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Thoughts on Rice
This podcast is for growers, PCAs, consultants, and other industry professionals in the California rice industry. We'll primarily be focusing on the Sacramento Valley and Delta Region of California. The UCCE Rice Farm Advisors aim to deliver extension information relating to the California rice industry.
Find out more about UCCE and California rice here!
Thoughts on Rice
No-till rice with Bruce Linquist
Feedback Poll
Together, the UCCE Farm Advisors seek to provide relevant, topical research-backed information relating to CA rice production.
Bruce Linquist and Sarah Marsh will be discussing Bruce's research into no-till rice in California.
No Till Resources
UC Rice Blog post about no-till rice results (2023)
UC Rice Blog post about no-till rice results (2024)
No-till, direct-seeded rice saves 15% of water, study shows
Presentations from the 2024 No-Till Rice Field Day
Other Resources
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.
UC ANR is an equal opportunity provider and employer
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:I'm Whitney from the forest. I'm the Cooperative Extension Rice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento counties.
SPEAKER_01:My name is Luis Espino. I'm the rice farming systems advisor for Butte and Glynn 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, Yolo-Solano, and Contra Costa counties.
SPEAKER_02:Together, the UCCE farm advisors seek to provide relevant, topical, research-bound Today, Bruce Lindquist and I will be discussing his research into no-till rice in California. Bruce Lindquist is the UC Cooperative Extension Rice Specialist, based out of the Davis campus, where he has both research and extension responsibilities. Bruce has been focused on ensuring the long-term sustainability of rice systems, a massive goal with large ripple effects throughout the industry. His research encompasses a huge range of topics– nutrient management, water use reduction, heavy metals in rice assessment, accessing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options, far more. So Bruce, thanks for making the time. At the time of recording, the conversations that I've been having have all been geared towards one subject. getting ready for harvest, and when to pull boards. And in fact, I had a conversation earlier this week with a grower who was kind of hesitant about when to take the water off, but he said that he'd be keeping an eye on his neighbor and seeing what he did first. What kind of conversations have you been having?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, a lot of my calls that I've gotten this year are sort of related to this idea of no-till rice. I've been surprised at how much interest interest there has been in this area. And the other surprise a little bit is just for the different reasons that people are interested in it. It's very broad. It's not just for one reason. So yeah, it's been really positive. And I think we had that field day in June. I don't know, there's close to 40, 50 people show up there, a lot of PCAs and growers, certainly a lot of interest in the topic.
SPEAKER_02:In fact, I had a conversation with a couple of people yesterday who were they were like, I'm interested in no-till rice. And I said, go talk to Bruce Lindquist. And I got a couple of calls today that they were like, okay, I'm going to send an email to Bruce. So you might be getting a few more.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, now's the time, especially in some of the systems to really start to think about it. So yeah, it's good to get that kind of information out early because part of the planning starts this time of year. A lot of conversations have rotated around a very hot July and what impact that might have on yields. That's been a big one where people have been coming to me. And, you know, does it impact yields? Does it impact the progression of crop development? A little early to say. I have my guesses on some of that. I think we are probably going to see a little lower yields in that area coming up because of the hotter July, but also the later plantings that we saw. Most of our plantings occurred after mid-May, over 50%. The 50% plant date was around May 16th, May 17th, which is a bit later than usual. So that with a high July temperatures, which means also some warm nighttime temperatures, tend to lower yields.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely. So Bruce, let's get into our topic a little bit. I understand that you've been doing quite a bit of research, some of the first research ever actually in no-till rice in California. And so just really quickly, can you give us a brief definition of what no-till rice encompasses?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it might not be brief. It's a bit complicated, but I would say it always involves a no-till drill. And so that's the commonality is the use of a no-till drill. In the spring, you're planting with a no-till drill seeder. There's different types of systems. Some of them are strict no-till where you have rice in the previous year. After harvest, there's no further tillage. You might manage your straw in different ways following that, but there's no tillage or incorporation of that straw. There's none of that. You might flood the field, but come spring, you're going to plant into that field, into that seedbed. So that would be a very strict no-till system. The other system that we're looking at is where the fields were worked the year before. It could have been the summer before, like if the field was fallowed, it would be worked. We'd call that a summer prep. Or you could have a fall prep where maybe after harvest, the weather was favorable maybe you burn the straw maybe you were able to incorporate that straw but you were able to get a seed bed prepared in the fall really before the rains came in the winter and so that's not a strict no-till in some places like in the south they'd call that a stale seed bed we're calling it sort of summer prep or fall prep depending on kind of when during that previous year you would do it but when you get into that spring there's no further field work you're planting into that bed. Some of the issues maybe in the strict no-till or how you manage maybe your straw, and we're kind of looking at that. Do you remove the straw? Do you keep it on the surface? Do you burn it? Those are all further variations to that.
SPEAKER_02:There's a lot more drilled rice in the Mid-South region of the U.S., so I guess the prevalence of no-till rice, how much of the U.S. is doing this kind of no-till rice system? Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:I don't have the numbers, but certainly drill seeding is the common form of plant establishment in the Mid-South. So shifting from a drill seeded to a no-till where you're using a no-till drill seeder is not a big shift for them. It's basically the same management, just a different seed bed. But just talking a little bit with Dustin at RES, he threw out a number that in Louisiana, maybe 25% of the growers did some sort of what we would call this fall prep, where they're growing rice in the previous year, but they have the fall to develop, to make the seedbed for the following year. And so they're using no-till drill seeders. So yeah, it is certainly that fall, summer prep type of system is common down there. It's not a unique system. Also, no-till. The strict no-till is much more common in the Mid-South than it is here in California. There's very little of this in California, although I say there are growers that have experimented with it.
SPEAKER_02:And I think a lot of the emphasis on no-till or low-till or conservation tillage, especially in the Midwest and further east of the West Coast, has been prioritized as a result of the dust bowl and the soil erosion. So there's been a lot more focus, I think, on keeping residue on the soil than there has been out here. Our
SPEAKER_03:soils are, I Heavy clay soils make it more of a challenge, I think.
SPEAKER_02:Since you've started looking into no-till rice in California, do you know approximately how many people are using some variation of the no-till system in their rice fields?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know the numbers. Over the years, I've heard of and met a few growers experimenting with it. Some trying to plant into residual moisture, planting in early spring. Certainly this year, there were a number of growers that were interested based on really the field day last year and some of the talks. I mean, some of them are experimenting on some significant acreage this year. And then in the organic systems, certainly there are people that have tried it out there as well. But I don't have numbers, but the numbers are very low.
SPEAKER_02:So you mentioned earlier planting times and then planting into the moisture. Can you explain a bit more of the rationale that might motivate a grower to start looking into no-till rice?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, I started this really thinking about water conservation. And we've looked at different ways to conserve water in a water-seeded system. And it's really hard to get practices that save big chunks of water. I mean, we can save small chunks of water, you know, maybe an inch by using a shortened duration variety compared to a long duration variety you can save a little bit of water by planting late like at the end of may versus the beginning of may because you're planting into a hotter time of year and so the plant develops faster and there's you know you're irrigating for less but those are small savings and certainly don't really factor into a lot of your decisions and really it was just these no-till systems allow for large savings in in water uh, Because you are using that existing moisture that's in the soil, you're planting into a soil that is wet, or at least wet below the very top soil. When you're planting, it needs to be a little dry on the top. But below that, there is water. And so that water can be used to support plant growth. In Australia, where water conservation is really paramount, and what they do is they'll flush it once and then they wait 25 days to four weeks before they flush it again or go to a permanent flood. And that saves a lot of water just because your evaporation becomes so low that soil surface is dried. So if you're comparing it to a water-seeded system where you just have a pond of water that's a lot of evaporation coming off of that, you can save a lot of water on that. And certainly this year, we quantified it. We water in the system we have out there at the experiment station this year. So that's a big one, I think, but it's not really necessarily the main thing driving it for a lot of growers. Certainly the ability to plant early is very favorable for them to be able to plant a field and then be done with it. They're not worrying about it. You can get in early. That's attractive. We've also seen just the benefits of early planting in terms of yield. We saw that in the yield contest where the ability to plant early, really helps ensure higher yields. So that's a big one. Certainly, there's the cost savings in tillage. Typically, a grower would have to at least run a disc over this and level it again and all of that. You're saving those costs and that time. And then probably one of the bigger ones that growers like is the idea of rotating herbicides or using cheaper herbicides. A lot of the herbicides that we have right now, they can be quite expensive So this offers at least some opportunities to use cheaper herbicides.
SPEAKER_02:So that's a lot of benefits, but what about the drawbacks for no-till rice in California?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, certainly the cost of a no-till planter. I mean, most rice farmers don't have access to a no-till planter. It's an expensive piece of equipment and it's not super easy. There's just not a lot of no-till planting in California. These pieces of equipment aren't even that easy to just get a hold of. So that's, I think, one of the biggest drawbacks is just farmers being able to test it, try it. Having access to a no-till planter to try it out is probably the biggest Drawback. Certainly, there's a learning curve as you go from water seeding to drill seeding. Even if you're doing conventional tillage, it can be a steep learning curve. But when you're doing it no-till as well, I think it's even more of a learning curve. So that's a challenge. So if a grower hasn't done any kind of drill seeding before, broadcasting, dry seeding, that type of thing, going from where they've only done water seeding right into a no-till drill seeded type of situation, a lot to learn. It could be hard, a challenge. And some of the other stuff, I mean, you are thinking about herbicides and weeds in a different way. You have to deal with winter weeds, which is a challenge all of a sudden. Before you just tilled them in, you didn't give them a second thought. Now you're dealing with those. So that's a challenge. You're applying urea. That's going to be your primary nitrogen source. Probably a little bit more expensive than a And you don't need to fly it on. I mean, in this system, you could get it on with some sort of tractor with some wide tires. But generally, I'm thinking growers would probably want to fly that on. So yeah, those are some of the challenges and some of the drawbacks to that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think, like you mentioned, one of the most significant drawbacks is just the lack of information about the specific system. You mentioned winter weeds and weed control in general. I mean, one of the reasons we started flooding rice in California was for weed control. So without that method, you're kind of just stuck with the herbicides that are available.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So yeah, Whitney's doing a lot of work on that. And your weeds, your weed populations are going to shift. You're not going to have your weeds, but you are going to have a lot more grasses. So learning to control those. I mean, grasses are a problem in water-seeded systems as well. So those are going to be potentially a bigger challenge, but we have different herbicide programs to maybe tackle those.
SPEAKER_02:And we touched on this a little bit, but in terms of budget, are you able at this point to quantify if it's generally more expensive or inexpensive in terms of inputs for no-till right I've
SPEAKER_03:given it some thought, but the yields are really going to drive it, you know, what kind of yields. And so when we're going into a summer prep or fall prep type of situation where, you know, it was fall of the previous year, those yields in a pilot study that we did last year were comparable to conventional water-seeded systems with conventional tillage. Under those types of situations, I imagine there's some significant savings, especially if you can use some of the cheaper urban where you get into the strict no-till. Last year, we saw yields were lower by five, six, seven sacks than the summer prep or the water-seeded conventional. I don't know how much of a yield hit you can take before breaks even. And that's something that I'm hoping we can get. Once we get this year's data in and looking at some of the programs, we could develop a rough kind of economic analysis Well, speaking of
SPEAKER_02:data, what kind of field trials do you have this year to study the no-till practices?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we've got a lot. And it's not just myself, but it's Luis and Whitney are involved as well. And hopefully you soon. My area that I'm specifically working on is we're looking at fertility management, where we'd expect that fertilizer management might be a little bit different in these systems, certainly compared to water seeded. But I'm just trying to understand how fertilizer, particularly nitrogen management might be affected by this. So we've got a lot of plots out there. We're actually looking at different rates of urea, looking at different timings, also looking at some stabilized nitrogen fertilizers as well to see if there's any benefits from that, if we can manage those better. The other thing we're looking at, and I've already alluded to this, is we're looking at water use. So those aren't plots out there, but we are quantifying how much water is being used in these systems.
SPEAKER_02:And how are you quantifying the water use?
SPEAKER_03:So initially, we see water savings in that first month. And so that's really the main focus of the period that we're quantifying. We're keeping track of the amount of water going on. We're keeping track of soil moisture at the beginning and end of these irrigation periods. We're able to determine how much water actually has evaporated, how much water we still have in the soil And those numbers I gave you previously of six to seven inches of water savings are based on those sorts of calculations.
SPEAKER_02:And I think I remember reading one of your students' work said that with the pilot study anyway, that there could be potential for 15% water savings. Is that that six to seven inches of water?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, that is. So the consumptive use of water in rice is estimated to be around three feet of water. So if you're getting a six to seven inch water savings, that comes out to be that sort of 15 to 20% water savings.
SPEAKER_02:You were talking about your current research in the systems.
SPEAKER_03:Nutrients, water, and then we're looking at greenhouse gas emissions to see is there benefits in that way. And then Luis and Whitney, Luis is looking at pests and diseases in that. In fact, today he's out there rating disease incidents among these different treatments. We might expect that in the no-till systems where that straw has been left on the surface, perhaps there's greater chance for disease in that compared to the summer prep where it had been fallowed. I don't know. We'll see what that looks like. Certainly in terms of pests, we don't see tadpole shrimp out there, so that's another benefit. And then Whitney's just doing some really important work trying to figure out the weed management programs that might work in these systems. Certainly we have pendimethalin as a type of herbicide that can come in and really help us in these systems. So we're hoping to make good use of that. But then that in combination with other herbicides and timing, you know, what's the best timing on all of this is something that she's looking very closely at.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that is, all of that is really important work because like you said earlier, we don't have a ton of data on this, especially in California rice. So the work that all of you are doing will be the foundation for for what we kind of build on in the future.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Yeah, it's fun.
SPEAKER_02:Over the course of your work in no-till rice, has there been any unexpected results or anything that you were surprised to see in the field?
SPEAKER_03:You know, this is the first time I've done any kind of no-till work. I've worked in rice over 25 years. So a lot of it's kind of new to me. But last year when we were doing it, I was just surprised at how good of a stand we could get and how uniform it was. So we were really pleased with that. We were also very happy to see last year. I thought there would be some sort of a yield hit to all of this. All of the no-till systems, but certainly in that summer prep where the field was fallowed in the previous year, our yields were a little higher even than the conventional water-seeded system. Certainly wouldn't be significantly higher, but certainly there's no dip in yields in that system. So that was really encouraging to see. I think there'd be the true no-till. There's going to be a yield dip in those. Maybe it makes sense economically. to do those. We'll see. So that yield dip wasn't a surprise, but we'll wait and see how that looks out. We hadn't anticipated the challenge maybe of winter weeds in this research, so that kind of came out as, oh, that's something we got to be aware of and think about during this. So that was a bit unexpected, but when you think about it, it's something we probably shouldn't have been surprised about, but we were.
SPEAKER_02:Bruce, where can people go to learn more about no-till rice and your research program?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we're in very early stages. So we don't have anything really written up yet. I mean, last year we did a pilot study. This year we're doing a more rigorous study. There's several growers that are generously letting us kind of track what they're doing, follow what they're doing. So we're hopefully by the end of this year with the data, we're going to be able to develop at least a preliminary fact sheet to allow farmers to be able to sort of see, oh, okay, this is maybe how we could, if we're interested in trying it out, this is where we could go. So right now, most of our information is sort of in those field day bulletins, Rice Research Board reports, FREP reports, that type of thing. So by the end of the year, I'm hoping that we'd have some sort of guidelines for growers. And with that, Sarah, just for growers that are planning to try it next year. I'd alluded to at the beginning, now is the time to really start thinking about it. It's not going to be in the winter when you might be seeing these reports. It's really now that you have to be making those decisions. And what I would really say is, if you're jumping in on the summer prep, which is, I think, the most logical way to jump in right now, or a fall prep type of field where you're trying to develop a seedbed this year, you really want to be able to get those Those fields, by the time winter rolls around and you're not able to get in that field anymore, those fields need to be leveled, ideally with a slight slope, maybe have some ditches running through those fields to allow you to flood up rapidly, but also to drain rapidly for your flush and get that all done. Once you get into the winter, it's too late to start thinking about that kind of stuff. So get those fields prepared like you want, you know, certainly by the fall before the rains really hit.
SPEAKER_02:With that, Bruce, are you available for people to ask you questions about the no-till systems?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I am. And anybody can reach out to me either by email at balinquist at ucdavis.edu or give me a call at 530-902-2943. Thank
SPEAKER_02:you so much, Bruce. As we enter into harvest season, we don't have any upcoming field days or events to talk about, so I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the available resources for those who are interested in further information about no-till rice. Bruce talked a little bit about some of the work he's been doing, and all of this will be linked in the show notes, but I'd like to specifically point out there are two UC rice blog posts about no-till rice results, one from 2023, which detailed the pilot study specifically, and one from 2024, which talked about the results from that pilot study as well as future directions for this project. I'd also like to point out a press release from the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, which is entitled No-Till Direct Seeded Rice Saves 15% of Water Study Shows. This press release talks about the No-Till Drill Seeded Rice Field Day that was held at the Rice Experiment Station in Biggs, California earlier this summer. It also talks about specific results from some of those presentations. Now, if you're more interested in hearing about the presentations themselves, the next link is entitled Presentations from the 2024 No-Till Rice Field Day. And there you can access a lot of the presentations that were presented that day, including some of the ones that talked about the water savings, as well as other experiments that Dr. Lindquist and his fellow lab members have been doing. In terms of just general rice resources, as always, there is the UC Rice blog the UC Agronomy Rice website, and our newsletters. 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 rice in the Delta region of California.
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SPEAKER_02:Thanks for listening to Thoughts on Rice, a UCANR podcast. You can find out more about this podcast on our website, thoughtsonrice.buzzsprout.com. We appreciate you listening, and like the growers like to say, have a rice life. Mention of an agrochemical 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.
