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Overhead irrigation systems have revolutionized agriculture across the United States and in other parts of the world, using less water than furrow irrigation and requiring significantly less labor and maintenance than drip systems.

But in California, the No. 1 agriculture state in the nation, it hasn’t gotten off the ground. That could be changing. University of California Cooperative Extension and Fresno State agricultural production scientists researched overhead irrigation at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center for five years, growing wheat, corn, cotton, tomato, onion and broccoli, comparing them with crops produced under furrow and drip irrigation.

The United Nations will be discussing recommendations from a new report about climate change-related loss and damage, including a case study of how the San Joaquin Valley is coping with drought, during the second UN Environment Assembly (UNEA2), May 23-27 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The policy recommendations developed by Dr. Gil Harootunian, Fresno State director of university initiatives, focus on how the Valley can best cope with drought. They are featured in “Preventing the Avoidable, Dealing with the Unavoidable,” published May 19 during the Science Policy Forum at the UNEA2.

 

Humboldt County’s winter and early spring rainfall could intensify the spread of the pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death (SOD) but the outcome won’t be known for another year or two.

And while new areas of SOD infection weren’t identified in aerial surveys last year, the pathogen continues to spread in existing areas and it’s uncertain that drought has had an effect due to Humboldt County’s numerous, wet “micro-climates.”