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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
August Rice Round Table with Whitney Brim-Deforest and Bruce Linquist
Feedback Poll
To round out the month of August, we're going to hold a "Rice Round Table" to talk about some of the farm calls and questions we have gotten this past month, as well as discuss what to expect going forward in the season. Join Whitney Brim-Deforest, Bruce Linquist, and Sarah Marsh as they recap rice in August 2024.
Upcoming Events!
- Rice Pest Management Course on September 4 *registration required*
- Weedy Rice Pop-Up on September 9 (Glenn County)
- Weedy Rice Pop-Up on September 12 (Colusa County)
Other Resources
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_01:I'm Whitney from the forest. I'm the Cooperative Extension Rice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento counties.
SPEAKER_02:My name is Luis Espino. I'm the rice farming systems advisor for Butte and Glene counties. I'm Michelle Leinfolder-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_03:Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek to provide relevant, topical, research-backed information relating to California rice production. To round out the month of August, we're going to hold a rice round table to talk about some of the farm calls and questions we, the rice advisors and rice specialists, have gotten this past month, as well as what to expect going forward in the season. We'll start off with a round of introductions.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm Whitney Broom-DeForest. I am based out of the Sutter Yuba office, and I cover Yuba, Sutter, Placer, and Sacramento counties. And I am a weed scientist by training, so I focus mostly on weeds and rice.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Bruce Lindquist. I'm the UC Rice Specialist. So I have statewide a mandate. I'm based at UC Davis campus. And my background is more agronomy, but we look a lot at water, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to sort of cropping systems and fertility issues.
SPEAKER_03:My name is Sarah Marsh. I'm a farm advisor covering Colusa and Yolo counties. I'm based out of the Colusa office and my training, I guess you'd say, is in weed science. And so today I think the three of us are going to talk a little bit about some of the farm calls and questions we've gotten them last month, as well as what to expect going forward in the season. So just real quick. Earlier this week, we had the rice field day and Bruce and Whitney actually spoke at that. So is there anything specific we want to mention about the rice field day or anything that might've come up in conversations with people at the field day?
SPEAKER_00:It was a great field day. And what I. mostly was talking about was some of the no-till work that we're doing and encouraged by a lot of interest in that. Certainly growers are interested in that system for a lot of reasons. So it was nice to share that information and also just kind of see the interest by growers for that, to think about those types of systems.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, definitely. I'd agree with that. I know we talked about this a bit, Bruce, but several people came up to me with questions specifically about no-tilled rice. So I think we definitely saw a lot of interest on that end. And Whitney, what about you? What was your thought on the rice field day this year? I
SPEAKER_01:thought it was great. It was well attended. I was surprised at the number of people, but I thought it was really well attended. And I spoke a little bit about propanol, the double propanol applications that we're seeing across the valley and tried to give people some alternatives for watergrass control.
SPEAKER_03:Well, there's not a lot of options for control of watergrass. So yeah, I know that's part of your research program is kind of investigating watergrass control. role.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yeah. I've been, I've been working for, I think about three years specifically on that problem, the post-emergent applications, trying to come up with some tank mix alternatives. And some of it is site specific. So I, I, I've been trying to give like broad brush ideas, but we have several tank mixes now, and I think it's going to be up to people to, to look and try different things at different sites. But I think the one that's kind of standing out right now is the regimen followed by propanolopathy. And I've been doing it at a week apart, but I know some folks have been going closer together and getting even better efficacy.
SPEAKER_00:seen it in previous years where that system seemed to have better water grass control than a conventional till. Do you have a reason why that might be?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I don't have clear data on it, but I would suspect that's because the water grass seed is left on the soil surface over the winter. They're not tilling in the fall and they're not tilling in the spring. All the seed from the previous year would just be left there. And I do know that the ducks and geese, all the overwintering birds love what water grass seed. So there's probably predation happening. And then also I would guess that, again, if it's not tilled under, then those seeds have an opportunity to rot in the flooded fields. So that's actually something that I would advocate for people doing for water grass control would be to no-till in the fall and, if possible, no-till in the spring. It's also a weedy rice control method. So same idea, that you're getting predation from geese and birds and then also rotting happening over the winter.
SPEAKER_03:With the weedy rice though, I mean, we recommend against deep tillage, right? Partially because of the long dormancy of weedy rice. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And actually the same would apply for water grass control.
SPEAKER_03:Well, let's move on a little bit to some of the farm calls and conversations we've been having lately. And I know at least in Colusa County, the topic on everyone's mind is blast. And everyone's calling each other saying, have you seen blast? Have you seen blast? And I have to say so far, I have not seen confirmed blast in Colusa County, but I'm not saying it's not there. It's just I haven't personally seen it myself or personally heard about it. What about you guys? I
SPEAKER_01:have not got any blast calls, but I do think that Luis has kind of weighed in on the blast situation. Again, I could be speaking out of turn here, but I don't think he's seen any confirmed cases either.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think he actually put something out on the UC Rice blog earlier this week, just another other blast update with some very nice charts about leaf wetness. So I'd recommend anyone go look at those.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I have been getting quite a few calls actually about suspicious looking weedy rice related or odd rice, uh, in field. So, um, I was, I was overly optimistic earlier in the season and thought we weren't gonna see much, but, um, we've been getting a lot of calls. I can't confirm that everything is weedy, but definitely some suspicious slash off type, uh, calls. And, and I think, um, Quite a few from Colusa County and a few from Sutter as well.
SPEAKER_03:Have you gotten any requests for the rice herbicide resistance testing? Many of those yet?
SPEAKER_01:I have not from Sutter and Yuba, but a lot of people have asked or said that I was welcome to go out and collect for them. So I probably will be in a couple of cases.
SPEAKER_03:Any farm calls that you've got or conversations, Bruce, that you want to touch on here?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've had a number, mostly related to temperatures and, you know, kind of the What am I expecting in terms of how these temperatures affect crop development and maybe yields? So, you know, what we've seen is, you know, in our variety trials, I asked Ray to kind of, we just collected all of our heading notes and just to kind of see where we're at compared to a normal year. And kind of what we're seeing is that at heading this year across varieties, we're probably about six days faster than maybe the average year. So it has accelerated. And there's a couple of reasons for that, I think. And one is the late planting. Generally, we planted later this year. Our 50% plant date in California, I believe, was around the 17th of May. So it's about four or five days later. When you plant later, you're planting into a warmer time of year. And so plants develop faster regardless. But then we had a very warm July on top of that. And so that may have further accelerated things. So yeah, I think we're ahead of where we'd normally be. Like if you're tracking when you might want to harvest, my guess would be that it might come in just a little bit earlier. Obviously, that's going to depend a little bit on what the ripening stage is going to look like, if it's going to be very wet and cool or warm, but we're certainly progressing at a pretty fast rate.
SPEAKER_03:I had a follow up on that. I've gotten a couple of people people asking if the rice is taller this year because of the heat. That's true, right? And some of the varieties we have here, they can grow taller if they've experienced a lot of growing degree days earlier in the vegetative growth, right?
SPEAKER_00:We are seeing some very, yeah, Ray said when he's going out doing his heading notes, and I saw it the other day when I was out in the field in one of our variety trials, it is tall this year.
SPEAKER_01:And I would actually add that one of the questions I've been getting a lot this year is if if we're expecting reduced yields because of the heat or any effects on quality? Bruce or Sarah, if you have any thoughts.
SPEAKER_00:I would say probably I'm expecting slightly lower yields. I know there's some growers out there that are expecting some quite good yields. They've been calling me about the yield contest. But I would say generally I'd be expecting slightly lower yields, partly because we planted so late, which we know tends to reduce yields. But also with the high temperatures, that's often accompanied by high nighttime temperatures. And those high nighttime temperatures, you get a lot of plant respiration and that will have a tendency to lower your yields. So I'm thinking we're going to get some reduced yields. I think the quality is a bit, we have to see. I mean, we're in sort of a grain ripening now. We're not seeing the really high temperatures that we saw a few years ago when we were looking at 115 degrees during the day and very warm, like 70, 75, plus at night where we saw a lot of chalkiness in some of the rice. We're not seeing that right now. So I wouldn't think that the temperatures and weather conditions that we're seeing currently would have too much of a negative effect on quality.
SPEAKER_03:I'm glad you said that. I've also gotten a couple of calls just asking about quality concerns, especially with the heat in 2022, if I'm remembering correctly, which I know that frightened a lot of people in the industry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that was a bit of an anomaly. I think. I think it's maybe the hottest day on record in Sacramento, and it falls in mid-September. So that wouldn't be typically when you'd see the hottest day of the year. So it came at a very crucial time in rice development. And looking at the 10-day forecast here, we're not looking at any of those kind of temperatures coming up. And our nighttime temperatures are cooler as well.
SPEAKER_03:We've been talking a little bit about grain ripening stage. I know with the early spring rains we had, there was quite a bit of a space between some of the earliest planted rice and some of the late planted rice. On the whole, what would you guys say the rice is at in your specific areas? And I guess what kind of a range of maturity levels are we seeing across the valley? I
SPEAKER_01:mean, some people are already draining. And I heard one grower say that they're going to harvest maybe even starting the end of next week, which seems very early, but not sure off the top of my head.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I've had growers tell me that they're planning to pull boards right after Labor Day. So that's pretty consistent with what I've been hearing. But I know there's just a lot of variation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think some people got in earlier than others. I know maybe on average we planted a little bit later, but I definitely think there were some people that planted earlier than other people this year.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've seen a number of fields where the boards have been pulled, probably the earlier plant dates. Surely depends on the variety, though, because a lot of those early people may have planted M211 so it's going to be a little later but certainly there's a lot of, a good number of fields that I've seen that are starting to pull the boards and drain and those are typically ones that were planted on that early side before those rains hit. I would say something just on that drain phase just there's I think a fairly decent amount of M211 out there and just you know just with how sensitive M211 is to drying too early. Just probably would even consider keeping those boards in just a little longer on M211 just to ensure you're getting good quality and not letting parts of the field dry down too early.
SPEAKER_03:All right, so we're recording. It's the end of August. We're past army worms and so far we haven't seen a lot of people talking about blast. So what What things are we going to watch out for the rest of the season?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'd say, I mean, definitely if you think you have herbicide resistance, now is the time to start thinking about collecting seed if you'd like it to be tested. So for sure, that's something to think about. It's a little bit early for water grass, but some of the other species like some of our sedges should already be ready to harvest.
SPEAKER_03:And weedy rice. This is another good time to keep an eye out for weedy rice as well, right? Even though you should have been watching all season.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it is easier to see maybe like a couple weeks ago because once the heads start to fill, it becomes a little more difficult to see. But you can still see it. So yeah, if you think you have weedy rice or some sort of off type, we'd love to come out and take a look and we can help you determine where to go. But yeah, I think I guess we're having weedy rice pop up days i think two and a week or two and so if people want to take a look they're also welcome to come out and and and check so i think it's september 9th and 12th luis and sarah and i are going to do some pop-up field days we don't do like credits or anything like that we just station ourselves at a field and then people come by and look there's no like agenda
SPEAKER_00:a lot of people come and look
SPEAKER_01:I'd say we do have quite a few folks. I want to say around 20 or so, usually, each time. It kind of depends. I think we haven't done them in maybe three years, so it's been a little while.
SPEAKER_03:So the Weedy Rice pop-up field meetings, that's September 9th and 12th. September 9th is Glen County and September 12th is Colusa County.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it'll be on our mailing list. So if everyone's on our mailing list, they should receive the locations. We will be out doing our disease survey in a couple of weeks. So Luis sent out an announcement about it and it's our, every five years we have to do a disease survey, basically to be able to say that we still have disease present in our fields and kind of give the levels of diseases that are present. And that enables us to still be able to burn in the fields that need to be burned for disease pressure.
SPEAKER_03:What to expect coming up the rest of the season? Any thoughts?
SPEAKER_00:I think, you know, in a typical year, the 50% harvest, that peak harvest period is typically around the 4th and 5th of October. My guess is that it's going to be very much similar to that. That's where we're going to really have our peak harvest is that Early first week in October, just kind of based on faster progression, but a late planting date.
SPEAKER_03:I have a question on that, Bruce. Is that going to be moved up at all, that prediction for 50% because of how fast we've been progressing? Or do you think it'll still be around the first week of October? I
SPEAKER_00:mean, I'm kind of accounting for the speed up, but also that the late planting on overall, we had a later planting by about four or five days. And we're about four or five days faster in development. So I think that's really going to sort of be our peak area as a typical... I
SPEAKER_01:will just add that, Bruce, a lot of people have been asking me about the yield contest. Can you give us a reason why you're not doing it this year?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've had a lot of questions about that too. And... We decided not to do it, to kind of call the yield contest off, not because it wasn't good, but we've been doing it eight years and we collected a lot of information. And I thought we'd pretty much collected the information that we needed to, to kind of really get a good idea of those factors affecting yields. And we talked a little bit about that last winter grower meetings, and we'll develop maybe a fact sheet on some of the outcomes of that. So everyone has that. That said, it's a really interesting area for me. I am very interested in yield potential and what it is for us here in California. So I am looking at alternatives to a yield contest, maybe sort of a push for a certain, like maybe 140 sacks. The current record right now is 137. So maybe in the future, if you really think you have high yields and kind of going for that, next step up, like 140, kind of making a contest out of that. And it'd be a little less work for us because we're not going out to sometimes 20, 25 fields a year doing yield contests. This we'd probably be looking at going out maybe three, four, five times a year to growers that think they have really high yields.
SPEAKER_03:All right. So if people have more questions for either of you, how can they reach you?
SPEAKER_00:This is Bruce and they can email me at balinquist at ucdavis.edu or give me a phone call at 530-902-2943. And yeah,
SPEAKER_01:if people want to contact me, my office phone number is 530-822-7515 or you can email me at wbremdeforest at ucnr.edu.
SPEAKER_03:And this is Sarah Marsh. If you want to contact me, my email is smarsh, M-A-R-S-H, at ucanr.edu, or you can call me at 530-203-8585. Thank you all for joining me today. Thank
SPEAKER_00:you. Thanks, Sarah.
SPEAKER_03:We have a few upcoming events. The Rice Pest Management Course registration deadline was August 30th. If you registered for this event, we'll be excited to see you at the Rice Experiment Station on Hamilton Road on September 4th, where we'll talk about pest management in rice, including field tours of the rice herbicide trials. See our show notes for more details. As we mentioned earlier in this podcast episode, the Rice Farm Advisors will be hosting Weedy Rice Pop-Up Days on September 9th and September 12th. The September 9th date will be the Glenn County location and the September 12th date will be the Colusa County location. These Weedy Rice Pop-Up Days will consist of the Rice Farm Advisor being stationed at a field that has weedy rice in it. Those who are interested in this event are welcome to pop by and talk with the Rice Farm Advisor for a short informal conversation about weedy rice identification and the opportunity to see it in field. Our mailing list consists of the exact locations and times. Please see our show notes for more information.
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SPEAKER_03: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_03: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.
