Spring 2021 Newsletter

I hope this Spring Newsletter finds all of you well and the Summer that is on our horizon is as productive as the Winter has been. As you read all our Program Highlights you will see how busy everyone has been at WSU NWREC the last few months. We have maintained our projects through the pandemic by staggering our work schedules to minimize the number of people in our facilities each day. Many of our personnel have been working at home for a year now, and students also have been attending their classes from home. We are all looking forward to returning to work together, and since we spend much time working outside in our field plots, we will be able to maintain safe working procedures while continuing to focus on our research activities.

A primary change for us in December was the retirement of Dr. Bev Gerdeman, Entomologist, and Dr. Hollis Spitler, Entomology Technician. And in February we were very fortunate that our new Plant Pathologist Dr. Chakradhar Mattupalli joined us at WSU NWREC. We were also very fortunate last year that we received a Skagit County Economic Development Public Facility Project Grant (EDG) and a matching gift from a private donor that enabled us to construct the new headhouse (Phase I) of our new Plant Growth Facility. The headhouse is almost complete and we will move into the building in May. The headhouse provides office space for 8 personnel and a field lab for our Soils, Small Fruit and Pathology programs. We just submitted a second EDG proposal for Phase II of the Plant Growth Facility that includes 4000 sq ft of greenhouse space and a new growth chamber room. The majority of our greenhouse space at NWREC was built in the 1950s and lacks environmental controls that are needed for our research projects. We also hope to be able to secure private donations that are needed to match EDG funding for the plant growth facility. If you are interested in contributing to support our new Plant Growth Facility, please contact Tatum Weed, tatumweed@wsu.edu, 253-445-4554.

Plant Growth Facility Phase I: Ruth Wylie Plant Growth Headhouse

The Ruth Wylie Plant Growth Headhouse has been supported by a generous gift from Nancy Kercheval (1979, B.S., Agricultural Economics, WSU) who asked that the facility be named in honor of her mother Ruth Wylie (1950, B.A., Secretarial Studies, WSU). After graduating from WSU, Nancy had a successful career in the commercial fishing industry in the North Pacific and retired in 2011. “I admire my mother because of the risks she took to change her life. Her example helped me enter into a non-traditional field and run my own business. The idea for this gift came from my wanting to honor my mom’s 90^th birthday, and because we’re both WSU alumni, the headhouse was an ideal project to support.” Ruth Wylie grew up in Mount Vernon, born to pioneer parents Harry and Eva Parker. Her husband Jack Wylie’s parents homesteaded and farmed on Fir Island from the early 1900s, and Jack was a dairy farmer and a longtime county commissioner. After Ruth graduated from WSU she became business manager for United General Hospital (now PeaceHealth United General) in Sedro-Woolley, and was elected Skagit County Treasurer in 1979 and Skagit County’s first woman County Commissioner in 1992. Ruth and Jack were married more than 30 years, Jack passed away in 1999. In 2015, the Wylie family was recognized as the Skagit Valley Pioneer Family of the year. Ruth has been a long-time strong supporter of WSU NWREC and she, her late husband Jack, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are WSU alumni. “As farming changes, we need crops and methods that are suited for the Skagit Valley. That’s what WSU and the Extension service do through their research. This new building is a great honor that my daughter has helped realize for me.”

Plant Growth Facility Phase II Supporters

We are very grateful to Skagit County EDG and Nancy, Ruth and the Wylie family for their partnership that has enabled us to complete Phase I of the NWREC Plant Growth Facility. We are now looking for support for Phase II. We would like to pass on Nancy Kercheval’s challenge: “It’s been a great experience for me to be able to do this for my mom, now I challenge other Cougs to seek the same opportunities. What better gift can you give a parent?”

Berry and Potato Pathology

While the berry andpotato pathology program led by Chakradhar Mattupalli was just initiated in February 2021, Chakradhar is off to a running start. He has been interacting with potato and blueberry growers to identify their research needs and has submitted his first grant proposals to address growers’ top priorities. Field studies are already in progress to develop a decision support system for mummy berry management in blueberries. The study findings are being communicated to growers and stakeholders through ‘Weekly Mummy Berry Updates’ that can be found on the program’s webpage. Based on the feedback obtained from potato growers, new research projects focusing on the management of potato surface blemish diseases are being developed. Stay tuned to hear more about the exciting research coming out of this new program!

WSU Breadlab

WSU Breadlab has been focusing not only on ongoing research and spring planting, but also on strengthening relationships within our community and increasing outreach to area schools. PhD candidate Merri Metcalfe developed and instructed, with help from her Breadlab colleagues and Meagan Dawson of Kulshan Middle School, a “Whole Grain Researchers” OSPI course designed to meet STEM CEU requirements for teachers across WA state. We have also offered virtual instruction about fermentation and whole grains to elementary school students and co-hosted one of the public forums of UCCS Grain School 2021 on Whole and Heritage Grains in Health, Wellness and Disease Prevention. These efforts have been resounding successes and we plan on building on them in the future. We continue to participate as the Community of Practice Partner for regional grains in the USDA-AMS funded Local Food Systems Response to COVID, working on developing a longer-term project to help bolster regional food systems and elevate the collective voices of these food producers.

In collaboration with the local business leaders of Leadership Skagit and our friends at Viva Farms, WSU Breadlab will be hosting a virtual event specifically for local schools (and anyone else who would like to attend!) that will feature a Bread Lab! children’s book reading by author Kim Binczewski as well as a live demonstration and Q&A about making your own sourdough starter June 2. Please check out the program’s Instagram for updates and sign-up info.

Cider Education

In February, we launched another online section of the Cider & Perry Production – A Foundation course. Our latest cohort has 51 students from all corners of North America interested in taking the next step in their cider careers. This online class follows the same curriculum as the in-person version of the course but over a 15-week period and with additional guest speakers from the industry. Students are sent supplies prior to the start of the course for hands-on activities and sensory evaluations that complement the synchronous and asynchronous learning sessions. Our next offering will be an accelerated 8-week course that launches on April 13. Register for this course and others at ciderinstitute.com.

Entomology

With the retirement of Drs. Bev Gerdeman and Hollis Spitler, the Entomology program and projects are continuing with Dr. Lydia Tymon and Ben Diehl. In collaboration with the Alaska Division of Agriculture and USDA-ARS, the project “Eliminating pest-related trade barriers for the Alaska-grown peony trade industry” is focused on thrips, which can cause spotting, scarring, and deformed buds, and also they are vectors of tospoviruses. Some thrips species are considered quarantine pests for flowers that are exported so accurate identification is required, which we are doing using morphological methods and a molecular assay that we are developing. Increased damage from blueberry gall midge, Dasineura oxycoccana, was reported in 2019 and in our project “Biology of the blueberry gall midge” we sampled blueberry bud tips weekly from 4 locations in Whatcom County in 2020. We collected gall midge larvae and using molecular analysis, we determined that some larvae were D. oxycoccana and others were of another Dasineura species. We will continue midge sampling and identification in 2021 to determine if increased damage is associated with this other species.

In our project “Improved management of Lepidopteran pests of red raspberry and blueberry in Skagit and Whatcom Counties” we are collecting data on the seasonality of adult pest moths. We are using pheromone traps, passive light traps that are a stationary collecting box affixed with a rechargeable battery and light sensor, and active light traps that uses a collapsible light sheet set up for only a few hours. We will continue to monitor using pheromone traps in 2021 and will increase the number of light trapping events and use alternative light sources to attract more specimens. In a separate laboratory study we are testing Obliquebanded leafroller (OBLR), Choristoneura rosaceana, collected from Whatcom County for pesticide resistance. Please contact Ben Diehl with any Entomology related questions.

Small Fruit Horticulture

The Small Fruit Horticulture program has been transitioning the past few months as former graduate students Dr. Huan Zhang and Yixin Cai finish publications from their graduate work. Huan’s final research article was published in January 2021 and presents an extensive review on mulch application in small fruit systems. Yixin’s article on machine harvesting for fresh market blueberry is in review and was recently featured on the cover of a trade journal. Another programmatic highlight is the development and release of a state-wide blueberry cold hardiness model. The model is a beta (i.e., test) version being evaluated by stakeholders this spring and will be refined based on their input. The model is a significant accomplishment and represents seven years of work in partnership with Gwen Hoheisel in eastern Washington (extension specialist and project lead), Clark Kogan (statistician), and David Brown with WSU AgWeatherNet. The work also represents six years of cold hardiness testing and bud dissection led by Sean Watkinson, Scientific Assistant in the program (and certified firefighter!). The program also recently welcomed the arrival of postdoctoral researcher from Belgium, Dr. Maxime Eeraerts. Maxime represents the transition the program is taking this year, which will have a greater focus on pollination research. Maxime will be working on and providing co-leadership on several collaborative blueberry pollination projects funded by the USDA SCRI program and Washington Blueberry Commission.

In 2021, our mulch research will continue with MS students Brenda Madrid and May Wang. Brenda is focusing on characterizing and improving degradation of soil-biodegradable plastic mulches in western Washington. May’s research focuses on double cropping with strawberry and lettuce and understanding how mulches impact spore dispersal of Botrytis. These projects involve collaborations between the programs led by Drs. Miles and Tymon and include extensive outreach efforts regarding soil-biodegradable mulch. Qianwen Lu will continue her PhD studies on nutrient management in raspberry and impacts on soil health. She has also been evaluating the utility of sap nutrient analysis in raspberry and will be publishing her work soon. Our nutrient management work in organic blueberry systems in eastern Washington and Oregon continues and the program recently received another 3 years of funding from the Northwest Center for Small Fruits Research to continue evaluations of organic nitrogen fertilizer sources and rates. Last but not least, blueberry pollination research will be a primary focus as we study impacts of honey bee colony placement on pollination and pesticide exposure risks, characterize primary and secondary metabolites in pollen and nectar, and monitor how environmental conditions impact pollinator activity and bloom phenology. Furthermore, the program is excited to support the pollinator habitat effort at WSU NWREC and expand our knowledge on the biodiversity of native pollinators in the western Washington landscape.

Soil Health

The Soil Health team continues to grow and expand into working with a large variety of cropping systems. Graduate students Kwabena Sarpong and Molly McIlquham and Scientific Assistant Betsy Schacht have been working hard on the soil health assessment of specialty crops in eastern Washington, funded by a WSDA Specialty Crop Block Grant, and potato systems in western Washington. Last summer we collected soil samples from 114 on-farm sites across crops including wine grapes, onions, sweet corn, and potatoes, and we spent this winter working on sample analysis and conducting interviews with participating growers to learn about their soil management practices.

We are gearing up for an even more extensive sampling season this year and are partnering with WSDA scientists and WA State Conservation District staff. Our new postdoc Dr. Teal Potter has also joined the project and will be studying the soil and rhizosphere microbiome in potato systems. M.S. student Toby Una is wrapping up her thesis work on the effects of cover crops on soil health in potato-spinach seed systems (which has been supported by the WA Potato Commission, Puget Sound Seed Growers Association and NARF), and she plans to pursue her PhD in soil science at UW! We will welcome two new graduate students this summer, one to work on a $1M FFAR-funded project on the effects of soil management on quinoa nutritional properties, and another who will study the impacts of biosolids and grazed cover crops on soil health. With so many projects in the works, we are pleased that Liz Myhre (Ag Research Tech) has joined the Soil Health and Soils & Water programs this year and brings over 25 years of expertise from her time working at WSU Puyallup.

Soils & Water

Our program has been busy throughout the winter with research projects, course development, and outreach events. The Mount Vernon Long-Term Agroecological Research and Extension site, funded by the Washington State Soil Health Initiative, has taken center stage with the formation of a Stakeholder Advisory Committee, finalization of the experimental design, and baseline sampling prior to initiation of the trial this spring. Stay tuned for more on this valuable asset to agricultural research in our corner of the state, and please thank your legislators for supporting the Soil Health Initiative! Many other research projects have been moving along this winter, including site characterization for an NRCS-funded project investigating controlled drainage and subirrigation, bacterial rot evaluations to determine the impact of irrigation and fertility management on the incidence and severity of onion bulb rots (see the USDA SCRI ‘Stop the Rot’ project highlighted by the VSP program), and seed germination assays for our work on soil moisture management and irrigation scheduling for spinach seed crops.

A new M.S. student will be joining the program this summer to work with farmers on experimentation with irrigation scheduling – our work on this last year was promising, so let us know if you’re interested in collaborating! Our program has also been developing a new course on organic and sustainable agricultural certifications for our students at the WSU Everett campus, which is a critical part of contributing to the vibrant agricultural industry in NW WA, and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve had the pleasure of connecting with many of you virtually through workshops and other meetings.

Vegetable Horticulture

Grafting vegetables is an effective means to overcome soil-borne diseases and soil salinity, and in greenhouse production is used to increase nutrient and water uptake resulting in 10% yield increases. Our research has focused on developing a more efficient method to graft watermelon, as currently they are cost-prohibitive in the U.S. We have developed a methodology to successfully graft watermelon by removing their rootstock cotyledons, and this method is especially suitable for mechanization. Our new research at NWREC is focused on grafting field-grown cantaloupe, and we have found grafting onto cold tolerant rootstocks can increase yield four-fold. Cantaloupes show rootstock incompatibility so care must be taken with selection. We continue to explore growing new crops in our region, and this year we are testing sweetpotato. Other researchers have found that sweetpotatoes grown with plastic mulch in northern climates have higher yield than in the SE U.S., and our preliminary results also showed this. However, our plots were heavily impacted by wireworm, and so this year we are testing wireworm resistant varieties and breeding lines.

For cider apples, we are developing a production system that is suitable for mechanical pruning and harvest. Our cider apple research orchard includes 65 varieties planted in a tall spindle system and we are using a hedger for mechanical pruning. Last year an over-the-row tree fruit harvester was donated to our program by Ken Engle of Left Foot Charley Cider in Michigan, and this year we will be testing it for picking efficiency. In a separate study of regulated deficit irrigation, we have found that it may not be necessary to irrigate an established orchard in our region and with our soil type as yield and juice quality are similar to full irrigation.

Vegetable Seed Pathology

The Vegetable Seed Pathology program has been busy this winter with vegetable disease projects. The 12^th Annual Spinach Fusarium Wilt Soil Bioassay and the Annual Spinach Parent Line Fusarium Wilt Screening Trial were completed in January 2021, with spinach seed growers and seed company representatives examining their results on January 18 (following COVID-19 safety requirements). It was wonderful to see only a few of the growers’ fields tested had significant risk of Fusarium wilt, but a lot of the spinach parent lines evaluated were susceptible to Fusarium wilt. PhD student, Kayla Spawton, and Lindsey du Toit traveled to Texas in February to evaluate field trials on Stemphylium leaf spot of spinach, planted in a growers’ field in the Texas Wintergarden area. We were pleased to see excellent resistance (no disease) for 21 of the 79 cultivars evaluated.

The ‘Stop the Rot’ onion bacterial project funded by USDA NIFA Specialty Crops Research Initiative, led by Lindsey du Toit, had their annual meeting (virtually) on February 4-5. Much was accomplished during the 2020 field season for this $4M project over 12 states and one other country. On February 26, 22,000 onion bulbs in storage that had been hand-harvested from field trials in Pasco, WA were cut and rated for rot! To find out more, visit the Alliumnet website, including a video on the project. We’re excited to be initiating our 2021 carrot, beet, and onion disease field trials in addition to ongoing greenhouse and lab pathology trials on beet, carrot, chard, onion, spinach, and sweet corn. PhD students Kayla Spawton and Alex Batson gave a Lunch-and-Learn webinar on March 25 on soilborne and foliar diseases of spinach in the Pacific Northwest From roots to shoots: a synopsis of spinach diseases in the Pacific Northwest – YouTube.

Weed Science

This summer we will be validating the wild buckwheat and pale smartweed growing degree day models for determining days left before seed set commences based on the number of leaves on the mainstem. The models will be available in AgWeatherNet for this testing. The estimated number of days until seed set will be determined based on climate forecasts and will give growers trying to reduce the number of viable seeds returning to the soil a tool to determine when best to prevent seed production of these weeds. Studies on management of reed canarygrass on Ross Lake in the North Cascades National Park will be completed this spring and our active IR-4 program will be testing for efficacy, residues, and crop safety for a variety of pesticides.

• Batson, A.M., Fokkens, L., Rep, M., and du Toit, L.J. 2021. Putative effector genes distinguish two pathogenicity groups of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. spinaciae. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 34:141-156.
• Devi, P., L. Tymon, A. Keinath and C. Miles. 2021. Progress in grafting watermelon to manage Verticillium wilt. Plant Pathology, 767-777. https://doi.org/10.1111/ppa.13344
• du Toit, L., and Waters, T. 2021. Shank or irrigate? Evaluating methods of application of metam sodium for onion production in the Columbia Basin. Onion World, Jan. 2021:14-21. https://onionworld.net/2021/01/08/shank-or-irrigate/
• Gyawali, S., Derie, M.L., Gatch, E.W., Sharma-Poudyal, D., and du Toit, L.J. 2021. Lessons from 10 years of stakeholder adoption of a soil bioassay for spinach Fusarium wilt. Plant Pathology 70:778-792. https://doi.org/10.1111/ppa.13335
• Hulse-Kemp, A.M., Bostan, H., Chen, S., Ashrafi, H., Stoffel, K., Sanseverino, W., Li, L., Cheng, S., Schatz, M.C., Garvin, T., du Toit, L.J., Tseng, E., Chin, J., Iorizzo, M., and van Deynze, A. 2021. An anchored chromosome-scale genome assembly of spinach (Spinacia oleracea) improves annotation and reveals extensive gene rearrangements in euasterids. Plant Genome: accepted 27 Mar. 2021. TPG-2021-03-0030.R1.
• Liu, B., Stein, L., Cochran, K., du Toit, L.J., and Correll, J.C. 2021. Three new fungal leaf spot diseases of spinach and the evaluation of fungicide efficacy for disease management. Plant Disease 105:316-323.
• McDonald, M.R., Collins, B., du Toit, L.J., and Adusei-Fosu, K. 2021. Soil amendments for the management of Fusarium wilt of bunching spinach in Ontario, Canada. Crop Protection: accepted 2 Apr. 2021. CROPRO-D-20-00839R1.
• Mattupalli, C., Shiller, J., Kankanala, P., Krom, N. D., Marek, S., Mysore, K. S., and Young, C. A. 2021. The first genomic resources for Phymatotrichopsis omnivora, a soil-borne pezizomycete pathogen with a broad host range. Phytopathology: in press. https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-01-21-0014-A.
• Nampijja, M., Crane, S., du Toit, L., and Ocamb, C. 2021. Beet – Bacterial leaf spot. https://pnwhandbooks.org/plantdisease/host-disease/beet-red-beta-vulgaris-bacterial-leaf-spot. Swiss chard – Bacterial leaf spot. https://pnwhandbooks.org/plantdisease/host-disease/swiss-chard-beta-vulgaris-subsp-cicla-bacterial-leaf-spot In: 2021 Pacific Northwest Pacific Northwest Disease Management Handbook, J.W. Pscheidt and C.M. Ocamb, editors. A Pacific Northwest Extension Publication, Oregon State University, Washington State University, University of Idaho.
• Nampijja, M., Derie, M.L., and du Toit, L.J. 2021. First report of bacterial leaf spot caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. atata on Swiss chard, Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris, in Arizona. Plant Disease 105: accepted 8 Mar. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-12-20-2554-PDN
• Solemslie, R., du Toit, L.J., Tracy, W.F., and Stearns, T. 2021. Evaluation of steam treatments for Fusarium spp. and other fungi on sweet corn seed, 2020. Plant Disease Management Reports 15:CF017.
• Stern, A., J. Berstein, S. Jones, J. Blumberg, and T. Griffin. 2021. The impacts of germinating organic wheat: effects on phytic acid, resistant starch, and functional properties of flour, and sensory attributes of sourdough bread.  International Journal of Food Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijfs.15002
• Swisher Grimm, K.D., Crosslin, J.M., Cooper, W.R., Frost, K.E., du Toit, L.J., and Wohleb, C.H. 2021. First report of curly top of Coriandrum sativum caused by Beet curly top virus in the Columbia Basin of Washington State. Plant Disease: accepted 5 Apr. 2021.
• Trivedi, P., Mattupalli, C., Eversole, K., and Leach, J. E. 2021. Enabling sustainable agriculture through understanding and enhancement of microbiomes. New Phytologist: in press. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17319.
• Zhang, H., C. Miles, B., Gerdeman, D.G, LaHue, and L.W. DeVetter. 2021. Plastic mulch use in perennial fruit cropping systems – A review. Scientia Horticulturae: in press.