Burley Tobacco Day - February 16th

The program has been finalized for Burley Tobacco Day 2010 at the Madison County Cooperative Extension Center. The meeting will begin at 9am, February 16th.
On the program:
9:00am - Registration
9:30am - Opening Remarks, Dr. Tom Melton
9:35am - Burley Tobacco Fertilizer Recommendations, Dr. Greg Hoyt
10:05am - Black Shank Management, Stanley Holloway & Dr. Mina Mila
10:30am - Burley Variety Update, Dr. Sandy Stewart

10:55am - BREAK

11:10am - Using New Insecticides in NC Tobacco - Dr. Hannah Burrack
11:35am - Curing Strategies to Improve Marketability - Danny Peek
12:00pm - Burley Stabilization Update - Charlie Finch

12:20pm - LUNCH

12:45pm - Burley Tobacco Outlook & Situation - Dr. Blake Brown
1:15pm - Accessible Markets - Randy Collins

I hope to see you there!

Third Annual NC Commercial Blackberry and Raspberry Growers Association Meeting

This is a great organization for growers interested in or starting out in caneberry production. Blackberries can be grown throughout NC, while raspberries are restricted to the mountains for the time being. Gina Fernandez, caneberry breeder, has an active program to develop raspberries which can tolerate our hot summers and erratic winters.

Cleveland County Cooperative Extension Auditorium

February 18, 2010

10:00 AM

10:00 to 10:30…...Registration

10:30 to 10:35…..Opening Remarks and Welcome

Daniel Shires, Agriculture Extension Agent, Cleveland County

10:35 to 11:00…..Understanding Soil Fertility

Steve Dillon NCDA Regional Agronomist

11:00 to 11:45…..Blackberry Disease Update

Dr. Phil Brannen, Dept. of Plant Pathology, University of Georgia

11:45 to 1:15…….Lunch, Trade Show and NCCBRGA business meeting

1:15 to 1:45………Blackberry Insect Update

Dr. Hannah Burrack, Dept. of Entomology, NC State University

1:45 to 2:00………Labor Update

Norman Sykes, Agriculture Employment Consultant, NC Employment Security Commission

2:00 to 2:15………Blackberry Promotion Opportunity

Ervin Lineberger, President of the North American Raspberry and Blackberry Association

There will be a $10.00 registration fee for the meeting. Please call one of the secretaries at the Cleveland County Cooperative Extension office at 704-482-4365 to register by February 12th. You must RSVP in order to be included in the meal. Prior to the meeting there will be a registration table set up to collect registration fees and your 2010 NCCBRGA membership dues. Membership dues for 2010 are $15.00. Those who attend will receive pesticide credits in X category.

Spotted Wing Drosophila monitoring to begin in April!

Female SWD. Image via www.ipm.ucdavis.edu.

The Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium has recently funded monitoring efforts for the spotted wing drosophila (D. suzukii) in the southeast. Our work will rely upon a volunteer network of agricultural professionals, including county cooperative extension agents, master gardeners, and certified crop consultants. Monitoring efforts will be on a volunteer basis, but training, support, and materials will be provided. Training sessions will begin in March 2010, and monitoring efforts are targeted to begin in April. Monitoring locations will include backyard gardens and non commerical plantings of potential host plants (ie. peaches, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, and caneberries). We will avoid be monitoring commercial small fruit farms in the first stage of this project, because of potential regulatory implications. If and when SWD are detected and confirmed in a region, we may include commerical grower sites if there is sufficient interest.

This project will initially focus on North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, but training and methods will be available to interested parties from other states upon request. If you are interested in participating in monitoring efforts, contact Hannah Burrack.

Monitoring information will be collected via Google Documents and shared via this website and others.

UPDATE: We will now include commercial farms as possible monitoring sites.

Tobacco Growers Association meeting at the Southern Farm Show

For the past several years, Dr. Bill Collins has organized a tobacco production short course for young growers, and the 2010 session runs this week and ends as the students attend the NC Tobacco Grower's Association annual meeting Friday, at the Southern Farm Show. Talks at the Tobacco Grower's Association meeting will focus on FDA regulation and its implications for NC tobacco production. This has been the topic of interest all winter long, and will remain so for some time. Government regulation will likely move slowly. A scientific advisory panel is in the process of being formed, and no real decisions will be made until this panel is in place. Much more information from the FDA on regulatory progress can be found here. The pace of regulatory guidance leaves lots of room for industry and grower insecurity, which has been apparent this winter.

Grower concern has been obvious at the county tobacco meetings. At some, growers had yet to receive contracts and were unsure if they would even be growing tobacco this year. These groups had few questions for myself and the other specialists. As January moved on, however, and meetings took me to counties along the I-95 corridor, growers were more engaged. In Johnston, Wayne, and Wilson Counties, folks will continue to grow tobacco, although who they sell to may change.

The mood at the Tobacco Workers Conference was also more subdued than in previous years, but the consensus remains tobacco is a crop for which demand will continue. And growers will continue to need our expertise to produce their crops in an economical, environmentally sound, and safe manor.

Tobacco Workers Conference

The Tobacco Workers Conference begins today in Lexington, KY. Myself, Monique, and Richard are presenting results of projects and plans for 2010.

Blueberry Open House Update

Presentations from the 2010 Blueberry Open House will be linked from this website later this week--topics covered included pollination and insect updates and a discussion on blueberry maggot.

UPDATE

Here are the combined slides for my Blueberry Open house presentations from today. Please contact me with questions on this this or other talks.

Tobacco meetings in full swing

With 5 tobacco meetings this week, the winter extension season in full swing! Duplin, Wayne, Johnston, Pitt, Nash, and Beaufort Counties all have meetings this week (see meeting list for dates and locations). Next week (1/19 through 1/21) is the Tobacco Workers Conference in Lexington, KY. At this meeting, we will be rolling out a new TSWV (tomato spotted wilt virus) online decision making tool, a project we have worked very hard on in the last year with support from Altria, PMI, and recently, the Tobacco Education and Research Council (TERC). This tool was developed with the expertise of the NC State Climate Office.

Also at the Tobacco Workers Conference, Monique Rivera, MS student, will be presenting her 2009 findings on tobacco splitworm biology, a very rewarding project, and Richard Reeves, PhD student, will share plans for his upcoming research on tobacco insect threshold revisions.