FROM THE FIELD: Blast Found! With Luis Espino

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Welcome to our first mini-episode, which we're referring to as "From the Field"!

Luis Espino gives some quick tips regarding the current status of blast in the fields and the first reported sighting of blast in Glenn County

Upcoming Events!

• UCCE Hedgerow Demonstration Day on August 14
• Annual Rice Field Day on August 28
• Rice Pest Management Course on September 4 *registration required*

Other Resources

UC Rice Blog

UC Agronomy - Rice

Rice Briefs (Colusa/Yolo)

Rice Notes (Yuba-Sutter)

Rice Leaf (Butte/Glenn)

Rice in the Delta

Mention of an agrichemical does not constitute a recommendation, merely the sharing of research findings. Always follow the label. The label is the law. Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general purposes only. The "University of California" name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.

Transcript

UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a podcast hosted by the University of California Cooperative Extension Rice Advisors. I'm one of your hosts, Sarah Marsh, and I'm a rice farm advisor for Colusa and Yolo counties.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I'm Whitney from the forest. I'm the Cooperative Extension Rice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento counties.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

My name is Luis Espino. I'm the rice farming systems advisor for Butte

SPEAKER_01 0:37

and Glen counties. I'm Michelle Leinfelder-Miles. I'm a farm advisor in the Delta region. I work on all sorts of field crops, grains and forages, but one of those is rice. And the counties that I cover are San Joaquin, Sacramento, Pueblo, Solano, and Contra Costa counties.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek to provide relevant, topical, research-backed information relating to California rice production. Today will be the first mini-episode for the podcast, which we'll be calling a From the Field episode. We intend for these to be quick bites of information that may relate to a recently spotted pest or a new piece of regulation that affects the rice industry. In the case of this inaugural From the Field mini-episode, rice loss has officially been spotted in Glen County, and Louisa Spino is here to talk about the area that the blast was found in and a Analyzing the symptoms and determining if the symptoms actually show blast. Hi Luis, can you give us an update on the blast that you found recently?

SPEAKER_03 1:56

This is a field with a history of blast. So actually last year, which was a pretty heavy blast year, this field had quite a bit of blast. I believe the variety last year was M105. This year, the grower went with M210, that he wouldn't have that same issue.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Because just for people who aren't aware, M210 does have a blast resistance gene in it.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Right. So M210 is resistant, so you shouldn't have any blast issues. At the time of draining for propanil, he planted just a little three feet by four feet rectangle with M105. And so that M105 is much younger than the M210. And he noticed recently that he started to see the spotting and the blast on the M105 and nothing on the M210. So it's really remarkable you can see the m105 is you know it's got a lot of lesions some leaves are actually totally burned out uh versus the m210 it's it's totally clean there's nothing in it so it's good it's showing us that the m210 uh it's a good resistant variety

SPEAKER_02 3:06

and that 105 it's so young i mean are there even panicles emerging at this point

SPEAKER_03 3:11

no no these are not not from the m210 or the m105 not yet so the m105 is maybe mid tillering versus So the M210 is kind of at the boot stage. So yeah, and that's another thing is that we know is that younger plants or younger tissue is more susceptible to blast. So that might be also why we're seeing so much in that little area. But I haven't seen any in other fields yet. This is the first I see. I did talk to somebody that mentioned that maybe a field in another field in Glynn County on the west side of I5 might have a little bit, but I haven't been there yet.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

And now for the growers who are scouting for blast, what should they be looking out for? And what are some other problems that we see around this time that could be confused for blast symptoms?

SPEAKER_03 4:05

The time to scout for blast is really pretty much the whole season until heading. After heading, yeah, it's a little too late to do much. But so you start really during the vegetative growth. And if you see at that time any blast, you got to make a note that you're most likely going to have to do a treatment at heading because you want to protect the panicles. In general, a treatment during vegetative growth, so what we call leaf blast, when there's lesions on the leaves but there's no panicles yet, a treatment at that time, it's not really recommended because usually the blast is not going to kill a lot of plants. It might kill a little area small circle, but it's not going to cause a big dry down of the field. But if you do have it, what that means is that you're going to have the spores are going to be near, you know, present. By the time those panicles start emerging, those spores can then infect the neck of the panicle and cause neck blast, which is really what we want to avoid, right? That's the disease phase that can really reduce yields. This year, I've gotten three or four questions called the about leaves that have burned areas or lesions on the leaves that can be confused with blast. And they're easy to confuse. I mean, I myself sometimes have a hard time telling them apart. Propanil burn or some other herbicide burn can cause that. Sometimes under the right conditions, ammonium sulfate top dressing can cause that too, when it can burn the leaves. The thing to look for is to really search for those diamond-shaped lesions. And so a lot of times when blast develops, some of the lesions start to coalesce and then they form this irregular shape burn areas on the leaves that can be confused they look just like any other burn like a propanil burn but when it's blast you'll see those large burn areas and then there's always going to be a few of the single lesions that are diamond shaped they're kind of gray white in the middle and then they tend to be yellow at the borders of the lesion so if you see those around an area with more burned lesions, that's an easy way to tell that that's blast. The other thing that you can look for is that if there is any regularity on the burns, the lesions that you're seeing, because one of the fields I looked at, I wasn't sure if it was blast or not, but then the PCA realized that all the burn areas were where the tractor was loading the herbicide. We could see the tracks and it was right in the middle and every so many feet, there was another area where burns. So we figured out, yeah, that's just the herbicide burn. And there were none of those diamond-shaped lesions. So that can be confused. The other thing that can be confused with blast is damage to the panicles. So when you have rats that eat at the base of the plant, they eat the tiller, they cut the tiller, and then the tiller stays standing up and the panicle is still there. But the panicle, you know, it's totally dead. It turns white. And so from a distance, it can be confused with neck blast. But, you know, if you go into the field and you pull that panicle up and it'll come out with the whole tiller and you'll see at the bottom of the tiller the cut from from the rodent that's another thing that can be confused with blast

SPEAKER_02 7:30

i got one of those calls actually today and from the road it looked exactly like blast and it wasn't until we got up and close and started pulling on tillers where we noticed the angled cuts down at the base of the plant and we're able to okay this is rodents not necessarily blast and the absence of the diamond shaped lesions was also a bit of giveaway.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Yeah. And sometimes I've seen fields with no leaf lesions, but there's only neck blasts. So only lesions on the neck, on the brackets of the panicle, on the node. I think the leaf blast is the hardest to tell sometimes. I mean, the neck blast, if you see the lesion on the node, just below the panicle, then you know that that's blast. Just a reminder that like we mentioned earlier, M210 is our resistant variety M105, M209, M211 are very susceptible. Our other varieties, they're all susceptible. And under the right conditions, they all can sustain heavy damage. But M209 and M105, and I think M211 as well, those tend to be a little bit more susceptible.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Great. Thanks, Luis. We have a series of upcoming events relating to rice farming and production. August 14th we will have our UCCE hedgerow demonstration day. This will be a field day to discuss a new project, studying the effects of hedgerows in rice systems. We are fortunate enough to have a grower collaborator helping us with this project, and this demonstration day will be at the corner of Lodi and Thule roads in Grimes. Next event on our docket is the annual Rice Field Day, which will be August 28th. The agenda will start promptly at 8 and go until noon, and consists of field tours, talks from the rice breeders, and lunch. Our final upcoming event is the Rice Pest Management Course, which will take place on September 4th, which is the first Wednesday of September on the week of Labor Day. Registration is required for this event. Please note, the registration will officially close on August 30th. I cannot stress this enough. August 30th is the last day for registration. So if you're planning on attending this event, please go to the link in our show notes and register. We hope to see you there. The event will start at 8 o'clock and go until 3, and will consist of weed identification workshops, talks about pest management and rice, and field tours. If you're interested in learning more about our program, please check out our other resources, which will all be linked in the show notes. The UC Rice blog, the UC Agronomy Rice website, and our newsletters, which are Rice Briefs, which covers Colusa Yolo, Rice Notes, which covers Yuba Sutter, Rice Leaf, which covers Butte and Glen, and Rice in the Delta, which covers the rice-specific practices to the Delta region of California. Thanks for listening. If you're interested in learning more about this podcast, you can go to our website, which is thoughtsonrice.buzzsprout.com. Thanks for listening. And like the growers always say, have a rice life. Mention of an agrichemical does not constitute a recommendation, merely the sharing of research findings. Always follow the label. The label is the law. Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general purposes only. The University of California name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.