Almond Pest Management Alliance Advisory Team Meeting

Sept. 6, 2001 

Olive Room, DANR Building, UC Davis

Minutes

1)      Introduction of Advisory Team members and guests

The following Advisory Team members were present:

Peggy Schrader

Tom Babb

Lonnie Hendricks

Bob Elliott

Mark Cady

Sarah Goldman Smith

Joe Connell

Walt Bentley

Frank Zalom

Chris Heintz

Roger Duncan

Mark Looker

2)      Review of Minutes of March 7, 2001 meeting

The minutes of the March 7, 2001 meeting had been mailed to all team members. No comments were received regarding revisions and the minutes were accepted as presented.

3)      Review of PMA project from April 2001 to present

Kern County Project

Peggy Schrader reported on the progress to date of the Kern County Project. It has been a heavy mite year for the cooperator but they have got a handle on it. There has also been a problem with ants and the grower did not use any conventional approaches and seemed to be able to control the problem.

With harvest underway, crackouts will be collected and analysis conducted, with results to be reported in the end of year report submitted to the PMA team.

Stanislaus County Project

Farm advisor Roger Duncan reported there has not been much difference seen in the twig borer populations between the cooperator’s three treatments.  Mites have been real bad this year and they monitored early and sprayed the edges of the plots. The cooperator has a very low threshold for mites.

For ants, pre-treatment showed clear differences between conventional and soft approaches.

Roger will have a full report on the project results to date which will be presented at the fall field day later this year. 

Butte County Project

Farm Advisor Joe Connell said the June field day was very successful with over 90 people attending. The project has drawn a lot of interest as evidenced by the good turnouts at the field days.

Sarah reported she is working on the year-end project report and that so far they have not seen many differences in treatments except for mites, along with damage from a nearby abandoned orchard.

Parasites are appearing now and then and they are picking up a little bit of scale. The harvest sample of 500 nuts is complete and they saw very little damage. The hotdog traps showed some ants but overall the reject level has been at 1% or below in all of the treatments.

4)      Spring field days

Discussion was held on holding field days in each of the regions in the Fall. The following dates were agreed on:

Nov. 20—Kern County field day

Nov. 15—Stanislaus County field day

Last week of Nov or early Dec.—Butte County field day

Discussions of dormant spray runoffs and what the latest regulatory efforts are in the local watersheds should be discussed at all three field days, it was agreed. 

5)      Year Five Proposal

Considerable discussion was held on the merits of applying for a fifth year of funding for the PMA project.

Roger Duncan kicked off the discussion by raising the question of at what point are the returns no longer worth it? What more information will be obtained after a fourth year of the project?

DPR’s Bob Elliott was at the meeting to help facilitate the discussion and said there had been two good years of results showing that a soft program is comparable to the grower standard and the DPR would like to see increased implementation and adoption by growers. He discussed the factors driving adoption of reduced-risk practices and said the strong points of the almond PMA included a strong commitment by partners, support from the Almond Board of California, very dedicated participants and good public relations outreach.

All three project farm advisors discussed various ways their projects could be changed and how those changes could be reflected in the proposal for a fifth year of funding. Sarah who will be writing the fifth year proposal noted those changes. Overall, there was consensus that efforts need to be made to shift from a research based project to a field based demonstration project with the goal of informing more and more growers and PCAs of the results of the four years of research. One result may be a report or brochure that reflects lessons learned from the almond PMA which could be used by growers as a basis for adopting reduced-risk practices.

It was agreed a fifth year proposal would be submitted reflecting the discussion by the advisory team. The document will be reviewed by the team before the Nov. 1 submittal deadline to DPR.

6)      Fall Newsletter

The newsletter in the Fall will once again reflect contributions from farm advisors and other team members who want to write articles on various topics of interest to growers who want to learn more about techniques used in the project. Mark Cady will be the point of contact in organizing the newsletter.

One possible article suggested was on the topic of no-spray/low-input approaches used by some Cortez area growers and their efforts led by PCA Gary Glidden. 

7)      Misc/announcements

Chris Heintz noted the ongoing concern in the industry over discovery of salmonella in a shipment of raw almonds to Canada. The issue has garnered the attention of the FDA and the Almond Board is working with various government agencies and scientists to gather information. There is an ongoing effort to educate growers about this issue and a presentation on food safety could possibly be incorporated into future PMA field meetings.

Bob Elliott noted that DPR has contracted with an independent company to conduct a review of the overall PMA program. Someone from the company will be contacting various members of the almond PMA to gather their views on how the program is operating and what recommendations they may have for the program in the future.

8)      Set date for next meeting

The next Advisory Team meeting will be after the first of the year but no definite date was set. Mark will contact PMA partners by email to see what date may be best.

Submitted by: ______________________________

Mark Looker

Project Administrator