According to the UGA Extension Viticulture Blog, North Carolina State small fruits Extension specialist Mark Hoffmann provided a webinar on the 2020 grape harvest. Click here for a link to the webinar.
Category: Georgia
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Flavorful Fruit Yields Sweet Results for Melon Farmers
Southeast watermelon growers delivered a flavorful crop this year that yielded a sweet price at the market, said Mark Arney, executive director of the National Watermelon Promotion Board.
Photo taken by Clint Thompson/Shows watermelons for sale at the Farmers Market in Cordele, Georgia. “We’re happy, we’re happy for the guys. Obviously, the guys that didn’t have a crop, it doesn’t matter how hot the market is, they’re not going to make money. We feel terrible for those guys,” Arney said. “The crop has been excellent quality, that’s helped.”
High Prices
Carr Hussey, a watermelon farmer in Florida and Alabama and chairman of the board of the Florida Watermelon Association, said in early July that prices were averaging 22 cents per pound. It was a huge increase from the 14 cents growers had grown accustomed to in previous seasons.
Watermelons were in high demand due in large part to the short supply. Georgia acreage decreased almost 4,000 acres this year. Imports from Mexico were down 10% overall for the season, according to Arney. Because of weather-related issues, Georgia’s crop did not start until 7 to 10 days later than normal.
Typically, Georgia and North Florida harvest watermelons at about the same time, which could lead to a surplus on Memorial Day weekend. That did not happen this year, however.
There were even fears of a shortage at various times during the growing season.
“You had a combination of the lateness of Georgia, of the Mexican crop being down around 10% overall for the season and the flavor being exceptional. All of those things brought a situation where you did have a shortage,” said Arney, who’s concerned about the current impact that Hurricane Isaias will have on watermelon production along the Atlantic Coast. “Who knows, there may even be more of a shortage (now) with the weather. Watermelons like rain, but too much rain means the guys can’t get into the fields if they’re using these school buses to harvest. They have to wait until things dry out. That could delay as well.”
Little Impact From COVID-19
While COVID-19 impacted the food service industry, as restaurants closed in response to the pandemic, watermelons were not one of commodities that felt the brunt of the impact.
“The first couple of weeks it was panic time. We saw some pretty big slumps. Then all of a sudden, things started taking off. It was like, wow, what’s going on. Well, No. 1, flavor has been really good. I had one grower describe it as a vintage year. He’s been in the watermelon business forever and said, ‘I can’t remember a crop with this good of a flavor.’ That certainly helped,” Arney said. “I think produce in general is up because so many people are sheltered and can’t go to restaurants even though there’s been a little bit of openings. But because so many people are not eating in restaurants; they’ve got to eat, so they’re going to either order online or go to the grocery store. Watermelon’s a great bargain. It’s healthy.
“Watermelon’s an excellent source of Vitamin C and it’s also probably one of the better bargains, if not the best bargain for fruits at costs per serving, which is around 17 cents.”
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Actuality: One Reason not to Plant Unsolicited Seeds from Unknown Sources
United States Department of Agriculture
Jacob Barney, invasive plant expert at Virginia Tech University, giving one of several reasons why we should not plant seeds that show up at our door unsolicited from unknown sources.
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Soil Sample for Nematodes Now
UGA Extension photo/Stubby root-knot nematode on onion plants in 2017. The time is now to soil sample for nematodes, says Pablo Navia, Adama Technical Development Leader for East Region.
“This is the best time since populations of nematodes are really high right now in the soil. There’s still some roots that they are feeding on. This is the best time to sample,” Navia said. “It’s a good way to know what enemy you’re dealing with next season.”
Navia said growers need to coordinate with the Extension agents in their county to take samples and arrange to take their samples to the appropriate lab.
“Each state’s Extension agent will know where to send the sample. Each university will have their lab and you can send the sample to their lab,” Navia said.
Navia recommends that producers take between 4 and 8 samples in a field, which will provide growers a good representation of the entire field.
There are different types of nematodes that impact vegetables, with root-knot nematodes being the most widespread and can cause the most damage. Nematodes are especially troubling because of the wide range of potential hosts. In addition to vegetables, nematodes cause problems in cotton, peanut and tobacco plants.
“It’s one of the most damaging pests out there,” Navia said. “It’s as important as a soil-borne disease or a foliar disease. There are many diseases that can affect a particular crop. But nematodes will make everything worse. If you have nematodes, then you have high chances of losing your crop.”
Soil sampling better prepares growers for the following season and will help them know if numbers are beyond threshold and if further action is warranted.
“If you have root-knot nematode and you find one nematode in your sample, that means you may be in trouble next season. Nematodes, like stubby root for example, the threshold is 200. Depending on the crop, like the citrus nematode, the threshold is 1,000,” Navia said. “It really depends on the species.”
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Southeastern Farmer of Year Winner to be Named at ’21 Sunbelt Ag Expo
Contact: Becca Turner
(229) 985-1968 x2228Due to the cancellation of the 2020 Sunbelt Ag Expo show, plans for the selection of the 2020 Swisher Sweets/Sunbelt Ag Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year Winner have been amended. Originally, this year’s judging tour was planned for August 10-14. Due to current health concerns, the tour has been postponed indefinitely. 2020 State Winners will be recognized, and an overall winner will be announced at the 2021 Sunbelt Ag Expo. A new class of state winners will not be selected in 2021.
“We have considered virtual options for the judging tour and the awards ceremony, but the Farmer of the Year program is not a virtual event. The program is about so much more – the interaction amongst our 10 state winners, and the 265 winners that have been awarded over the last 30 years cannot be replaced. To have a Farmer of the Year class not be able to experience the in-person judging tour, the trip to South Georgia and the Sunbelt Ag Expo is not an option in our book,” said Chip Blalock, Sunbelt Ag Expo Executive Director.
The Sunbelt Ag Expo looks forward to welcoming visitors and the 2020 Farmer of the year class in 2021 as it showcases the latest in farming technology, October 19-21. Visit www.sunbeltexpo.com for more information.
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CFAP Deadline is Aug. 28
Farmers impacted by COVID-19 and hoping to take advantage of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program have a little more than three weeks left before the Aug. 28 deadline. That is when the United States Department of Agriculture will stop accepting applications from producers.
Runge Through CFAP, USDA made available $16 billion in financial assistance to producers of agricultural commodities who have suffered a 5%-or-greater price decline due to COVID-19 and face additional significant marketing costs as a result of lower demand, surplus production, and disruptions to shipping patterns and the orderly marketing of commodities.
Max Runge, Extension specialist in agricultural economics at Auburn University, believes CFAP has been a success for growers.
“Overall, I think it has been a success. It provided some much-needed funding and hopefully some cash flow for some producers that needed it. It wasn’t a perfect program. I know some people feel like they were left out or they didn’t get enough, or it should have been done differently. But overall, I think it was very helpful to our producers.”
In mid-July, the USDA, amended the original crop list covered under CFAP to include additional commodities, including the addition of blueberries to Category 1.
According to https://www.farmers.gov/cfap/specialty, eligible specialty crops in CFAP are broken down into three categories:
- Had crops that suffered a five percent-or-greater price decline between mid-January and mid-April as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,
- Had produce shipped but subsequently spoiled due to loss of marketing channel, and
- Had shipments that did not leave the farm or mature crops that remained unharvested.
Resources for farmers regarding the payments are available at www.farmers.gov/cfap.
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Broad Sequencing of Tomato Genomes Will Help Geneticists Breed Better Varieties
UGA photo/UGA horticulture researcher Esther van de Knaap is part of a research group that sequenced and compared the genomes of 100 different varieties of tomato to detect and study how gene variants affect crop traits. By Maria M. Lameiras for CAES News
New technology has led to a greater understanding of how gene placement within the tomato genome influences gene expression and, therefore, the characteristics of the resulting plant’s fruit, a discovery that is important for breeders and producers.
University of Georgia horticulture researcher Esther van der Knaap provided vital information for an expansive new analysis of genetic variation among tomatoes that uncovered 230,000 previously hidden large-scale differences in DNA between varieties.
As tomato plants evolved, segments of DNA were deleted, duplicated or rearranged. These structural variations in genomes underpin the vast diversity among tomatoes, changing flavors, altering yield and shaping other important traits, according to a release on the research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
Part of the UGA Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics, van der Knaap has been studying the genes that determine tomato shape and size for decades, finding that the genetic sequences that control the size of tomatoes do so by controlling cell division or cell size. Her team also found similar sets of shape-control genes in plants other than tomato.
Research Group
A research group comprising members of van der Knaap’s lab and investigators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University and other institutions sequenced and compared the genomes of 100 different varieties of tomato, including robust varieties suitable for industrial agriculture, heirloom varieties and wild relatives of cultivated tomatoes. Within those genomes, the team identified more than 230,000 structural variants. New DNA sequencing technology, along with powerful new genome editing technology, has recently made structural variants easier to detect and study how they affect crop traits.
The partnership has allowed van der Knaap’s lab to address research questions on genome evolution more effectively than they have been able to on their own in the past.
“The premise of the study was based on evidence from our lab on the importance of genome structural variation and how they change fruit appearance,” van der Knaap said. “We have been creating resources and knowledge in my lab that has recently expanded the knowledge in other vegetables as well.”
To gain a better understanding of structural variants’ role in diversity, the team showed that thousands of genes were changed by the structural variants. Then they used CRISPR — the genome editing tool that can make targeted changes in DNA — to show that duplication of a particular gene causes a plant’s tomatoes to increase in size by about 30%.
Gene Identification
Because the tomato genome is made up of 900 million base pairs making up the approximately 35,000 genes, identifying which genes control certain traits is important to van der Knaap’s research. This study and the extensive resource it provides has made gene discovery more easily achievable.
“One base pair is one nucleotide. A kilobase pair (KB) is 1000 base pairs. We’re not talking about changes to one or two nucleotides. We are talking about changes to sometimes 6,000 to 30,000 nucleotides,” van der Knaap said. “That can lead to effects on the phenotype — how the plant looks, how it grows and the type of fruit it creates.”
A trained molecular biologist and geneticist, van der Knaap is interested in using the structural variations discovered in the study to determine whether they may cause trait variation in fruit shape, weight and flavor. Much of the research in the lab is to genetically map a trait such as weight in the genome. Once the genomic region is found and the researchers know one of the remaining 10 to 20 candidate genes, they examine the region carefully for any variation that could contribute to that trait. Some of the apparent causes are single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), but thus far most have been caused by a structural variant. Knowing all the structural variants in the genome facilitates the discovery of novel genes controlling the trait such as weight, shape and flavor.
“I want to know exactly where these variants occur and then take it one step further to figure out what the change is,” she said. “The genome is linear in higher organisms. The genes are in a certain order in most tomato plants. In other tomatoes, there is a region of about 300KB that is inverted. We don’t know how that happened, but it is inverted. The result of this inversion changed the regulation of the gene that is important for fruit width, making a very flat tomato. It is as if a one-way road suddenly turned around.”
Tomato Industry
A $190 billion global industry, understanding how structural variants influence tomatoes gives breeders new power to improve the properties of tomatoes. It also shows how structural variants that can enhance breeding are likely hidden in the complex genomes of many other important vegetables like potatoes, melons and peppers.
Looking at the whole genomes of many different varieties of tomato equips scientists with the information geneticists need to develop new tomato varieties and producers need to choose what varieties to grow for the traits they desire in a crop.
“We cross tomato varieties all the time. One pairing might make bigger fruit while another might make more fruit, but there are hundreds of populations and we would need 10 times the greenhouse space to evaluate them all. We have to be smart about it and choose which crosses are going to be the most informative, which ones are going to give us new genes we don’t know about yet,” van der Knaap said. “With the knowledge we create, we can select traits at the genome level that we know, as breeders, will result in a variety with much superior qualities.”
More information on van der Knaap’s research is available at vanderknaaplab.uga.edu.
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Grape Sustainability at Risk With Pierce’s Disease
A tour of the research vineyard at the Clanton Research and Extension Center in Chilton County at the Alabama WIneries and Grape Growers Association meeting in September 2019. Grapes are grown by Elina Coneva and the staff at the CREC. Grape varieties are developed by Dr. Andy Walker, a grape breeder at UC Davis. Pierce’s Disease is wreaking havoc in grape vineyards in the Southeast. It is such a problem that University of Georgia Cooperative Extension plant pathologist Phil Brannen is concerned about the sustainability of some farming operations, especially as winter temperatures continue to get warmer.
“Once you get above 2,000 feet in elevation, I have only rarely seen a single plant come down with this (disease) and that’s still the case. But the areas that are around 1,700 feet in elevation where we used to not see that much of it, when we have two or three warm winters in a row, we really start to see a lot of it. Some of those vineyards, they’re losing 400 to 500 vines a year. That’s not sustainable,” Brannen said. “A lot of vineyards right now that are in north Georgia, they’re suffering a lot of loss from Pierce’s Disease now. If the temperatures get continuously warmer in the wintertime, I don’t know where we’re going to grow this grape.”
What is Pierce’s Disease?
Pierce’s Disease is caused by a bacterium that is transmitted by numerous sharpshooter insects, such as the glassy-winged sharpshooters. The bacterium clogs the grape xylem and cuts off nutrient and water flow to the vines. Once infected with Pierce’s disease, vines will die within one to two years.
“You’ve got the xylem that carries that water and nutrients and if it’s clogged a little bit, you may get by if you have plenty of moisture, but if you get less and less of it, then the water will collapse in that vessel and then you don’t get any,” Brannen said. “When it’s real dry conditions, that is when the symptoms really start to show up. It’s a scorch around the leaf is what you’ll initially see. The berries actually dry up. They form raisins on the vine. You’ll see all of that occurring when it gets really dry in late summer.”
Brannen said right now is when grape producers will start seeing Pierce’s Disease symptoms.
Most Effective Management Tactic
He said the best management tactic that growers potentially have is with disease resistant plants, bred by scientists at UC Davis and are being researched at a couple of sites in Georgia and in Alabama.
According to Elina Coneva, an Extension specialist in the Horticulture Department at Auburn University, three red wine grape selections were planted at the Chilton Research and Extension Center (CREC) in Clanton in 2010 and are showing promising results. One white wine selection was planted in 2017. So far, the research team has not lost one plant to Pierce’s Disease.
The only other option is try to apply a soil-based Imidacloprid insecticide in the spring to kill the sharpshooter insects.
“If it goes into the root system and gets into the soil, it will last a long time in the plant. That will kill the sharpshooters and that cuts back on transmission a lot,” Brannen said.
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Auburn Economist Skeptical About Upcoming Trade Hearings
Two hearings on Aug. 13 and Aug. 20 with the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office will provide growers from Georgia and Florida the chance to voice their concerns over unfair trade.
Rabinowitz However, one economist is skeptical about the potential impact these hearings will have.
Adam Rabinowitz, Associate Professor and Extension Economist at Auburn University, points to the lack of coverage for specialty crop growers in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for his lack of confidence in the upcoming hearings.
“It’s certainly important for the farmers to be able to voice their concerns about some of the trade issues that are at hand. It’s going to be interesting to see I guess, to what extent there is actual impact from that,” Rabinowitz said. “When you talk about some of the challenges with trade in the Southeast, Mexico is a big issue there. The fact that nothing was addressed for this region in the USMCA, I’m not sure what the opportunities will be to resolve some of those outstanding issues.”
The hearings will take place virtually. They will provide the U.S. Department of Commerce and Trump Administration an opportunity to hear from seasonal produce growers on the urgent need for federal action on unfair foreign trade.
Even more so this year, Mexican imports into the U.S. were troubling for growers who were struggling to sell produce during the coronavirus pandemic. Florida farmers Sam Accursio said Mexico imported 2 to 3 million pounds of squash per day while he struggled to find buyers, if any at all. Florida farmer Ryan Atwood said the influx of blueberry imports from Mexico contributed to a sharp decline in market prices this year.
“Certainly, the blueberries are a concern, cucumbers and bellpeppers as well. We’ve seen some data there, and of course, tomatoes, even with the tomato suspension agreement; certainly is highly competitive coming out of Mexico,” Rabinowitz said. “Those I’d say are the commodities we’ve seen evidence of that have been impacted pretty significantly. But some of my hesitation in being optimistic comes from the challenge of why nothing was addressed in USMCA.”
Additional information on USTR field hearing dates, deadlines, and submission instructions can be found in the Federal Register notice.
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Senate Passes Resolution Declaring July “National Blueberry Month”
July 31, 2020, Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Senate has passed a resolution designating July 2020 as National Blueberry Month, recognizing the contributions of the U.S. blueberry industry and acknowledging that purchasing blueberries supports farmers, jobs and the economy. The resolution echoes a proclamation from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in March.
Senate resolution (S.Res. 656) was sponsored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and co-sponsored by senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), David Perdue (R-GA) Angus King Jr. (I-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA). The resolution recognizes that highbush and wild blueberries have an annual economic impact of $4,700,000,000; a harvested area estimated at over 140,000 acres; are produced in 48 states by more than 15,000 farms and their families; and that highbush blueberry production in the U.S. has continually increased, with particular growth in the past two decades, to reach a harvest of 700,000,000 pounds in 2019. It also points to the research-based health benefits of blueberries.
NABC members met with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., in March.
Last spring, members of the North American Blueberry Council (NABC) traveled to Washington, D.C., to encourage lawmakers to support blueberries by signing onto the resolution that reflects the incredible growth, value and impact the blueberry industry has on the economy and communities.
Over 130 participants met with their senators and representatives to share NABC’s policy priorities and help raise the profile of the health benefits blueberries provide, as well as the economic impact blueberry growers have in their communities and the U.S. economy. These efforts influenced the Senate resolution passed yesterday .
“Blueberry growers and others connected to the industry are very appreciative to have their life’s work recognized and celebrated during National Blueberry Month,” said NABC Chair Ken Patterson. “July continues to be our peak season, and this resolution helps draw attention to the important economic and health benefits of blueberries. We’re grateful to the senators who are helping us highlight our industry with this timely resolution.”