CALS NewsLine from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

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IN THIS NEWSLINE ISSUED October 22 , 2008:

1. SALTCEDAR: BLIGHT OR BENEFIT?
2. PHOENIX'S SOUTH MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY TO BENEFIT FROM CHILD WELLNESS PROGRAM
3. NEW PUBLICATIONS
4. WATER HARVESTING CLASS 'RESHAPING' CAMPUS
5. UA SCIENTIST STUDIED NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING IDEA
6. ARIZONA AGRIBUSINESS FORUM NOVEMBER 20
7. NEW CAMPYLOBACTER VACCINE FOR POULTRY
8. TIME TO PLANT DESERT WILDFLOWERS
9. ARIZONA NEMO WATERSHED PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS
10. 2009 DESERT TURFGRASS SCHOOL JANUARY 5-9
11. CALS IN THE NEWS

1 SALTCEDAR: BLIGHT OR BENEFIT?

There is nothing neutral about saltcedar. Imported to the East Coast from Eurasia as a nursery plant in the early 1800s, the hardy shrub's popularity grew beyond ornamental purposes in the early 1900s, when thousands were planted out West to stabilize irrigation canals and control erosion along elevated Southern Pacific rail lines. Satisfaction turned to alarm when the eight imported species of saltcedar--also called tamarisk--escaped cultivation and spread too fast.

Dense thickets of the drought- and salt-tolerant species "Tamarix ramossisima" now cover vast tracts of the West and Southwest, especially in watercourse (riparian) areas once filled with native willows and cottonwoods. Blamed for guzzling too much water, out-competing native plants and destroying wildlife habitats, saltcedar has been the focus of 25 years of aggressive abatement efforts. To many, the only way to control it is to kill and remove it.

"The longstanding idea is that getting rid of saltcedar would improve the ecology and save water," says Ed Glenn, a senior research scientist in the Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the UA Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science (SWES). Yet eradication measures are costly, time-consuming and labor intensive--and may not, as new research shows, be entirely necessary.

Read more of this article from the 2007 Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station Research Report at the link below.

Ed Glenn, Environmental Research Laboratory, eglenn@ag.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/general/resrpt2007/article3.pdf

2 PHOENIX'S SOUTH MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY TO BENEFIT FROM CHILD WELLNESS PROGRAM

Building upon a project led by Governor Janet Napolitano's Children's Cabinet, the Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS) was recently awarded more than $4.5 million to improve child health and wellness in Phoenix's South Mountain community.

The Tapestry Project, as it will be called, will invest in children birth to age eight whose family and neighborhood environment put them at high risk for poor health, anti-social behavior and academic problems.

DHS will coordinate local services through the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, which is already embedded in the community. This new funding will be used to enhance children's access to mental health and wellness services, promote developmental screenings across a range of settings, coordinate integration of behavioral health with primary care, improve parenting skills of families with young children, and foster early childhood social and emotional development.

Read more from the October 1 press release, issued by the Arizona governor's office, at the link below.

DHS will receive $900,000, with $611,000 of it going to UA Cooperative Extension. Eight people will be hired to help conduct the project and funding is guaranteed for one year and renewable for up to five years.

Patty Merk, Maricopa County Cooperative Extension, merk@cals.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://www.krde.com/krnews/index.php?/archives/1240-Tapestry-Project-Awarded-4.5-Million.html

3 NEW PUBLICATIONS

SAVING ENERGY AT HOME
How quickly can we spend ONE kilowatt of energy at home? Leave a desktop computer on for 10 hours, an LCD monitor on for one day, or a 60-watt incandescent light on for 17 hours.

As our awareness of our energy use and the associated demands we place on our local resources grows, we are beginning to better understand the impact each one of us has on the natural environment. At the same time we are beginning to realize that through our individual actions we can reduce this impact, our "footprint" for our common benefit today, and for the benefit of future generations.

To find out what you can do at home to conserve, read the latest Arizona Cooperative Extension bulletin, "Doing Our Part to Help Conserve Arizona's Water Resources and Reduce Global Warming by Saving Energy at Home." The 6-page guide presents background information on greenhouse gases, dwindling water resources and other issues, and offers specific tips on how to save energy. Go to http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/consumer/az1458.pdf

Janick Artiola, Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science, jartiola@ag.arizona.edu

A GUIDE TO ARIZONA ALFALFA VARIETIES
Nondormant alfalfa varieties are adapted to mild winter areas in Arizona. An alfalfa variety should be selected based on dormancy class, potential pest problems, university yield trials and on-farm tests. "Nondormant Alfalfa Varieties for Arizona 2008" is an update of an annual publication, available at http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/crops/az1267.pdf. The brochure includes guidelines for selecting an alfalfa variety and a list of 49 nondormant alfalfa varieties showing their pest resistance ratings, yields and final stand figures for the Parker-Yuma, Maricopa-Tucson and Safford areas.

SMALL GRAIN VARIETIES FOR ARIZONA
Durum, barley and wheat are staples of southwestern grain production. The newly updated "Small Grain Varieties for Arizona 2008" summarizes differing production characteristics for seven barley varieties, 13 durum varieties and two wheat varieties. This convenient brochure is available at http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/crops/az1265.pdf

Mike Ottman, Department of Plant Sciences, mottman@ag.arizona.edu

4 WATER HARVESTING CLASS 'RESHAPING' CAMPUS

Over the years, The University of Arizona has jettisoned some of its grass lawns in favor of desert landscaping. While this has cut down on the amount of water the UA has used on campus plant life, it's created another landscaping problem in its wake.

One example is Fourth Street, which travels through the southern end of campus from Highland to Park. When it rains, water coming off the roofs and through downspouts of the buildings lining Fourth Street erodes the sand and gravel, washing some of it onto the sidewalks and into the street--except on a small patch of ground between the sidewalk and the Family and Consumer Sciences building, where piles of rocks and earth have been contoured to catch and retain rainwater. The design catches runoff and irrigates the plants there instead of flooding the street.

This bit of landscaping is the product of hydrologist Jim Riley, an associate professor of soil, water and environmental sciences, and the students who have taken his rainwater harvesting class.

Riley, whose office sits on the third floor of the Family and Consumer Sciences building, said several years ago a student came to him saying that there was money for students to work on water harvesting on campus, but that there should be an education component to the project.

Riley said if the project was funded, he would teach the class. It was, and this coming spring semester will be the fourth time he has taught it. With the help of UA Facilities Management, Riley and his students have slowly begun to transform one piece of the campus landscape. As other parts of the campus are added, the impact could be considerable.

Read the rest of this article from the October 9 edition of UANews at the link below. Listen to a UA podcast with Riley on rainwater harvesting at http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/node/21817

Jim Riley, Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science, jriley@ag.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/node/21912

5 UA SCIENTIST STUDIED NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING IDEA

In a fortunate stroke of collaboration, a University of Arizona scientist has helped transform the Nobel-prize winning idea of marking cells with the bright green glow of a jellyfish into a basic tool of modern bioscience.

David Galbraith, a UA plant sciences professor and BIO5 Institute member, said that he felt a personal attachment to the Nobel Prize given on October 8 to Martin Chalfie and two others.

Along with Chalfie, a biological sciences professor at Columbia University, the other co-winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize were Osamu Shimomura, of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School, and Roger Y. Tsien, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.

The prize honored Chalfie's 1994 paper, which showed how to use the jellyfish's "glow"--which is caused by a green fluorescent protein, or GFP, gene in the jellyfish DNA--to mark a worm's nerve cells. Within days of that paper being published, Galbraith was struck by an idea.

"I read the jellyfish paper and right away I thought, we should put that to use in plant cells," Galbraith said. He figured that the marker could become a much larger breakthrough for researchers trying to study cells in organs where individual cells were difficult, often impossible, to separate out and analyze.

Galbraith asked Chalfie to help him put the GFP gene to immediate use. Chalfie sent him samples of the DNA that encodes the green fluorescence and, 14 years later, the Nobel Prize committee recognized both the initial breakthrough and the expanding applications that Galbraith was among the first to envision.

Read the rest of this October 9 BIO5 press release at the link below.

David Galbraith, BIO5 Institute, galbraith@arizona.edu
To learn more: http://uanews.org/node/21946

6 ARIZONA AGRIBUSINESS FORUM NOVEMBER 20

The 23rd Annual Arizona Agribusiness Forum will focus on The New Food Economy and will be held on Thursday, November 20 at the UA Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building, BIO5 Conference Room 103, in Tucson.

The program will include keynote speakers, panel discussions, and student presentations that address food policies, changing structure of U.S. food demand, biotechnology and nutrition, research funding opportunities, and an outlook on Arizona's economy. Students enrolled in the UA Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Ag Policy class will provide short presentations after lunch outlining possible policy actions to address specific case study and/or environmental situations. A tour of the BIO5 Research Facility will be available in the afternoon following the keynote luncheon address.

Registration costs $80 before November 3 and $100 after; students pay $35. The fee includes lunch, refreshments and the tour. Reserved parking is $5 for the day. For more information on the Forum, go to the link below.

Russ Tronstad, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, tronstad@ag.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/arec/dept/agbusforum2008.html

7 NEW CAMPYLOBACTER VACCINE FOR POULTRY

Most people are familiar with Salmonella and its potential to make people ill. But fewer know about Campylobacter jejuni--even though it makes more people sick. Raw chicken is one of the most common carriers of the bacteria, often encountered when cooked meat is placed on unwashed cutting boards previously used for trimming raw chicken, or when chicken is not cooked to 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Campylobacter is now the No. 1 food-borne pathogen in the United States and the world, surpassing Salmonella," said Lynn Joens, a professor in The University of Arizona department of veterinary science and microbiology and a member of the BIO5 Institute. "In the United States alone, 2.4 million cases are reported annually, with costs exceeding $1 billion."

A new poultry vaccine in development at the UA offers a unique approach in controlling Campylobacter jejuni infection in chickens before it reaches the dinner table. In research trials the vaccine has significantly reduced the pathogen's ability to colonize young chickens' intestines, where the infection begins. The goal is to halt the contamination before it spreads and survives on raw chicken sold in stores.

Read the rest of this article from the October 3 edition of UANews at the link below.

Lynn Joens, Department of Veterinary Science and Microbiology, joens@ag.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://uanews.org/node/21806

8 TIME TO PLANT DESERT WILDFLOWERS

One of the great things about desert wildflowers, besides their beauty, of course, is their descriptive names. You don't have to see a picture to visualize colorful plants like desert marigold, Arizona blue eyes, scarlet flax and Mexican hat.

All these and many more can grace your landscape and provide perpetual color. Some 80 varieties are available in seed and can be grown in the Southwest.

Now is a great time to plant wildflower seed. You can buy seeds in pre-packaged mixes or select from packets of individual wildflower varieties. The smallest seed packets will cover small areas of only a few square feet, while one-pound bags will seed a large area of about 2,000 square feet.

Whatever size area you can devote to planting, proper soil preparation is the key to success. If you're converting granite mulched areas to wildflowers, remove the mulch. To perpetuate themselves, wildflowers need to be able to seed out over the soil.

Read more from the October 19 Arizona Daily Star at the link below.

John Begeman, Pima County Cooperative Extension, jbegeman@ag.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/262605.php

9 ARIZONA NEMO WATERSHED PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS

To assure the sustainability of water resources, community character, and long-term economic health of Arizona, the Arizona Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) Program supports volunteer efforts across the state to restore watershed health by reducing nonpoint source pollution. Nonpoint
source water pollution results from a variety of human land uses that mobilize pollutants and impact the water quality of streams and lakes. These include increased sediment due to construction and road building, degraded stormwater runoff due to urbanization, and the introduction of fecal pathogens due to overgrazing in riparian areas.

Arizona NEMO provides educational outreach to an adult audience of policy makers, planners, and land use decision makers facing water management decisions. In partnership with and funded by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), Arizona NEMO is also supported by the University of Arizona, Technology and Research Initiative Fund (TRIF), Water Sustainability Program through the Water Resources Research Center, and is a program of Arizona Cooperative Extension.

Arizona NEMO integrates watershed management and planning with research-based, professional education in order to engage stakeholders and foster better land-use decisions to protect our water resources. Emphasis is on the linkages between water quality and land use, as well as water quantity and supply.

Learn about current Arizona NEMO projects from "Arizona NEMO: Watershed Projects and Programs" at the link below.

Kristine Uhlman, Water Resources Research Center, kuhlman@ag.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://cals.arizona.edu/azwater/awr/septoct08/Nemo-supplement-9-10-08-downsampled.pdf

10 2009 DESERT TURFGRASS SCHOOL JANUARY 5-9

The Desert Turfgrass School will be offered at the UA Karsten Turfgrass Facility in Tucson on January 5-9, 2009. The one-week short course will cover warm- and cool-season turfgrass species; overseeding and transition; desert soils, salinity, fertility and nutrition; irrigation audits; and pest and weed management.

Experienced golf course superintendents, sports turf managers, schools and municipal turf facilities managers, and commercial landscapers will get a refresher crash course and early career professionals or those new to the desert Southwest will learn how to approach turf management challenges unique to the area.

The registration deadline is December 1 and space is limited. Details and registration information are available at the link below.

Kai Umeda, Maricopa County Cooperative Extension, kumeda@cals.arizona.edu
To learn more: http://turf.arizona.edu

11 CALS IN THE NEWS

UA MICROBIOLOGIST CHARLES GERBA CHEERILY EXPLAINS: BILLIONS OF NASTY MICROBES AWAIT YOU EVERY DAY
Many of the best stories in Charles Gerba's professional life have to do with the toilet. He rode to semi-fame as a scientist in part because of his study of a phenomenon known as toilet splatter.

It's not as bad as you think. Oh, no. It's much worse. We'll get to that peculiar horror before long.

At the moment, Gerba is sitting in his windowless office in a windowless UA building, right behind the Sixth Street parking garage. Scientists once worked inside this brick monstrosity to find defenses against biological warfare, and that makes it a perfect setting for Gerba, an environmental microbiologist.

He tests offices, households and public places for germs that can make us sick, or even kill us. Most people, knowing what he knows about the microbes that await us every day, would collapse in a heap, unable to go on. But Gerba draws energy from that knowledge. It gets him up in the morning. It brings him pleasure.

They call him Dr. Germ.

See the rest of this article in the October 8 edition of the Tucson Weekly at http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Tools/PrintFriendly?url=%2Fgbase%2FCurrents%2FContent%3Foid%3Doid%253A116778

Listen to a UA podcast featuring Gerba's take on disenfecting vehicles at http://uanews.org/node/21812

Chuck Gerba, Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science, gerba@ag.arizona.edu

WINTER HARVEST BRINGS NEW CONCERNS ABOUT FOOD SAFETY
With the winter harvest season right around the corner, consumers are curious about food safety. Tomatoes and jalapenos were ripped from menus all across the country when a salmonella outbreak sickened more than a thousand people, but experts say local folks may be a lot safer than they thought.

The desert southwest as been well known as the nation's salad bowl. Now growers in both Arizona and California face tougher rules in the field.

"The produce that's grown here in the Yuma area is under a very strict collection of production guidelines. Everything from water inspection to soil ammendment inspections," says Kurt Nolte with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension.

Read the rest of this article that appeared in the October online edition of KSWT News in Yuma, Arizona at http://www.kswt.com/Global/story.asp?S=9102094&nav=menu613_2_5

Kurt Nolte, Yuma Agricultural Center, knolte@ag.arizona.edu

CULTURAL PRACTICES OFFER BEST LETTUCE CROP DISEASE CONTROL IN LOW DESERT
New research results indicate that cultural practices including temperature and soil moisture management between lettuce crops can provide up to 100 percent destruction of lettuce drop disease.

Mike Matheron, a University of Arizona Extension plant pathologist based at the Yuma Agricultural Center, Yuma, Ariz., shared his findings with growers, pest control advisers, and others during the 2008 Preseason Vegetable Workshop in Yuma sponsored by Cooperative Extension.

Lettuce drop is a fungal disease that costs growers in the low-desert lettuce production areas of Yuma County, Ariz., and the Bard-Winterhaven area of Imperial County, Calif., up to about $2.5 million annually depending on the crop value, Matheron says. Losses per acre range from 1 percent to 5 percent of the crop, and even higher during wet years. A 50 percent to 100 percent crop loss can occur in individual fields.

Lettuce drop disease is caused by two fungal pathogens, Sclerotinia minor and S. sclerotiorum, sometimes called minor and major respectively. The sclerotia of the S. minor pathogen are smaller than the S. sclerotiorum. The pathogens cause brown decay in lettuce that destroys the plant crown tissue causing the plant to wilt and collapse and become unharvestable.

"To control lettuce drop, you must neutralize the Sclerotinia sclerotia," Matheron says. "The ways to accomplish this are to prevent sclerotia from germinating and to destroy the sclerotia."

Lettuce drop affects head, romaine, and leaf lettuces. The S. sclerotiorum pathogen occasionally affects cauliflower and cabbage while S. minor has been found in broccoli, but these are minor hosts in the low desert compared to lettuce.

Read the rest of this September 25 article from Western Farm Press at http://westernfarmpress.com/vegetables/lettuce-disease-0925/

Mike Matheron, Yuma Agricultural Center, matheron@ag.arizona.edu

WHENCE THE BEEF? U.S. CONSUMERS SOON WILL KNOW FOOD'S ORIGIN
(BENJAMIN HILL, Sonora) Beef may be what's for dinner, as the slogan goes, but until now it was hard to know where it was coming from. Country Of Origin Labeling (COOL) requirements for agricultural commodities, including beef, go into effect Tuesday, and activity at cattle ports along the Mexican border is idle as breeders in Sonora, along with buyers in the United States, wait to see what sort of impact the new law will have on their long-standing relationship, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Gustavo Camou Luders, a fourth-generation Sonora cattle breeder, exports about 1,500 cattle a year to the United States to be fattened in feed lots and butchered. Mexico exports more than 1 million beef cattle to the U.S. each year. He said some cattle breeders fear U.S. consumers could be turned off by beef labeled as Mexican-born, despite the fact that they've consumed it for years.

Read more from this story--which includes a brief commentary from Peder Cuneo in the UA Department of Veterinary Science and Microbiology--that appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on September 28: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/259578

Peder Cuneo, Department of Veterinary Science and Microbiology, cuneo@email.arizona.edu

To find out about available CALS publications and upcoming events, go to http://cals.arizona.edu/. If you have questions or comments about NewsLine, send an email to newseditor@ag.arizona.edu. Previous issues can be viewed at http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/newsline/previous-issues.html

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