Backyard Orchard News
Young scholars from overseas intern at KARE
Five students from Central America and the Caribbean who recently graduated from Reedley College with associate's degrees in agriculture business are undertaking a four-week internship at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center.
The students are part of Reedley College's Scholarships for Education and Economic Development (SEED) program, a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Agency for International Development and Georgetown University's Center for Intercultural Education and Development.
After their four-week research stint at Kearney ends, the students will be traveling back to their homes to share the knowledge and skills they acquired during their two years in America to produce a positive impact in their communities and countries.
The five scholars working at Kearney are:
- Kenia Ruiz, 22, of Santa Ana, El Salvador
- Lucas Bartolón, 25, of San Marcos, Guatemala
- Pierre Marescot, 26, of Cayes, Haiti
- Gricelda Sánchez, 21, of Managua, Nicaragua
- Gabriela Nicolas López, 23, of Santa María, Honduras
Ruiz and Bartolón are working in the lab of plant pathologist Themis Michailides. Marescot, Sanchez and Lopez are assisting with a variety of projects with KARE researchers and staff.
Left to right, interns Lucas Bartolón and Kenia Ruiz with Herve Avenot, an assistant project scientist working in the Michailides lab.
Gabriela Nicolas López (left) and Gricelda Sánchez.
Pierre Marescot.
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After leading a 40-year crusade against crop destroying nematodes, Selma native Michael McKenry retires
McKenry was born in Selma and raised on a farm where his family produced fruits and vegetables for sale at Highway 99 fruit stands. He earned his degree in soil science with a biochemistry minor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, in 1966, where his senior project targeted the microscopic soil-borne true round worms that would shape his career.
“Very few farmers knew much about nematodes at the time,” McKenry said. However, the pest was causing serious damage and yield loss, especially when crops were replanted into previously farmed land.
After serving as a vocational agriculture teacher in Yucaipa, Calif., and conducting field trials with his students, McKenry was offered the opportunity to study nematodes at UC Riverside. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1972 and was soon appointed by UC Riverside to his nematology research position at Kearney.
McKenry said his research focus changed with the times. The first two decades, he studied the movement of fumigants and other pesticides in soil, and the timing and placement for nematode congregation under trees and vines. Equally important were his activities to develop newer methods to assure that California’s nursery stocks would remain nematode-free.
“As drip systems evolved we encouraged farmers to pay more attention to the root flush in order to be more efficient with whatever treatments they used,” McKenry said.
Increasingly stringent regulations and bans on the use of certain fumigants began to turn nematologists’ attention to reduced rates using timing and placement as well as botanically derived alternatives to synthetic products. McKenry noted an unreported biological control process underway at Kearney where certain naturally occurring fungi and bacteria were lethal to nematodes.
“We’ve been working on that for 40 years,” McKenry said. “We’re still missing pieces, but the potential and limitations are better understood.”
During this period, McKenry also developed a portable drenching system that reduced off-gassing of soil fumigants and led the way for pre-plant delivery of degradable nematicides deep into soil.
The next 20 years was the period of rootstock exploration. Grape rootstocks that had been released in the 1960s were losing their resistance to nematodes in the 1980s. McKenry and his staff evaluated as many as 1,000 potential grape rootstocks from around the world. This was followed by evaluation of 100 peach and almond rootstocks and then thousands of potential walnut rootstocks.
Over the last two decades, McKenry’s nematological expertise provided industry awareness of three grape rootstocks, RS-9, RS-3 and 10-17A; three fruit/nut rootstocks including Krymsk 1, specifically useful for dwarf plum trees; HBOK-1 and Hansen 536, for peach and almond orchards, plus a new walnut rootstock named VX211. In addition to durable nematode resistance with these rootstocks, some may be planted without soil fumigation. If some fumigation was necessary, he demonstrated how a portable boiler could provide adequate steam to give first-year nematode relief.
More recently, McKenry identified the first effective nematode treatment that in very low doses could be sprayed onto leaves of trees and vines. This new chemistry was hidden away as an insecticide. Thousands of soil samples evaluated by McKenry and his research team at UC reported that if farmers followed a few guidelines, their yields could be boosted 10 percent to 20 percent.
In all, McKenry has written more than 250 research papers, half of them in pest management manuals, the other half peer-reviewed conference proceedings, book chapters and research journals.
Even though he will retire this summer, McKenry said he plans to continue with a few special projects.
“There is so much yet to be done,” he said.
He said he also looks forward to having more time to spend at his home in Cayucos while continuing his worldwide travels.
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