New Academy on Climate Resilience to Connect Specialty Crop Professionals

Aug 30, 2023

By Seth Truscott

A team led by scientists at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources (CSANR) is establishing the Specialty Crop Climate Change Extension Academy to improve Extension and USDA professionals’ capacity to support climate preparedness.

The new training academy is being funded by a $1.5 million Climate Hub grant from the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s Foundational and Applied Science Program. Its goal is to facilitate forward-thinking conversations about climate change resiliency among professionals in the fruits, vegetables, seeds, and other specialty crops industries.

“This new academy is about finding peers in specialty crop agriculture and making connections across regions,” said Chad Kruger, CSANR director and lead investigator of the training project, titled “Analogs for Dialogs.”

This fall, team members will recruit a cohort of 20 Extension and USDA Climate Hub professionals in major centers of U.S. fruit and vegetable production to the academy. Recruits will learn about climate change factors and communication strategies, developing their ability to support grower preparedness.

A major focus of the project is fostering cross-regional connections through climate analogs: for each target region, an “analog” site will be chosen with a current climate that matches the target’s expected future. Participants from paired sites will engage virtually and through site visits.

“Conversations that help growers get to know their counterparts, and what they’re dealing with, will empower them more than us simply giving them information,” said project manager Teal Potter, a postdoctoral researcher with CSANR. “We’re looking for people who know there’s a need to prepare for a changing climate, but don’t really know what to do about it.”

Collaborating with the grant team, Siddharth Chaudhary and Kirti Rajagopalan, scientists with WSU’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering, study the value of analogs for cross-regional conversations on climate change adaption. Their recently published research in Scientific Reports characterized analogs for all specialty crop counties in the U.S., bringing together Extension professionals from paired locations to discuss regional practices.

A map of the lower 48 U.S. states, showing eight USDA Climate Hub regions and potential cross-regional connections for climate change and specialty crops. The arrows show target-analog pairings between specialty crop-growing counties; from recent research by WSU scientists.

In a complex system like agriculture, climate change creates opportunities and risks, with multiple dimensions and tradeoffs,” Rajagopalan said. “You need multiple iterations of interactive dialog to capture the nuanced insights that lead to climate preparedness for society. Who better than Extension professionals to create the bridge between research, Extension, and society?”

Team members represent WSU, the University of Florida, the University of Minnesota, and the Ag and Food Systems Institute, and work in partnership with six regional USDA Climate Hubs.

Academy participants will be admitted this fall, with training beginning early in 2024.

Source : wsu.edu

Video: Turning Plant Defense Into a Management Strategy

Turning Plant Defense Into a Management Strategy

Understanding how a plant responds to stress is one thing.

Using that knowledge to make better management decisions is another.

Systemic acquired resistance, or SAR, is the plant's more direct defense response. When stress or infection occurs, the plant begins signaling throughout its system and preparing defensive compounds.

But if we know that response exists, can we help prepare the plant before the stress arrives?

The answer starts with understanding what triggers the response and what the plant needs to carry it out.

The Trigger and the Fuel

Salicylic acid plays an important role in triggering the SAR pathway.

Think of it as turning the truck on.

The engine may be running, but it still needs fuel to do the work.

In this case, manganese plays an important role in supporting the enzyme systems involved in the plant's defensive response.

This makes manganese status an important part of the conversation. Whether a producer is using tissue testing, sap analysis, or simply scouting for visible deficiency symptoms, the goal is to make sure the plant has adequate manganese available.

Manganese is required in relatively small amounts, but that does not make its role small.

If the plant receives a signal to defend itself but lacks the nutrition needed to support that response, it may struggle to carry out the process efficiently.

The trigger matters.

The fuel matters too.

Prepare Before the Stress Arrives

The best time to think about stress management is before the plant is overwhelmed.

Once a crop is already struggling, management can quickly turn into a game of catch-up.

This is similar to nitrogen management. Once a plant becomes severely deficient, correcting the problem does not necessarily erase the time and yield potential already lost.

Plant defense can work the same way.

Low-rate, targeted approaches designed to support the SAR pathway may fit best ahead of an expected stress event rather than after significant damage has already occurred.

That requires producers to think about predictable stress.

We may not know exactly what the weather will do tomorrow, but we generally know summer heat is coming. We know certain field conditions increase disease pressure. We know a herbicide application can temporarily stress a crop as the plant processes the chemistry.

Even a properly timed and labeled herbicide application can create a temporary response in the plant.

That does not mean the herbicide is bad.

Weeds can create significantly more yield loss than the temporary stress caused by controlling them.

The question is not whether we should eliminate every stressor.

The question is whether we can better prepare the plant to manage necessary and predictable stress.

Not All Stress Is Bad

Stress is a normal part of plant growth.

A perfectly stress-free environment does not exist in the field.

In fact, some stress is necessary for normal plant development. A plant responds to wind, temperature, moisture, sunlight, and countless other environmental signals throughout the season.

The environment is stress.

The plant's job is to manage it.

Problems begin when the stress load becomes greater than the plant's ability to respond.

Extreme heat, drought, high salt concentrations, disease pressure, and even certain management practices can add to that load.

This is where understanding SAR becomes useful.

Instead of waiting until the plant is visibly struggling, producers can begin identifying periods when stress is likely and make management decisions around those windows.

ISR Starts With the Soil

While SAR is a more direct defense response, induced systemic resistance, or ISR, brings the conversation back to soil health.

The longevity of a farm is closely connected to the health of its soil.

Carbon plays a major role because it supports biological life within the soil. Bacteria, fungi, and other organisms interact with plant roots and influence how the plant grows, accesses nutrients, and prepares for stress.

This is why soil health cannot be reduced to one product or one application.

It is a system.

Keeping living plants in the field longer can support biological activity. Cover crops may fit some operations. Better water management can improve soil conditions.