• By Ching Lee • Winter-flooded rice fields already provide essential habitat for migratory birds, but could they also provide benefits to help the state’s salmon populations? Scientists at the University of California, Davis, are finalizing their fieldwork on an experiment to find out what management practices farmers might adopt in their fields to maximize fish survival. At River Garden ... Read More »
Continue to keep eyes peeled for weedy rice in California fields. • By Vicky Boyd, Editor • The amount of California rice ground infested with weedy rice hovers around 14,000 acres, leading experts to believe that pest control advisers and growers are carefully scouting for the pest. And they hope the diligence continues. “We had three new sites (in 2019), ... Read More »
About 9,000 baby salmon have been placed into winter-flooded Sacramento Valley rice fields as part of the second year of the California Rice Salmon Pilot Project. The fish are in eight specially prepared test plots in a living scientific experiment designed to determine if any unique extra treatments, such as deep channels or vegetative cover, make these fish food-rich rice ... Read More »
California releases a premium Calrose medium grain and a high-yielding long grain. • By Vicky Boyd, Editor • The California Cooperative Rice Research Foundation Inc. has approved the release of two new varieties from the Rice Experiment Station. The medium-grain M-211 and long-grain L-208 will be sold for seed production this season and available commercially for growers for the 2021 ... Read More »
• By Luis Espino and Ian Grettenberger • Do you want to make sure your freshly planted rice fields don’t look like the muddied mess on the left below (versus clear on right) following a pyrethroid application? Wondering if your tadpole shrimp are becoming less susceptible to pyrethroids? We do too! Pyrethroids are widely used for managing tadpole shrimp, and ... Read More »
• By Vicky Boyd Editor • Dr. Russell Rasmussen has been named the new associate director of the California Rice Experiment Station in Biggs. He will work alongside current director Dr. Kent McKenzie and will take over as director when McKenzie retires Dec. 31. “We have some overlap, which is a great model for hiring new people,” Rasmussen said. Prior ... Read More »
• By Bruce Linquist • In 2015, University of California Cooperative Extension started the UCCE Rice Yield Contest as a pilot study in Butte County. The contest has now expanded to include all of the Sacramento Valley.Because of potential regional yield differences, the valley was divided into regions (1-NE, 2-NW, 3-S) using the Sacramento River and Highway 20 as dividing ... Read More »
The California Rice Commission and its project partners have received a $1.5 million Conservation Innovation Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The project is in in partnership with NRCS, Ducks Unlimited, the California Ricelands Waterbird Foundation, Point Blue Conservation Science and FlowWest. It is designed to: • Provide funding to enhance approximately 10,000 acres through ... Read More »
Rominger Brothers Farms of Winters, California, received the 2019 California Leopold Conservation Award during a ceremony at the California Farm Bureau’s recent annual meeting in Monterey. Sand County Foundation created the Leopold award to inspire American landowners by recognizing exceptional farmers, ranchers and foresters. Named in honor of renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold, it is given in 20 states. The award ... Read More »
• By Whitney Brim-DeForest • Similar to the disease survey we did last month, University of California Cooperative Extension will be surveying rice weeds this fall. The survey implementation was funded by the Rice Research Board in 2019, and pending the results of the survey this year, we plan to repeat the survey every five years, similar to the ongoing ... Read More »
Rice Farming A One Grower Publication