AES

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have identified new root traits that help grapevines resist drought.

The findings, published in the journal Annals of Botany, could speed up the development of grape rootstocks that protect vines from dry conditions, helping the grape and wine industry adapt to climate change.

Wine grape growers in California and elsewhere face increasing labor costs and severe labor shortages, making it difficult to manage and harvest a vineyard while maintaining profitability. Growers are increasingly turning to machines for pruning, canopy management and harvesting, but how well these practices are executed can substantially affect yield and quality.

Sheep will graze the University of California, Davis, Campus Gateway on Old Davis Road this week in an academic experiment to see if sheep can eat weeds and grass, fertilize and control pests as well as or better than using conventional landscaping methods.

Red, ripe strawberries are the hallmark of spring in California. Two new varieties from the Public Strawberry Breeding Program at the University of California, Davis, will provide consumers with big, flavorful strawberries throughout fall and winter, too.

“These cultivars were developed to provide high-quality fruit from late summer through the holidays,” said Professor Steve Knapp, director of the UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program.

As municipalities have taxed sugar-sweetened beverages and schools and worksites have banned their sales, university researchers have found that simple warning labels on such beverages in a college cafeteria helped students reduce their reported consumption of drinks by 14.5 percent. The results signal that such labels could reduce sugar consumption in larger settings.

Gene editing can improve crop performance, but there’s a catch: It can be hard to grow plants from cells after you’ve tweaked their genomes.

From creating fragile crop harvest-aiding mobile robots (FRAIL-bots) for strawberry harvesting to developing an automated robotic orchard platform designed to optimize fruit pickers’ performance, Stavros Vougioukas is addressing agricultural challenges and making an impact on California agriculture.

In fresh market fruit production, harvesting is one of the most labor-intensive operations, incurring high cost and dependence on a large seasonal semi-skilled workforce, which is becoming less available.

For the first time since the 1980s, University of California, Davis, researchers have released new varieties of wine grapes. The five new varieties, three red and two white, are highly resistant to Pierce’s disease, which costs California grape growers more than $100 million a year. The new, traditionally bred varieties also produce high-quality fruit and wine.