One of my research focus areas over the past few years has been related to soil fumigation issues, specifically focused on methyl bromide alternatives for the tree and vine nursery industry. I described some of this nursery work in a post late last year. Today I wanted to share a brief description and links containing a more overarching view of methyl bromide alternatives related research in California, Oregon, and Washington.
With the support of USDA-ARS, a five-year program was initiated in 2006 to support research, demonstration, and extension projects in western cropping systems heavily reliant on preplant soil fumigation with methyl bromide. These included several nursery systems (decideous tree and vine, sweet potato slips, cut flowers and bulbs, forest seedlings) production systems (orchard and vineyard replanting, strawberry, etc) as well as controlling atmospheric emissions of fumigants.
As these projects reach the end of the five-year horizan, we started building a website to serve as a bit of a clearinghouse for information on the issues and research results. Last week in Orlando, FL at the Annual Research Conference on Integrated Methyl Bromide Alternatives and Emission Reductions (who names these things anyway?), I coauthored a paper and poster with one of my USDA-ARS collegeues on our extension website and related outreach efforts. A pdf copy of the poster is attached at the bottom of this post or can be found here.
Better yet, you can visit the USDA-ARS Pacific Area-Wide Methyl Bromide Alternatives Program website (ok, I take the blame for the website name). There are about 100 pages of information and links to a lot of more in-depth information by several multidisciplinary research teams. Some of these pages are still being developed or finalized but I think this site is good start to explaining the methyl bromide issues, research successes, and continuting challenges in California and other western states.
Take care,
Brad
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