttadpole shrimp catcher, which I
know you teased at our growermeetings and I'll say this here,
our rice team has actually hadthe opportunity to use it and
we've been pretty excited aboutit.
Ian Grettenberger (14:36):
Well, that might've been the only thing I
talked about regardless, butyeah, so as part of that, we're
finishing up a DPR funded grantfor tadpole shrimp management.
And part of that was developingscouting, better scouting
methods.
Basically, how do we betterfind the shrimp in the field,
both from an efficiencystandpoint, being able to
(14:57):
collect them, but then alsoideally finding them when
they're smaller so that we canbe a little more proactive about
management and also enablescouting more.
Because if we're only able tofind shrimp when they're already
very large at that point, it'susually pretty obvious that you
have them.
And some of the insecticidesdon't work as well for large
shrimp.
And so you may have missed theboat a little bit to get the
(15:20):
best bang for your buck out ofsome of the insecticides or even
just logistically best plan outyour applications as well.
But yeah, so we're trying tocome up with something that was
better than just simply staringinto the water or sticking your
head in a clear bottom bucket.
And we were working to developa scoop based method that
started with the fact that weknew we could scoop them
(15:40):
somehow.
I mean, it was simple pool, apool net would work, but the
problem there is you get a lotof mud and then The shrimp do
move around when you scoop themup, but if they're coated in
rice mud, they do not.
And so finding them would behard and especially if they're
small.
And so basically we startedfrom the ground up and design
modeled and then 3d printed ascoop.
(16:01):
scoop that attaches to a polebasically um that will kind of
move through the move throughthe water column that you can
kind of just um pull and scoopup the shrimp and yeah it will
catch shrimp and thenimportantly we've been able to
catch shrimp when they're prettydarn small as well which is
something that is very hard todo i think with our current
management or current options oris just pretty inefficient if
(16:23):
you're to use you know thevarious other tools that are
available
Sarah Marsh Janish (16:26):
yeah i mean well selfishly speaking here
it's been an absolute delight tojust be able to pull this large
scoop through the water andthen easily sift through the
shrimp instead of trying to digthrough the soil or trying to
catch it when it's very small Ithink I might throw to Luis here
but I think as far as the sizeof the shrimp that this is able
(16:49):
to catch we've noticed that it'spretty on par catching the
small shrimp
Luis Espino (16:53):
well yeah maybe it seems to be that way but you
know it depends on what you'recomparing it with right so The
way I was doing it, I was tryingto catch as many shrimp as
possible with one method, likelet's call it the absolute
method.
And so, you know, we can catchall kinds of shrimp, but it
takes a long time.
(17:13):
And I wouldn't expect a groweror a PCA to do that.
And so if you compare that withthe scoop that Ian designed,
yeah, you end up catching lessof the bigger ones, maybe.
But, you know, if you're...
Trying to find those, you cansee them, one.
And two, it's too late, right?
At that point, the shrimp mighthave already caused their
(17:36):
damage.
So you really want to focus onthe little ones.
And I think that's where thebenefit is because you can see
them easily.
It's really nice.
Sarah Marsh Janish (17:45):
Ian, I think it's doing what you designed it
to, is catching the shrimp whenit's important to catch them.
Bruce Linquist (17:51):
Ian, can you set up a little video of how it
works?
Ian Grettenberger (17:55):
Yes, I am.
either going to do that shortlyor definitely can.
We already, I shot a little bitof video on, yeah, showing how
it works, plus a few photos.
Bruce Linquist (18:04):
Yeah, it'd be nice to have up on our website.
Sarah Marsh Janish (18:08):
Sorry, Ian, got a little sidetracked there.
I did want to just quickly askyou, I think we saw a little bit
of seed midge in high numbersat the Rice Experiment Station.
Is that something you can touchon a bit?
Ian Grettenberger (18:22):
Yeah, generally speaking.
I mean, I think...
There's been issues with riceseed midge.
I think what happens at thestation is a little bit driven
by the interesting dynamicsthere in terms of, you know, a
small field will get flooded ata timing that is different than
everything surrounding it.
So you can get someconcentrations of adults that
will lay eggs that can leadto...
(18:44):
potentially abnormal damage insome of those areas.
And that's actually what weare, that's what we try to
foster when we're doing ourinsecticide trials or any sort
of trials in that we plantlakes, we figure the midges are
going to be, the midgepopulations will be developing.
And also if we're one of thelast fields to flood our little
(19:06):
research plots, research trialarea, then we should be able to
concentrate whatever midges arearound and don't want to
over-posit in the alreadyestablished rice.
We'll come find our plot.
Sarah Marsh Janish (19:15):
So what are some of the other insecticide or
trials that you're working onthis summer?
Ian Grettenberger (19:19):
Yeah, on our end, the focus has been, the
last several years, on tadpoleshrimp and rice seed midge now.
And so tadpole shrimp, like Isaid, we're sort of finishing up
that one project.
I think I'd like to continuetaking some of these things
forward, like the scoop and thescouting side of things.
And then otherwise, we'recontinuously evaluating
(19:42):
available insecticides, anythingnew that we have.
There's not a lot that's on thehorizon in terms of evaluating.
Luis can touch on that, maybethings that he's been trying.
But basically looking atdifferent materials for
different modes of action, givenregulatory concerns, as well as
pyrethroid resistance, and thenincluding aspects around
timings.
So potentially treating thesoil pre-flood, as well as kind
(20:06):
of different timings withdifferent strip sizes as well.
And then on the rice seed midgeside of things, we're
evaluating materials, includingmaterials that are relevant
early season, you know, relevantfor rice water weevil, tadpole
shrimp, registered, as well asmaterial.
We're also looking at aBT-based product that's looked
pretty good for several yearsnow.
And so continuously evaluatingthat, looking at different
(20:28):
rates.
Sarah Marsh Janish (20:28):
Right.
That sounds like some veryimportant work here when it
comes to just studying pests inrice.
Yeah.
Well, Anne, thank you forgiving us that information.
We will stay kind of in thisthematic area and go back to
Luis Espino.
And Luis, we kind of touched onthis when we were giving the
summary of the drilled riceproject, but I wanted to ask you
(20:53):
about rice water weevil and ifyou're seeing an increase in
that in the drilled rice fields.
Luis Espino (20:59):
Well, no.
So what happened is we havethese basins where we're testing
our drill seeded, no-till drillseeded rice.
And so it's interesting, butwe've noticed that we have some
rice water we will injury thisyear in the no-till drill
seeded.
Now we have different systems,right?
We have the fallow, which isthe summer prep.
(21:22):
basin and then we have thechopped and the disc where the
straw has been either removed orchopped we don't know if the
weevil is equally distributed inall these plots you know but
yeah we typically don't see thismuch or we haven't seen this
much weevil at the station inBiggs for a few years.
(21:44):
And so it's interesting thatthis year, you know, we're
seeing quite a bit on our plots.
And so it could be one of thepossibilities is that, you know,
on our drill seeded no-till,especially on the chopped and
the removed, the stand is not100%.
It's more like maybe 80% and70% in some spots.
(22:06):
And so we know that the weevillikes to go into fields that
have low stands.
And so maybe that could be areason why we're seeing weevil
there.
But yeah, I think we'recertainly going to plan on
looking at this more closelynext year and maybe set up some
plots so that we can determineif really the weevil is an issue
(22:30):
in these systems.
Or it's maybe just because Isaid that we shouldn't be an
issue in drought and drillseeded rice.
Definitely happens that whatyou said, the opposite happens
in real life.
Sarah Marsh Janish (22:44):
Just keeps things interesting, right?
Let's talk about the otherproject you have going on in
this 2025 season.
Luis Espino (22:52):
So we have the army worm traps, you know, and
everybody should be gettingthose emails and we're seeing
the moth numbers go up.
And so we know that once we'rethe peak, you know, one, two
weeks after that, that's whenthe armyworms are going to start
showing up.
We're going to do somefungicide trials in that stem
(23:14):
rot.
You know, if we get some blast,we'll evaluate that as well.
Part of that, we're looking atsome of the induced resistance
products.
You know, this is the second orthird year we're looking at
those in combination with someof the fungicides we have
available.
And then also we're doing somemore of the sampling of stem
(23:36):
rot, trying to find a bettertiming for stem rot sampling so
that you can go earlier aboutgood time and assess how much
stem rot you have and decide ifyou need to do a treatment for
stem rot or not.
Because right now, the best wayto do that would be to wait
till drain time, then you canlook at that and make a decision
(24:00):
for next year, but not, youknow, there's nothing you can do
at that point.
So we're going to continuedoing that, that, that project
this year.
Yeah.
And that's, that's, I thinkthat's about it.
Sarah Marsh Janish (24:12):
But yeah, I've been slowly watching the
army worm numbers jump up on thearmy worm trapping network and
it's, Do you have any idea?
I know it's different everyyear, but do you have any idea
when the peak would generally beat?
Luis Espino (24:27):
So, yeah, it's interesting.
So in late planted years, wehave seen the peak.
It's a little late.
It's typically at the end ofvery late June, early July.
That's, you know, when the peakwould happen.
So this year, you know, and Ithink we've talked amongst
(24:47):
ourselves, you know, we'reseeing that there's a broad...
window of planting.
And so there's fields that wereplanted early May, and there's
fields that were planted verylate May.
So it's going to be interestingwhen we're going to see that
peak.
You know, we'll see.
Probably sometime at the end ofJune, most likely.
Sarah Marsh Janish (25:05):
Makes sense.
Whitney, I think we're going tomove on to you now and talk a
bit about the trials that you'redoing.
First off, would you mind, Iguess, explaining a bit about
the watergrass trials?
Because I know this is severalyears of work that you've been
doing, and I've been getting acouple of people asking me about
them.
So would you mind going intodetail about that?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (25:25):
Oh, sure.
So I guess this is maybe thefourth year officially, but
we've been looking foralternatives to the double
propanol application.
So everyone's been doing doublepropanol, I would say, at an
increasing rate over the pastfew years.
And the reason is, is becausewe're struggling to control
(25:46):
water grass at the cleanuptiming, sort of at the, you
know, five leaf slash tilleringtiming.
And I've been testing varioustank mixes and sort of like
follow up, you know, or closelyspaced timings of different
products.
We don't really have anythingnew coming down the pipeline for
the foliar timing.
At least nothing that I'm awareof.
(26:08):
And so this is kind of, to me,becoming a bigger and bigger
problem.
We also do have propanolresistance in watergrass And so
we're trying to get people awayfrom doing the double propanil.
Even though it is working, Iwill caveat that it is working.
And it's working in my trialsas well.
But we don't want to lose thatproduct because it is very
(26:31):
effective.
It's probably the mosteffective product we have for
watergrass control.
And since we do haveresistance, doing two
applications in a row or threeapplications in a row is only
going to hasten that selectionfor more resistance.
So I'm really trying to getpeople into the habit of not
using it every single year.
(26:51):
So if they're going to dodouble propanol, I would caution
them to not do that multipleyears in a row and use something
else, you know, in off years.
Or the other thing I've beentelling folks is that if you're
going to do double propanol, tohave one of those propanol
applications be a tank mix withsomething else.
So whether that's we've beenusing Abolish, that one's
(27:15):
working pretty well, thepropanol-abolish tank mix.
Another good one ispropanol-alloyant or
propanol-clencher.
But that way we're not justapplying propanol, propanol,
propanol.
We already know how that wentwith our sedges, and we have
widespread propanol-resistantand sedge populations.
So we really don't want to gothere with the water grass.
So we're trying to do our bestto provide folks with some
(27:38):
alternative applications.
Sarah Marsh Janish (27:41):
Yeah, I mean, like you said, propanol's
a great product.
We'd like to try to keep it aslong as possible, but...
Yes.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (27:48):
Yeah.
And I will say the other thingthat's been happening as to is
because it hasn't always beenworking, even with the double
propanol.
People have been, in somecases, applying propanol over
the label rate or at moretiming.
So three or four applicationsof propanol.
And we really, really don'twant to head down that pathway
(28:08):
either.
but we want to make sure we'refollowing the labeled rates and
not going over the labeled ratesfor applications in a season,
both for safety as well asherbicide resistance.
So, you know, there's multiplereasons we don't want to do
that.
Sarah Marsh Janish (28:21):
Yeah, lots of reasons there.
So I know the watergrass trialstake up quite a bit of your
time throughout the season, butwhat are some of the other
projects that you're working
Whitney Brim-Deforest (28:31):
on?
Well, definitely looking atdrill seeded programs.
So like I mentioned earlier, sosome options hopefully for for
both pre-emergent where I'mlooking at a product that we
might be able to get labelednext year for pre-emergent and
then also just programs.
So people have more sort ofoptions for, and more guidance,
I guess, on what they should beapplying in sequence to make
(28:54):
sure that they have good weedcontrol in those drill seeded
programs.
And then there is a hedgerowproject that we've been working
on for a couple of years inColusa.
So that's, that's, The firstever hedgerow project that I
know of in rice.
And it's been interestingworking with both you, Sarah,
(29:14):
and Luis on that.
And then let's see, what elsedo I have going on?
Finishing up a cover crop workthis year.
So we'll have hopefully datapublished this fall.
Let's
Sarah Marsh Janish (29:23):
talk about this new work on Ludwigia.
Is that something you can talkabout?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (29:29):
Yeah, so we are trying to...
with you guys, so Luis andSarah, and we have some
collaborators from USDA as well,and of course the county and
commissioners and stuff.
We're trying to do a bigger,better mapping program for
Ludwigia, which is wingedprimrose willow.
It was found, I believe, in2010, which you can correct me
(29:50):
here if I'm off on my timing,but that's when it was first
discovered.
It is invasive.
It is from the southern UnitedStates, and it is considered to
be an A-rated pest.
So it is not allowed to be inseed fields.
So if you had it in a seedfield, your seed field could not
be harvested.
So we've really kind of decidedthis year that we noticed it
(30:11):
moving down some canals in ButteCounty in the past couple of
years.
And so we're doing a biggersurvey this year.
And then myself and mycolleague Jens Beetz from USDA
is going to work on the aquaticside of things.
So he's going to work on someherbicide options for aquatics.
And I'm going to work on somefor rice.
And so hopefully we'll havesome better herbicide control
(30:34):
options for folks for next year.
And then also we're doing theWeedy Rice five-year survey this
year as well.
So I forgot about that as well.
So Weedy Rice five-year surveycoming down the pipeline
probably in July.
We'll be reaching out to folksthat have either had Weedy Rice
in the past or have it now.
And we'll be surveying thosefields as well.
(30:55):
We're going to see, hopefully,a reduction.
I'm assuming there's areduction.
It seems like there is, but nowwe'll be able to document.
Hopefully that there is one.
Sarah Marsh Janish (31:04):
You heard it here.
Well, not first, but recently.
Whitney says there's going tobe a reduction of weedy rice.
I
Whitney Brim-Deforest (31:10):
mean, I think there is.
I mean, Luis, you can commenttoo, but it feels like there is.
So this year will give us anupdate as to whether or not our
management practices are workingfrom the last time we did it,
which was in 2020.
Luis Espino (31:22):
It's either that or people are just less concerned
about it, you know, and they'renot reaching out because we were
getting...
calls from PCAs and growers,like, you know, concerned about
the weedy rice, if they thoughtthey had it, you know, if they
saw a suspect plant.
So either they're, because Ihaven't gotten very many calls
in the past, maybe a year ortwo.
(31:42):
So either it's not as much orpeople are not concerned.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (31:49):
Yeah, well, hopefully we'll be able to
tell because we'll be goingback and surveying all fields
that have previously had aninfestation, so.
I'm hoping that'll give us ahandle on whether or not, yeah,
whether it's what Luis is sayingor if we're actually seeing
reduction in the fields.
I've heard anecdotally fromgrowers that their management
practices or the managementpractices we've been
recommending have been working.
So I'm hoping that we're seeingan actual reduction.
(32:12):
But we'll know.
We'll know later.
Later this year, hopefully.
Sarah Marsh Janish (32:17):
Whitney, thanks for, I guess, giving us
that rundown.
That is hopefully good,optimistic news.
I'm hopeful.
I don't think I've gottenhardly any.
I think I've gotten one callabout weedy rice in the last
year.
And so I'm optimistic thatwe've seen an effective
management, hopefully.
Me
Whitney Brim-Deforest (32:35):
too.
Yeah, I got a few last year,none yet this year.
But the ones last year, I willsay, all were not weedy rice.
So in the end, it was justinfestations with, like, mix ups
of seed or something like that.
So yeah, so I'm optimistic aswell.
Sarah Marsh Janish (32:51):
All right, Bruce, save the best for last
here.
But I'm wondering if you couldgive us a rundown on some of the
multitude of projects you'reworking on, maybe starting first
with the variety trials, sinceeverybody always wants to hear
about the variety trials.
Bruce Linquist (33:07):
Yeah, so we've got eight different variety
trials around the state.
And all of us advisors and havebeen very helpful with setting
those up.
It's interesting.
We actually have a new siteover by Winters, so kind of in a
cooler area to kind of look atsome of that cold adaptation.
(33:27):
So we're really looking forwardto seeing results from that.
I mean, it was kind ofinteresting.
You know, we're looking at justadaptability and just with the
spread of the season, we thoughtthese variety trials were all
going to be spread out.
across the growing season.
But apart from one early one,all of our variety trials were
(33:49):
planted within the span of about10 days.
So it was a very busy time forus, kind of all in the middle
part of May, trying to get thesevariety trials in.
So a very rather narrowplanting window this year.
Sarah Marsh Janish (34:04):
What other projects are you working with,
Bruce?
Bruce Linquist (34:07):
Yeah, obviously with a number of you guys
working on the no-till and sothat's already been largely
spoken about.
You guys are doing differentaspects.
I'm looking at water use andnitrogen fertility in those
systems as well as greenhousegas emissions.
So that's all going well.
(34:29):
The other project that we havethat's new is we have two large
nitrogen by variety trials wherewe have nine commercial
varieties that are quite varied.
A lot of them are mediumgrains, but we have some
specialty rice and long grainrice.
And we're looking at a range ofnitrogen rates, looking at how
Is there different nitrogenrequirements for these different
(34:52):
varieties, as well as lookingat the effect of nitrogen on
maybe some of the qualityparameters of those varieties?
So very large experiments andvery excited about that.
And then, yeah, we're doingsome of the AWD work.
It's not...
We have two...
(35:12):
two sites on farm where growersare testing it really at a full
farm or not a full farm scale,a full field scale and seeing
how that works.
And so we're measuring some ofthe greenhouse gas emissions.
I think Whitney might belooking at maybe some impacts on
weeds and we're also looking atthe impact on arsenic
(35:36):
concentration in the grain.
So yeah, we're excited aboutthose.
And they're actually both,starting in a drain or about to
start a drain right now.
Sarah Marsh Janish (35:47):
And so that drain, that'll be, is that
approximately seven to 10 daysof a drain there?
Bruce Linquist (35:53):
Yeah, it's a seven to 10 day drain.
Usually around, it starts 35 to45 days after planting.
So before PI, you want to startthat drain.
And then once it Once it getsdrained, you go for, yeah, seven
to 10 days.
Sarah Marsh Janish (36:13):
And can you explain, I guess, why you're
looking at alternate wetting anddrying or AWD as a practice?
What kind of influenced that?
Bruce Linquist (36:22):
Yeah, it initially started with the
California Rice Commissionasking us to look at ways to
reduce arsenic in rice grain.
And so that was the initialimpetus of that.
California doesn't have a hugeproblem with arsenic in rice.
But then it got to be theimpact on greenhouse gas
(36:43):
emissions, particularly methane.
We were looking to see also,and so before, yeah, it does
reduce.
We can reduce greenhouse gasemissions by about half with
that practice.
But then the other thing, wewere hoping to see a reduction
in water use.
And there is a small reduction,but it's not large.
We're also wondering if there'dbe a yield bump with it because
(37:07):
a mid-season drain is somethingthat's been practiced for
centuries in Japan, China, orthey do it for increasing
yields.
So we haven't seen astatistically significant yield
increase, but we haven't seen adecline in yields, and it might
(37:29):
be a small increase.
Luis Espino (37:30):
So, Bruce, yeah, you talked about the AWD, you
know, during our GRRRR meetings.
And I got a question, and thequestion was, so we've always
recommended not to drain toavoid losing nitrogen.
And so how does that work withthe AWD?
How come we're not, you know,losing a bunch of nitrogen when
(37:50):
we do that?
Yeah, that's a
Bruce Linquist (37:52):
really good question because we're
recommending– the drain to occurwhen the amount of soil
nitrogen is low.
So by about 45 days afterplanting, all of your nitrogen
that you applied pre-plant hasbeen taken up.
(38:12):
So your levels of soil nitrogenare very low at that time.
So there's really little tolose at that time period.
So if you were to drain veryearly on, when there's still a
lot of nitrogen in the soil,yeah, you'd have huge problems
with nitrogen loss.
But because we're draininglater, the ideal time really to
(38:36):
drain is about 40 days, maybe45.
But the practice that's beendeveloped allows for as early as
35 days.
There's still a little bit ofnitrogen in that soil.
And we might be getting intothe weeds here a bit, but When
you drain a field at 35 days,even if there's a lot of
nitrogen, it's going to nitrifyor it's going to turn into
(38:57):
nitrate.
That nitrate's available forplant uptake.
So the plant can still take upnitrate.
Where you lose it is when youreflood it.
And that's going to happen 10days later.
So a lot of that nitrate, mostof that nitrate will have been
taken up by the plant before youreflood and get that loss.
So That's a maybe in the weedsanswer to.
Sarah Marsh Janish (39:21):
Actually, I think it's great that you went
to detail about that because Ithink the nitrogen cycle as a
whole is really interesting andnot altogether well understood.
I mean, especially in our riceflooded anaerobic conditions.
Bruce, anything else you wantto add here?
Bruce Linquist (39:40):
Broadly, I would just say I was looking at, I
mean, Louise brought it up, kindof the very extended planting
season that we had.
We were roughly 20% planted inCalifornia by April 27th.
And then everything from thenon, you know, it was just go,
go, go.
There was a little lag, maybebecause of wind and some
(40:04):
forecasted rain.
But it's a very stretched outgrowing season this year.
And I think it's going tostretch out the harvest season.
And I'd be interested to know,I mean, Luis said maybe there's
some impact on army worms orother things, but I think it's
going to be a bit of an unusualyear in that way.
Because we have rice well intoPI right now and rice that's
(40:30):
very just coming out of thewater.
I mean, this year we were 50%planted, even though we started
really early, our 50% plant datewas a little, it was about
three days later than an averageyear.
So it was kind of interestingjust with that, but whether
that's really true or not basedon how they collect their stats,
I'm not really sure.
(40:52):
Also, when you talk about 100%,at the beginning of the year,
you don't know how many acresyou have.
You could have a lot ofprevented planting acres, And so
all of a sudden, you have a lotof acres out.
So what is that 95% or 20% apercentage of?
I don't actually know what itis.
(41:13):
Because early on, it would be apercentage of your total acres.
But when you get to 95% ofplanted acres, I think at the
end of it, you're looking at,well, that's actually the amount
of acres that are going to beplanted.
Sarah Marsh Janish (41:29):
Shifting goalposts.
Bruce Linquist (41:31):
I think it is a bit.
Yeah.
Hey, Sarah, you've asked usabout all our projects.
Are you just going to bail andnot talk about your projects?
Sarah Marsh Janish (41:41):
Don't worry.
I was going to slip it in hereat the end.
But yeah, I have a couple ofprojects that I'm working on
this year.
One at a grower collaboratorfield and then a couple up at
the Rice Experiment Station nextbase and over from everybody
else.
But one of the ones that I'mreally starting a pilot study on
is uh it's it's a starting workon seeing the effect of
(42:06):
reseeding or delayed planting onrice essentially if there's any
kind of effect on plant standestablishment if we delay
seeding after the flood waterhas been put onto the field
frankly there's just not a lotof data or past information on
this subject so At least inCalifornia, the last research
(42:28):
done on this was in the 60s.
So it's a lot of new factorsinvolved in this, new varieties,
different measuringtechnologies.
So far, I actually justfinished my final planting date
today, which is June 18th, whichis February.
way behind the recommendedplanting date for rice in
(42:50):
California.
So it'll be really interestingto see how that project turns
out.
But yeah, that one's with theend goal of trying to create
some kind of recommendation forgrowers who might have to have,
for reasons beyond theircontrol, some kind of delayed
planting or maybe a necessaryreseeding projects.
And For better or for worse,unfortunately, one of Whitney's
(43:14):
basins had a bit of a problemwith stand establishment due to
predation by tadpole shrimp andmidge.
And so luckily, she's let metake some measurements in there
after we reseeded.
So we'll be able to kind ofcompare and contrast what a
grower standard for reseedingmight be as compared to just
seeding into a standing flood.
(43:35):
But yeah, unfortunate forWhitney, but lucky for me.
And I do promise I did not seedher basin with tadpole shrimp
eggs to try and get this result.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (43:51):
Sure, Sarah.
Are you sure?
It is rather suspicious, rightnext to mine,
Bruce Linquist (43:56):
yeah.
Sarah, you planted your lastseeds today.
Yes.
How long has that field beenflooded?
Sarah Marsh Janish (44:02):
That field got flooded May 27th.
So today we are 21 days out,which is way beyond the current
recommended time period betweenflooding and seeding.
Yeah, I think we'reanticipating some challenges
with weed controls, especiallyin these later planted plots.
(44:24):
And then one thing I noticedtoday when I was out there is a
lot of my seedlings that are atapproximately one to two leaf
stage were actually uprooted andI've seen a lot of feathers in
my plots.
So I'm a little bit afraid thatthere might be some kind of
waterfowl predation that mighthave some kind of effect on
(44:45):
results.
But I guess we'll see whathappens when the yield map comes
through.
With that, folks, I think we'regoing to use this last bit of
time to kind of go around ourvirtual table here and talk
about some of the farm calls andquestions we've been getting so
far.
Does anybody want to start offwith maybe an interesting
(45:06):
question that's come acrosstheir desk?
Luis Espino (45:09):
I can start.
So, yeah, I've got a couple ofcalls about bacchani again.
And actually this morning I wasjust driving around and saw a
field that looked like it had alot of bacony in it.
And so, yeah, and I, you know,I stopped and ran into the
grower and we chatted for alittle bit.
(45:30):
And so, yeah, there's somefields with some heavy bacony.
I don't think it's going to beany economic effect of what
we're seeing.
But, you know, there's talkabout some varieties being more
susceptible than others.
Some of these fields have beentreated with bleach before
(45:53):
seeding.
I wrote a blog post about this.
I'm thinking probably what'sgoing on is the bleach
treatments might not be reachingthe concentration needed, and
that's why we see bacony comethrough.
(46:14):
That's my theory.
I mean, it could be a, there'sother possibilities, but that's
probably what the mostplausible, given for what I've
seen in previous years, wheresome fields had heavy bacony,
then they, you know, thewarehouse started doing a better
job of doing the bleachtreatments, checking the
concentration, and we don't seemto have bacony from in these
(46:38):
fields.
So that's something that's comeup.
I think we'll, you know, we'llhave to do a little bit more
digging around to see what'sgoing on.
Sarah Marsh Janish (46:48):
Louise, I also had people calling me about
Bacchanet in treated fields,fields that have been treated
with bleach.
And so we, I think the group ofus actually talked about using
bleach testing strips in thesoaking tanks to make sure that
that concentration is where itneeds to be.
So that might be something welook into to make sure we can
(47:09):
standardize some kind ofsanitation protocol.
Luis Espino (47:12):
And yeah, the strips works.
But it's tricky because thestrips, you can buy strips for
up to 2,000 ppm.
And those would work for onewhen you bleach for 24 hours.
But then the next level is10,000 ppm.
And I don't know how well theywould work for when you bleach
(47:34):
two hours.
So I was thinking I might buysome and try them out and see.
But yeah, I don't know ifthere's a handheld probe that
you can use that will tell you.
I'm sure there is, but it'sprobably expensive.
Sarah Marsh Janish (47:49):
Bruce, what about people calling about going
without starter fertilizer?
Are you starting to hear a bitmore about the outcomes of those
decisions?
Bruce Linquist (48:00):
No, that was really the bulk of my calls was
related to that.
kind of looking to cut costs byputting their, not their
starter, but their top dressnitrogen into their aqua.
And I think a lot of growersdid that this year.
Again, we're kind of gettinginto that time of year when, you
(48:23):
know, we're getting into PIwhen they'd want to start
thinking about a top dress.
The few growers that I knowthat have done it aren't
thinking that they need to, topdress because of that.
But, you know, that's a few ofmany.
So we do recommend that theystill evaluate to see if they
need it.
They shouldn't, but you stillwant to check.
Luis Espino (48:46):
Maybe, Bruce, maybe you can mention that, you know,
method that we were discussingto check if you would need a top
dress, you know,over-fertilizing an area.
Bruce Linquist (48:56):
Yeah.
So if you have Before theseason starts, you can put out a
small over-fertilized area intothe field.
Sometimes it's a cup of ureainto a 10 by 10 foot square area
in a representative part ofyour field.
When it comes to PI, either inthat section or maybe you know
(49:17):
you have some aqua overlaps orsomething where we have excess
nitrogen.
If you don't see a differencebetween that enriched area where
there's extra nitrogen and therest of the field, you're not
going to need to apply topdress.
And so that's an easy way totell if you don't need to apply
(49:38):
top dress.
The question then becomes, doyou need to apply top dress?
You may need to do it if you dosee a very visible difference
between those two treatments.
And that's where the greenseeker or maybe the leaf color
chart can come in and help makethat decision.
(49:59):
But certainly if you can't seea difference where you've
applied excess nitrogen and therest of the field, you won't
need to be applying a top dressnitrogen.
Sarah Marsh Janish (50:09):
I had on my list here, a couple of the
calls, actually all of the callsI've had so far have been about
stand establishment issues,funnily enough.
The two calls that I've gone onthis year to check it out, it
was kind of inconclusive, but Ithink together the PCA and I
decided that it was most likelydue to geese pressure.
Tons of feathers in the field,lots of problems with just like
(50:33):
stand establishment and a singlecheck in a field rather than
spread across the entire check.
So that's something I think wesaw at least in a couple of our
fields last year, but it lookslike it might also change.
a problem in some fields thisyear maybe due to the extended
planting period the geese areable or geese or waterfowl are
(50:55):
looking for places to go i don'tknow if any of you guys have
heard tell of i guess predationfrom geese or other kinds of
birds
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:04):
not this year but yeah i mean i seem to
have a lot of issues in a lot ofmy trials in the past
Bruce Linquist (51:09):
this year maybe with the earlier start that at
least some growers had.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:14):
That could
Sarah Marsh Janish (51:14):
be.
Bruce Linquist (51:15):
There may have been some extra geese pressure,
especially maybe on the westside.
Sarah Marsh Janish (51:19):
It was definitely on the west side.
I think at least in theReclamation District 108, we saw
a ton of birds there whileplanting was going on.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:30):
Were they earlier planted fields of
curiosity?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Luis Espino (51:36):
Well, Sarah, we visited that field that
definitely had some geese orducks you know, damage.
It was kind of planted a littlelater, more towards the end of
the month.
It wasn't a big area, but youcan tell that they had been
there.
You know, you can see all thefeathers.
Sarah Marsh Janish (51:52):
Any other calls we want to bring up here?
I
Whitney Brim-Deforest (51:55):
mean, I'll just say that I've been
getting a lot of calls aboutwater grass control.
So, but that doesn't really,it's not new.
So, but it's, yeah, a lot ofcalls, just people wondering how
to control their grasses andwhat they should put on.
Luis Espino (52:08):
So one question I got from at least two people
was, what's the benefit or thedifference between Cliffhanger
and Butte?
Whitney Brim-Deforest (52:18):
Just the AI is different.
So Butte has a halosulfuronmixed in.
So it's halosulfuron plusbenzoyl cyclone.
So that's one difference.
But Cliffhanger can go on a lotlater in the season in
comparison to Butte.
So the timing can be later withCliffhanger.
So that's one of the benefits.
But I think both products aregreat.
(52:38):
But yeah, cliffhanger allows alittle bit more flexibility and
timing.
But it is not a foliar product,just to re-clarify with
everyone.
Somebody else asked me thattoday.
Not a foliar product.
It's meant to be applied intothe water.
It does not work on establishedweeds out of the water.
So it's an into-the-waterproduct as well.
Sarah Marsh Janish (52:59):
Yeah, and if you're going to use
cliffhanger, you need to makesure you're going to be able to
keep that water up at least fourinches, preferably higher.
But that's, I think, in caseswhere I've seen, I guess, a
failure of control, it's usuallybeen because of a lack of water
or a lack of depth of water ora lack of time of keeping the
(53:21):
water on.
Whitney Brim-Deforest (53:22):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Sarah Marsh Janish (53:25):
Great.
Well, thank you guys again somuch for taking the time to be
here.
A lot of really good stuff.
A lot of really goodinformation.
Glad to be back recording afterour planting hiatus and let's
have a good season.
Thanks,
Whitney Brim-Deforest (53:38):
Sarah.
Bye.
Bye, guys.
All right.
Thanks, Sarah.
See you guys.
All right.
Bye, folks.
Sarah Marsh Janish (53:55):
We've got a couple of upcoming events that
are rapidly approaching.
The first event that's up onour schedule is the rice
production workshop.
which is a workshop we holdevery two years to cover the
basic principles and practicesof rice production in
California.
This event will take place July23rd and July 24th, 2025.
(54:17):
This is a two-day workshop.
These will be two all days, soit will start at 8.30am and go
till 3.30pm and take place atthe UC A&R building on 2801 2nd
Street in Davis.
Registration is required forthis event and if you go to our
UC Rice website, there is a linkfor that registration.
(54:40):
Our next upcoming event will bethe Weedy Rice Workshop, which
will take place August 5th,2025, from 10 a.m.
to 1.15 p.m.
at the Roberts Union FarmCenter in Stockton, California.
This will be a workshop devotedto the history and current
management practices of weedyrice in California.
(55:01):
Registration is not requiredfor this event.
Our final upcoming event forthis season is the annual Rice
Field Day, which takes placeevery year on the last Wednesday
of August, which is August 27,2025.
It starts promptly in themorning, so be sure to get your
coffee and donuts when the fieldday starts.
(55:21):
And it will take place at theRice Experiment Station at 955
Butte City Highway in Biggs.
And as always, stay tuned forsome great talks and delicious
lunch.
For more information aboutthese and other upcoming events,
feel free to check out ourresources, which include the UC
(55:42):
Rice blog and the UC AgronomyRice website.
In terms of other resources youmay want to take advantage of,
you can also look at ournewsletters, which include Rice
Briefs, which covers Colosiolo,Rice Notes, which covers Yuba
Stutter, Rice Leaf, which coversButte and Glen, and Field
Notes, which covers rice in theDelta region of California.
(56:05):
Thanks for listening toThoughts on Rice, a University
of California CooperativeExtension podcast from
University of CaliforniaAgriculture and Natural
Resources.
You can find out more aboutthis podcast on our website,
thoughtsonrice.buzzsprout.com.
We'd love to hear from you,whether it's from using our text
(56:28):
link in the show notes, asurvey submission in our
feedback form, also in the shownotes, or or in a comment or
rating on your podcast streamingservice of choice.
You can also email us with anycomments, questions, or concerns
at thoughtsonriceatucdavis.edu.
Thanks for sticking with usover this planting hiatus
(56:50):
earlier this spring.
Rice season is well underwayand we hope you stay safe this
season.
And remember, like the growerslike to say, have a rice life.
Mention of an agrochemical doesnot constitute recommendation,
merely the sharing of researchfindings.
Always follow the label.
The label is the law.
(57:10):
Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu.
The views, thoughts, andopinions expressed are the
speaker's own and do notrepresent the views, thoughts,
and opinions of the Universityof California.
The material and informationpresented here is for general
purposes only.
The University of Californianame in all forms and
(57:30):
abbreviations are the propertyof its owner, and its use does
not imply endorsement of oropposition to any specific
organization, product, orservice.
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