US: Better water wisdom to help control disease in almonds

Published 2024년 9월 3일

Tridge summary

Over the past eight years, Sacramento Valley almond growers have encountered significant challenges in managing 'Monterey' almond trees, primarily due to water management issues. These challenges, based on grower experiences and Australian anecdotes, include water stress from both over- and under-irrigation, leading to various tree health problems. The article highlights the difficulty of maintaining optimal water levels and suggests using plant-based water status-monitoring tools like FloraPulse to improve irrigation practices. It also emphasizes that excessive water often causes more issues than insufficient water, even during droughts, and encourages growers to share their experiences to enhance collective knowledge and practices.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

Over the past eight years, four new problems have arisen as major challenges for some Sacramento Valley growers as they work to establish and manage their ‘Monterey’ almond trees. These four problems have not been studied in UCCE-replicated and -randomized field trials. Instead we are relying on the establishment of patterns from individual grower experiences in the Sacramento Valley as well as anecdotes from Australian almond production. Over the past eight years — with a growing list of ‘Monterey’ maladies — a single through line has become well ingrained: water. NOT TOO LITTLE WATER Many growers accuse the ‘Monterey’ variety of being a canary in the coal mine when it comes to water stress. One Glenn County grower who had a Ceres Imaging flight (remote sensing via airplane) over his orchard noted that the ‘Monterey’ rows showed up bright red, indicating water stress. As we head toward harvest, extreme water stress has well-known downsides: nut shrivel (reduced nut value), hull ...

Source: Growingproduce