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"Irrigation uses the largest amount of water, accounting for nearly 90 percent of freshwater consumption in the West"
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m e n t
Introduction
Water-both quality and quantity-is no doubt Idaho's biggest agricultural environmental concern, with topics such as sustainable agriculture, air quality, waste management, finding ever-friendlier pest solutions, preventing disease, and land use also concerns.
Irrigation uses the largest amount of water, accounting for nearly 90 percent of freshwater consumption in the West, according to 2003 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports. For years UI scientists have been successfully developing better crops that require less water. Some newer potato varieties use water and nitrogen more efficiently than Russet Burbank, allowing significant savings to the grower.
With proper grass selection, water, and nutrient management, summer municipal water use in southern Idaho can be reduced by about 10 percent. Optimizing irrigation in Idaho potatoes could save 480,000 inches of water a year and improve farm income by over $12 million. These are only a fraction of UI studies and efforts to help Idaho growers preserve water.
How CALS sets goals
All land-grant agricultural colleges, including the UI, set their goals guided by USDA goals. Current USDA goals are:
. An agricultural system that is highly competitive in the global economy,
. A safe and secure food and fiber system,
. A healthy, well-nourished population,
. Greater harmony between agriculture and the environment, and
. Enhanced economic opportunities and quality of life for Americans.
Examples of more environmental help for Idaho from college scientists and UI Extension educators are reported.
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UI professor's non-toxic pesticides now on market for home, commercial use
By Bill Loftus
Professor Don Crawford's study of bacteria found among linseed plant roots has yielded two EPA-registered pesticides-one of them organic-for the agriculture, greenhouse, nursery, and turf industries, plus a home lawn and garden product.
The new pesticides rely on a bacterium that provides a nontoxic weapon against major fungal diseases that cause extensive damage.
Crawford, a microbiology professor and director of the UI Environmental Science Program, said that is the beauty of putting bacteria to work against fungi. Bacteria, which colonize a plant's roots, produce chemical defenses at specific points where the fungus attacks, delivering microdoses of antibiotics to specific targets at specific times.
Going national: EPA approval
With the investment and support of Houston-based Natural Industries, two pesticide products recently won formal approval of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Both rely on the specific strain of bacteria discovered by Crawford to attack a wide spectrum of root-damaging fungi. As a result, production has soared at a small Moscow spin-off company, Innovative BioSystems, which produces the bacteria commercially.
In Texas, efforts by Natural Industries founder, the late Bill Kowalski, to market the product began more than a decade ago after he met with Crawford at UI. At the helm since Kowalski died three years ago is his son, company president Matt Kowalski. "Without their support and perseverance, this product would not have reached the market," Crawford said.
Natural Industries markets Actinovate SP, the organic commercial product, and shepherded it through EPA registration, a five-year effort. In January, the company's work produced an early bonus. The closely related product, Actino-Iron, won EPA registration approval months earlier than anticipated.
Commercial sales encouraged the company to formulate Actinovate for the home lawn and garden market. It is now available through the Internet.
A pay-as-you-go success
The company's investment in the federal registration process approached $500,000, Matt Kowalski said. "We paid for everything on cash flow, which was a big testament to the product. We were able to generate sales, not only to sustain the company, pay employees, and satisfy investors, but also to pay for our registration, which is very expensive. It was pretty nerve-wracking through the years."
"The real key was EPA registration because of the inability to really talk about its biocontrol abilities when you can only sell it as a soil amendment," Crawford said.
Contact Crawford at donc@uidaho.edu.
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Twin Falls benefits from phosphorus-removal technology
By Marlene Fritz
There's a federal limit of 710 pounds on the amount of phosphorus the city of Twin Falls may legally discharge into the Snake River each day, and-except for relatively few days during the year-the city is able to stay within it. But City Manager Tom Courtney isn't content to simply meet minimum standards for discharge of a nutrient that prompts the growth of aquatic weeds and chokes off oxygen to desirable species.
The city has forged an agreement with Ron Sheffield, UI Extension waste management engineer, to determine whether a new technology that removes dissolved phosphorus from wastewater can successfully nip phosphorus at a key source-a Twin Falls potato-processing plant. Reducing phosphorus right below the Lamb Weston plant would allow Twin Falls to pump its consequently nutrient-reduced wastewater directly to a new park-like wetlands area, where the wastewater would be naturally cleansed of even more nutrients before entering the river.
City saves "significant dollars"
"If this works, it may save some significant dollars over other more traditional and conventional treatment systems," says Courtney. In addition, reducing phosphorus discharges to well below allowable levels could enable Twin Falls to sell pollution credits to other entities that aren't able to meet their phosphorus reduction requirements.
The new technology turns dissolved phosphorus into struvite-a concentrated, granular, slow-release fertilizer. Using a trailer-mounted phosphorus crystallizer that can treat 4,000 gallons of wastewater a day, Sheffield is testing how well it performs on phosphorus-rich wastewater from dairies and from cheese- and potato-processing plants. He'll need to design a phosphorus crystallizer with a 200,000-gallon-a-day capacity for more extensive testing with Lamb Weston's wastewater this fall. If Twin Falls eventually adopts the technology, 10 of these large-capacity crystallizers would comprise a full-fledged treatment facility.
Unprecedented in the nation
The scale Sheffield is attempting is unprecedented in the nation. Still, he has cause for optimism. "Our initial assessment looks very promising," he says.
Even the struvite itself could have value. Sheffield's research team-which includes members from North Carolina State University, Washington State University, and Multi-Form Harvest of Seattle-is investigating whether struvite can be blended with commercially available fertilizers or certified for use on organic farms.
"Struvite used to be just a nuisance compound that would build up in pumps and pump lines on farms and in wastewater facilities," Sheffield says. "Now, it can be a non-odorous and fairly valuable byproduct."
Contact Sheffield at rons@uidaho.edu.
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Spray additive with oomph improves outlook for microrate herbicides
By Marlene Fritz
In the late 1990s, UI Weed Scientist Don Morishita helped demonstrate to Idaho sugarbeet growers that they could reduce their herbicide use by switching to lower-rate applications of popular chemicals boosted with methylated seed oil. Made from sunflowers, the seed oil didn't pose the risk of crop injury that other spray additives did, according to North Dakota trials. Neither, however, did it enhance the performance of the reduced-rate, or "microrate" herbicides as well as alternative additives.
Morishita estimates that 40 percent of Idaho sugarbeet growers now use reduced-rate herbicides, but he says the number has been higher. Disappointment with the technology's ability to consistently control kochia and common lambsquarters has prompted some growers to return to full rates-a trend Morishita would like to turn around.
Last year at Kimberly, he decided to find out whether spray additives that put a little bit more oomph in the chemical mix could be used safely in Idaho's drier climate without causing crop damage. The more hydrated leaves of damper climates take up herbicides better but suffer more herbicide injury in the process.
A combination of methylated soybean oil and a drift-reducing agent, sold as Destiny and Interlock, performed best in Morishita's trials. Compared with methylated seed oil alone, it increased kochia control to 93 percent (from 82 percent) and common lambsquarters control to 96 percent (from 53 percent) without injuring crops. Morishita will repeat the trial this year.
Jim Patrick, a Twin Falls sugarbeet grower who pioneered-then abandoned-microrate technology, says he might try it again if Morishita's work continues to prove encouraging. "There were a lot of advantages," he says. "Any time you can decrease chemical use, it's better."
Contact Morishita at don@uidaho.edu.
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Low-phytate barley offers pollution solution for fish, swine
When agricultural scientists develop barley lines that are predictably low in phytate-a form of stored phosphorus that nonruminant animals can't break down-livestock producers will have feed grains that are more nutritious for fish, swine, and poultry. They also will be easier on the environment.
The reason: low-phytate barleys offer most of their phosphorus in a usable form. Instead of passing right through livestock into runoff water, this phosphorus largely remains in the animal and out of the wastestream.
In surface water, phosphorus accelerates an undesirable process called eutrophication, in which algae and aquatic weeds flourish and available oxygen for other species falls short. "We would like to eliminate this problem at the start, before we even feed the animals," says Juliet Windes, UI Extension cereal cropping systems agronomist in eastern Idaho.
Research at four Idaho sites
This year, Windes is leading research at four Idaho sites to identify production recommendations for two low-phytate barley varieties. "Our goal is to see how stable the trait is over different locations and production systems," she says.
The barleys were developed by Phil Bregitzer and Victor Raboy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service. Genetically, the new lines are 50 to 95 percent lower in phytate concentration; in the field, these figures vary substantially. Bregitzer hopes that by evaluating the lines under various growing conditions-including water stress-agricultural scientists will be able to predict how environmental effects and management practices influence the low-phytate characteristic.
Barley for fish, swine trials, too
Bregitzer is also increasing one hulled line and two hulless lines of low-phytate barley for swine- and fish-feeding trials in Idaho. Idaho Barley Commission administrator Kelly Olson says industry partners are lined up to test the products in the Gem State this fall. By 2006, she'd like to send ample quantities to potential customers in Japan and Taiwan who want to evaluate samples. Research by federal and state scientists at the UI Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station indicates that some strains of rainbow trout will perform well when 30 percent of their diets are low-phytate barley, but the feeds have yet to be tested in other livestock. "There's interest," says Olson. "What's holding us back is lack of product."
In the Magic Valley, trout producers are feeding nutrient-dense, low-waste diets in an attempt to slash discharged phosphorus by 40 percent. UI Extension Aquaculture Educator Gary Fornshell says, "Low-phytate barley feeds will help the industry achieve its goal."
Contact Windes at jwindes@uidaho.edu.
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