IN THIS NEWSLINE ISSUED MARCH 21, 2003:

1. PINE BARK BEETLES
2. FIRE-RESISTANT LANDSCAPING
3. NOW IN ARIZONA: EXOTIC NEWCASTLE DISEASE OF POULTRY
4. BREAST CANCER RESEARCH
5. BREEDING LIVESTOCK SELECTIVELY
6. SOIL BACTERIA GENOME KNOWN
7. FUSARIUM WILT FUNGUS HITS YUMA LETTUCE
8. ARE YOU LACTOSE INTOLERANT?
9. WATER WISE IRRIGATION
10. AZMET--REAL-TIME WEATHER INFORMATION FOR ARIZONA
11. EVENTS

1 PINE BARK BEETLES

Every year, several species of pine bark beetles help kill thousands of ponderosa pines in Arizona. When larger trees are destroyed, they often were already weakened by drought, lightening, nearby construction, or because they were growing on a poor site.

Fading tree foliage is often the first sign of a beetle attack; the needles change from bright green to a light straw color and eventually become brown or red. Dust caused by boring beetles is another sign. Numerous small pitch tubes (globules of pitch 3/4 to 1 1/4 inch diameter) appear on infected tree trunks.

Freshly-cut ponderosa pine slash and firewood are subject to attack. However, pine bark beetles seldom successfully attack trees cut during the late summer and fall. The inner bark of green trees cut from January to July remains moist and suitable for beetle habitat.

Bury or burn the slash and limbs of green trees within 30 days of cutting. If you need the boles for firewood or poles, pile them away from living green trees and cover them securely with heavy, clear plastic. Peel logs you need for poles as soon as possible.

No practical or effective sprays or injections will stop a beetle attack once it starts on green trees, but you can protect non-infested trees. Keep trees healthy by watering during dry periods. Thin out dense stands.

When the entire crown of a trees begins to fade, you cannot save the tree. Remove it quickly to prevent emerging beetles from attacking other pines.

Tom DeGomez, Coconino County Cooperative Extension
Deborah Young, Associate Director, Arizona Cooperative Extension

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1300.pdf

Landscape your property to help it survive a wildfire. Treat, clear, or reduce the vegetation around your home to slow the wildfire spread, and you will also reduce the chance of fire spreading from your buildings to the surroundings. This "defensible space" gives firefighters room to do their jobs.

A well-planned fire-resistant landscaping can be beautiful and add to your property value; it does not have to be sterile-looking or unattractive. While it's true that how and where you plant is more important than what you plant, native plant materials are still generally best. Choose those most resistant to fire.

Plants near your home should be more widely spaced and lower growing than those planted farther away. Plant in small, irregular clusters rather than large masses. To slow the spread of fire, use rock or stepping-stone pathways. Use mulches to conserve moisture and reduce weeds, but don't choose mulches that readily carry fire, such as pine bark or pine needles. Put gravel close to your home or mow the grass short. Tall grass will quickly carry fire to your house.

Alix Rogstad, Fire Education Specialist

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1291

One of the most infectious poultry diseases of poultry in the world, Exotic Newcastle Disease, has spread from California and Nevada to Arizona. Since October 2002, millions of birds have been slaughtered in southern California commercial poultry flocks to try to prevent the disease from spreading.

In Arizona, the disease was reported in La Paz County, forcing cancellation of all show competitions involving birds.

Exotic Newcastle Disease is most severe in chickens, peafowl, guineas, pheasant, quail, cockatiels, cockatoos, and pigeons. Other more resistant birds may act as carriers. Close to 100 percent of susceptible birds are infected and die within an average of five days after exposure.

No humans have been reported infected by eating poultry products.

Clinical signs in chickens include a dramatic decrease in egg production, difficulty in breathing, greenish-dark diarrhea, and nervous signs: drooping wings, dragging legs and heads, and necks that are twisted.

Non-commercial poultry owners should prevent all contact with any birds, poultry equipment, and people having direct contact with birds from quarantined areas. Currently, all of southern California up to Santa Barbara, the Las Vegas area, and western Arizona are quarantined.

S. Peder Cuneo, Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory

To learn more: http://microvet.arizona.edu/AzVDL/infoAlerts/Newcastle-general.html

Breast cancer ranks second among the causes of cancer deaths in women in the United States. Interdisciplinary research programs involve CALS, Arizona Cancer and Health Sciences Centers, and other departments to find ways to aid in breast cancer prevention and treatment.

Risk factors for breast cancer include age, previous family and personal history of the disease, early menstrual periods, late menopause, no childbirth, alcohol consumption, recent use of oral contraceptives or postmenopausal estrogens, and inherited gene changes. Diet may also play a part, but this connection is less well understood.

A team from the Department of Nutritional Sciences is focusing on the biochemical processes that take place in animal and human mammary glands with exposure to environmental carcinogens. How do these substances suppress the action of genes in the breast that normally protect against cancer?

Researchers discovered that powerful carcinogenic substances found in charbroiled meat, coal tar, tobacco smoke, and industrial pollution may repress necessary endocrine functions. DNA damage may accumulate, stimulating the onset of sporadic breast cancer.

Diet is the most important avenue of exposure to chemical agents that may modulate people's susceptibility to various types of cancer. Researchers want to find out how diet and environmental chemicals contribute to cancer development. Then they can design preventive and therapeutic dietary interventions.

Donato Romagnolo, Department of Nutritional Sciences

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/general/resrpt2002/4.pdf

Livestock producers are being forced by their market to pay more attention to high quality. Applying improved methods of breeding during the last few years have greatly increased the efficiency of livestock production.

Successful animal breeders--whether their programs are large or small, seedstock, or commercial--tend to have the same qualities. To begin with, they understand animal breeding. They use the best genetic predictions they can find to make good predictions about breed performance and individual animals. They think carefully about the fastest, easiest, most economical way to reach the results they want.

Successful breeders must know the type of animals that will be most useful over the long run; then they limit the traits they select to the most valuable ones. Most of all, successful breeders are patient; sometimes faster does not mean better.

The publication "Improving Livestock Through Selective Breeding" includes the principles of heritability, using selective breeding through inbreeding, outbreeding, crossbreeding, and breeding on performance. The publication sells for $7.00.

Dawn Irish Mellor, Jack Elliot, Department of Agricultural Education

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/calsmart

The first whole genome annotation held at the University succeeded in sequencing the genome of the important soil bacterium Azotobacter vinelandii. The U.S. Department of Energy sponsored the project as a spinoff of the Human Genome Project.

This particular bacterium is important because it can use nitrogen gas from the atmosphere and convert it to a form that serves as a plant nutrient. Unlike other nitrogen-fixing bacteria, A. vinelandi can fix nitrogen when oxygen is present. It can adapt to a wider range of environmental conditions.

Also, A. vinelandi can use three different enzymes encoded by different genes. It can grow on a wide variety of organic acids, alcohols, and carbohydrates, making it useful in many scientific studies.

Work continues. The researchers still do not understand all the genes in the bacterium even though the sequence of 250 genes were individually discovered and analyzed during the past 20 years. That leaves 4,800 genes in the recently sequenced genome that had not been seen before.

Christina Kennedy, Department of Plant Pathology

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/media/archives/5.11.html

Growing head lettuce is big business in Yuma County, earning growers a gross income more than $329 million in 2001. Obviously they paid attention when fusarium wilt, a fungus disease, was identified that same year.

The wilt streaks lettuce leaves a red-brown color and stunts their growth, leaving the heads unmarketable. The disease was first identified in central California in 1990.

The fungus moves slowly through the soil, but it will survive if the soil is moved. After every harvest, the debris from the previous crop is disked into the soil. If there's a spot infested with fusarium wilt, the fungus will be spread further and further. Growers need to remove soil from tractors, implements, harvesting equipment, and even workers' boots.

Planting different lettuce cultivars may help, but it isn't clear yet which ones will resist the disease. CALS researchers in Yuma have planted both cool and warm season lettuce cultivars in field trials in infected soil to find more resistant varieties.

Mike Matheron, Yuma Agricultural Center

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/general/resrpt2002/9.pdf

If drinking milk or eating foods made with milk upsets your stomach, you may be lactose intolerant. You're not alone. One-fourth of all Americans have trouble when they drink milk.

Milk products contain a sugar called lactose. Our bodies have an enzyme, lactase that breaks down this sugar so it can be absorbed. If your body doesn't make enough lactose, you may have gas, bloating, or diarrhea after ingesting milk.

However, even if milk upsets your stomach, most people can drink 1 cup a day with a meal and not feel sick. This may help your body make more lactose. Start with low-fat milk on your cereal.

If you're lactose intolerant, watch out for the many foods that have small amounts of milk or lactose. Even lunch meats and nondairy coffee creamers can be guilty. Always read the nutrition labels. You will also need to find other foods to supply your daily calcium.

Jaclyn Maurer, Department of Nutritional Sciences

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/health/az1297.pdf

Save money, save water, and still keep your landscape plants healthy and beautiful. Your goal should always be applying just the right amount of water--in the right place--at the right time.

Even though desert rains are sporadic, water harvesting is still a good, easy, and cheap way to irrigate. Catch precious rain by building gentle earth ridges perpendicular to the water's flow. Create natural-looking dry washes that will move water and control overflow.

In dry weather, use drip irrigation to deliver water slowly, allowing water to soak in instead of running off or evaporating. You'll need to use different valves adjusted to the varying water needs of trees, shrubs, bedding plants, and turfgrass.

Don't neglect your irrigation system. Check the emitter placement and output; perform general maintenance at least annually.

Kathryn (Cado) Daily, Cochise County Cooperative Extension

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/cochise/waterwise

Every day, every hour, AZMET's 23 automated weather stations in southern and central Arizona collect data and transmit it to anyone who needs up-to-the-minute information. Such diverse audiences as cotton and vegetable growers, golf course and park managers, and turf grass providers can track air and soil temperatures, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind, and precipitation in their areas.

From these measurements, automatically transferred to a Tucson-based data processing center, AZMET provides heat units (degree-days), chill hours, and crop evapotranspiration, plus ready-to-use summaries. The information is available through the Internet, email, fax, printed copy, or over the phone.

How is the information used? For example, heat units can allow growers to plan planting and harvest dates for melons and sweet corn; the same information can predict pest development and monitor crop development. Evapotranspiration data helps growers and managers schedule irrigations efficiently.

AZMET is now widely accepted as an important--and often, the only--source of meteorological information concerning horticultural and agricultural crops in Arizona.

Paul Brown, Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science
www.ag.arizona.edu/azmet or www.ag.arizona.edu/azmet/phxturf/html

To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/general/resrpt2001/02.html

Growing Awareness Southwest Youth Gardening Conference, March 21-22, Tucson, http://cals.arizona.edu/youthgardens/growingawareness.html

Global Retailing Conference, April 10-11, Tucson. Theme: High Performance Transformations: Innovation That Works. http://cals.arizona.edu/fcs/srcer

Arizona Water Resources Research Center Conference, May 1-2, Prescott Resort. Theme: "Local Approaches to Resolving Water Resource Issues: What's Working, What Hasn't Worked, and Building on Existing Efforts." http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER

Southwest Indian Livestock and Family Days, May 6-8, Hon-Dah Resort near Show Low. Reservations due April 22. Contact Gerald Moore, 928-871-7406

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