10 CapitalPress.com
August 25, 2017
Idaho
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Barley breeder developing
dryland, craft malt variety
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
ABERDEEN, Idaho —
Barley breeder Gongshe Hu
has sought help from crop re-
searchers in an arid North Afri-
can country as he starts working
to develop a drought-tolerant
malt barley variety well suited
for the growing craft brewing
industry.
Hu, with USDA’s Agricul-
tural Research Service, asked
officials of an international
germplasm collection center in
Morocco to send him two-row
barley lines with good drought
tolerance and high yield poten-
tial.
This season, Hu planted
about eight lines — all top per-
formers in Morocco’s drought
nursery, where they received
reduced irrigation — in Aber-
deen to expand seed for further
evaluation. He hopes a few will
perform well in the local cli-
mate and make good parents to
confer drought tolerance in his
breeding program.
Hu explained that craft
brewers typically use all-grain
recipes, requiring malt barley
with lower protein levels than
malt used in brewing beers
commonly produced by large
brewers. They are blended with
corn or rice sugar. Dryland
farming conditions tend to ele-
vate protein levels.
Hu’s breeding project will
seek to combine drought toler-
ance with low-protein genetics
to create a cross usable by dry-
land growers raising malt for
all-grain brewing.
“It looks like we will have
five or six lines that grow pretty
well in this environment,” Hu
said.
Hu will plant the seeds
he’s raising this season in Ab-
erdeen’s
drought-tolerance
nursery next season to evaluate
them against local lines. Hu
said it could take as long as a
decade for the project to yield
new varieties — even with his
program speeding the breeding
process by raising some gener-
ations of crosses in New Zea-
land during winters.
“At the moment, we’re try-
ing to introduce as much ge-
netic diversity as we can for
drought tolerance,” Hu said.
Drought tolerance is also a
trait Oregon State University
barley breeder Patrick Hayes
has prioritized.
“Low protein is always
important for malting barley,
especially under dryland condi-
tions,” Hayes said.
The American Malting Bar-
ley Association added all-malt
guidelines for barley breeding
in 2014, specifying all-malt
varieties should have less than
11.8 percent protein, a percent-
age point lower than standard
malts that are blended with ad-
junct ingredients.
“A low protein, dryland bar-
ley would potentially be useful
throughout craft brewing, and
would be especially desirable
considering increasing envi-
ronmental pressure throughout
barley growing regions,” said
Damon Scott, technical brew-
ing projects coordinator with
the Brewers Association.
Both the Brewers Associa-
tion and AMBA have support-
ed research regarding drought
tolerance.
“The whole malting barley
industry would be interested in
any lines that would be more
drought tolerant,” said Scott
Heisel, AMBA’s vice presi-
dent and technical director.
Senior project tests cover crops
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
GRACE, Idaho — Ross
Harris may change how he
farms and ranches, contingent
on the results of his son’s high
school senior project.
Other Caribou County farm-
ers and ranchers should also be
interested in 18-year-old Chase
Harris’ research — testing a
nine-species cover crop blend,
with plants intended to survive
the winter, thrive in his growing
environment and provide good
forage for the family’s cattle.
Chase — working with
Cameron Williams from the
Caribou County office of the
USDA Natural Resources Con-
servation Service — planted 8
acres of the family farm to cov-
er crops on Aug. 18, in a pas-
ture where cattle will also have
access to grass and a harvested
alfalfa field. Chase said another
key component of his research
will be assessing which forage
source the cattle prefer.
Farmers plant cover crops
primarily to improve the health
of their soils, but many growers
also opt to graze cover crops,
allowing livestock to benefit
from the forage value while
recirculating nutrients in their
manure. Cover crops aren’t
common yet in Caribou Coun-
ty, which has a short growing
season.
“We’ve always kind of been
conventional farming until
Chase went looking at this,”
Ross Harris said, adding he’d
be “crazy not to continue” ex-
perimenting with cover crops
if they work for his son. “We’ll
see how the cattle eat it and
what the cover crop might look
like this spring.”
Harris plans to graze his
cover crop this fall and to swath
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Chase Harris, left, discusses with his father, Ross, the various multi-species cover crop blends he
helped plant for trials highlighted during a recent field day in Soda Springs, Idaho. Harris helped set up
the field day and is organizing his own cover crop trial for his high school senior project.
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Chase Harris, of Grace, Idaho, calibrates his drill Aug. 18 while
planting cover crops as part of an experiment for his high school
senior project.
and bale the growth for feed in
the spring, before his father
plants no-till alfalfa.
In Idaho, high school se-
niors are required to complete
a project that benefits the com-
munity and includes 40 hours
of work with an instructor,
along with a report and a pre-
sentation. Chase said most of
his classmates plan to shadow
a professional and report what
they learn about an interesting
career.
“I figured if I was going
to do this, I was going to do it
all the way,” the Grace High
School student said.
In addition to conducting the
experiment on his farm, Harris
helped Williams organize and
promote a recent cover crop
field day in Caribou County,
which included presentations
by a couple of the nation’s top
cover crop experts. Harris also
helped plant the cover crop
plots highlighted during the
field day.
“Often it takes the next gen-
eration to attempt new tech-
niques like Chase is trying on
his family’s operation,” Wil-
liams said.
Chase said he got the idea
for his cover crop project
from his biology teacher, Eli
Hubbard, who spoke in class
about cover crops as a means
of improving soil structure.
Hubbard planted his first cover
crops this season on his farm
and ranch.
Growers report lower yields in early Norkotah harvest
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
RUPERT, Idaho — Potato
industry officials report yields
are down significantly as
Western Idaho growers com-
mence with their early harvest
of Russet Norkotahs for the
fresh market.
Growers statewide antic-
ipate having more average
production during their gen-
eral harvest in a few weeks,
as the crop will have time to
continue progressing, though
they don’t expect to approach
last year’s record volumes.
They expect tuber quality
to vary dramatically from field
to field, based on site-specific
conditions during a prolonged
heatwave this summer.
But growers also say
they’re optimistic about
strengthening prices, given
Idaho farmers planted 15,000
fewer potato acres this season
and should have a reason-
able-sized crop to market.
“Yields are down, price is
up, and (tuber size) is pret-
ty good,” Mountain Home
grower Jeff Harper said amid
his early harvest.
Jeff Miller, a crop scientist
at Rupert-based Miller Re-
search, explained during an
Aug. 17 field day at his potato
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Jeff Miller, of Miller Research
in Rupert, Idaho, holds potato
leaves with symptoms of early
blight during an Aug. 16 field
day. Miller said disease pres-
sure has been fairly low, but the
potato crop may be on pace to
have highly variable quality.
research plots that the 2017
crop got off to a slow start.
Potato planting was delayed
by wet fields, and cool spring
weather delayed crop emer-
gence.
Miller said an “almost un-
heard of” two-week period
of temperatures that peaked
above 95 degrees may also
lead to more tuber quality
problems, such as hollow
heart. Miller expects tuber
quality of individual fields
could vary widely, depending
on the growth stage when the
hot weather hit.
“People aren’t sure what
it’s going to do to quality,”
Miller said. “We’ve done
some test digs and some
looked horrible while some
looked great.”
In Eastern Idaho, Ritchie
Toevs, president of the Idaho
Potato Commission, antici-
pates his yields will be down
by about 60 hundredweight
per acre from last season.
Toevs, of Aberdeen, plans
to start harvest on Sept. 20
and has been pleasantly sur-
prised by tuber quality in his
test digs. He believes a bad
wildfire season has contribut-
ed to reduced yields.
“I don’t know if smoky
weather might have taken
some off of the crop in Au-
gust,” Toevs said, noting
smoke blocks solar radiation.
“We didn’t see the mountains
for two weeks.”
Marty Kearl, farm man-
ager with a Jentzsch-Kearl
Farms unit in Bliss, agrees
early harvest yields are low,
but he believes there’s still
time for the rest of the crop to
catch up.
He added that growers
have also had little trouble
with diseases.
“The tubers are smaller
than they were last year at this
time, but the vines are looking
better,” Kearl said.
Idaho labor chief resigns abruptly
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
34-2/#7
The Idaho governor’s of-
fice is giving no reason for
the sudden departure or com-
menting on whether the labor
director’s resignation is relat-
ed to a whistleblower lawsuit
filed in December.
Jon Hanian, the press sec-
retary for Gov. Butch Otter,
said he could not share any
additional information about
state Labor Director Ken Ed-
munds’ recent departure.
“He offered his resigna-
tion. The governor accepted
it. We are moving forward
and beginning the process for
naming a permanent replace-
ment,” Hanian said in an
email reply to Capital Press.
A whistleblower lawsuit
was filed against the Labor
Department, Edmunds and
two other IDOL supervisors
in U.S. District Court last
December.
That lawsuit, filed by
James Cryer — a 23-year
employee at the department
who was fired in June 2016
— alleges the defendants vi-
olated Idaho’s whistleblower
law and Cryer’s constitution-
al rights to free speech, priva-
cy and freedom from unrea-
sonable search and seizure.
The issue involves intim-
idation and retaliation after
Cryer registered his concerns
as an IDOL purchasing agent
over alleged violations of
state purchasing laws and
rules and his unwillingness
to bend those regulations, ac-
cording to the complaint.
The result of his com-
plaints and anonymous
emails to state officials alert-
ing them to alleged abuses re-
sulted in a subpoenaed search
of his personal cell phone re-
cords and his termination.
Among other things, Cry-
er’s concerns involved alle-
gations of attempted prefer-
ential purchases with vendors
that would evade the required
competitive bidding process.
In addition to raising
concerns with individuals
in IDOL and the Idaho Di-
vision of Purchasing during
2015, Cryer also sent seven
anonymous emails — some
in December 2015 and some
in April 2016 — to state of-
ficials “hoping it would spur
officials to take appropriate
action to stop and cure these
violations,” court documents
state.
“Instead of investigating
the validity of the anony-
mous complaints or taking
measures to address the al-
legations of illegal activi-
ty, IDOL chose to target the
messenger,” the complaint
states.
On June 23, 2016, Ed-
munds terminated Cryer, al-
leging that sending the anon-
ymous emails was “conduct
unbecoming a state employee
or conduct detrimental to good
order and discipline in the de-
partment.”