10
CapitalPress.com
Friday, February 25, 2022
Massive research eff ort will develop wheat for changing climates
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
The University of Cali-
fornia-Davis is leading a $15
million, fi ve-year research
project to accelerate wheat
breeding to meet new climate
realities and train a new gen-
eration of plant breeders.
A USDA National Insti-
tute of Food and Agricul-
ture grant will create a coor-
dinated consortium of 41
wheat breeders and research-
ers from 22 institutions in
20 states. Researchers from
Mexico and the United King-
dom are also participating.
UC-Davis plant sciences
professor Jorge Dubcovsky,
who leads the research, said
the eff ort is a continuation of
public breeding eff orts. The
researchers have been work-
ing together for the last 20
years, he said.
“You cannot create a gen-
eral, magic, climate-resis-
tant wheat,” Dubcovsky told
the Capital Press. “What you
do is accelerate your breed-
ing cycles and try to be more
effi cient, so you are always
catching up with the varia-
tion on the environment that
you are breeding for.”
The project will provide
a centralized facility to ana-
lyze data from growers and
breeding programs, to pro-
vide more information faster
about the varieties under
development. The data will
be entered into a central data-
base, Dubcovsky said.
Four
high-throughput
USDA genotyping labs are
part of the project, which
will allow all data collected
from growers and breeders
and genetic information to
select varieties faster, Dub-
covsky said.
“Breeding is always
local,” Dubcovsky said.
“The varieties that are good
for Texas are not the same
that are good for the Pacifi c
Northwest, and are com-
pletely diff erent than the vari-
eties we grow in California.”
Yield is always one of
the highest priorities, to feed
more people, he said. As cli-
mate changes, pathogen pop-
ulations shift and can become
a high priority. Drought resis-
UC-Davis
UC-Davis plant sciences professor Jorge Dubcovsky
with wheat plants. Dubcovsky is leading a national re-
search eff ort to coordinate and develop wheat varieties
in response to the changing climate.
tance and baking quality are
other key traits.
“Quality and disease
resistance, we understand
the genetics very well,” Dub-
covsky said. “Yield is more
complicated. Each year,
what makes the top variety
yield better is diff erent than
the next year. If one year
there’s a lot of wind, the vari-
ety that doesn’t shatter will
be the top variety. If the next
year there’s a lot of rain and
you have lodging, the variety
that doesn’t lodge will be the
best one. The next year, you
have a lot of (pathogen pres-
sure), and only the varieties
that will be resistant will be
the best one. Every year, you
get diff erent results. It’s not
that easy to integrate all that
information.”
The database will help
breeders determine which
varieties will work best in
which part of the country, he
said.
Washington State Uni-
versity, University of Idaho
and the USDA Agricultural
Research Service branch
in Washington are among
those participating in the
consortium.
“These
eff orts
will
directly contribute to PNW
variety development for both
winter and spring wheat pro-
grams at WSU,” WSU spring
wheat breeder Mike Pum-
phrey said.
The project will also help
train future plant breeders.
Twenty Ph.D. students in
breeding programs will par-
ticipate in fi eldwork, col-
lect data from drones and
DNA samples, and learn to
integrate that information
to accelerate wheat breed-
ing. The students will partic-
ipate in online and face-to-
face workshops, educational
events and national scientifi c
conferences.
Much of plant breeding
has moved into the private
sector, so there are fewer
public breeding programs
releasing varieties in the
U.S., Dubcovsky said.
“You cannot train plant
breeders if you don’t have
a breeding program,” Dub-
covsky said. “We are using
all these technologies also
to prepare students (for) the
place where they will be
working.”
Large private companies
have similar abilities to col-
lect data and select traits.
“It’s kind of putting the
public breeding programs at
the same level (as) the mod-
ern private breeding com-
panies, so then we can train
students in modern plant
breeding,” Dubcovsky said.
Dubcovsky has been
breeding wheat at UC-Da-
vis since 1997. He estimates
he’s released 20 wheat
varieties.
“My goal is to have some-
thing better than what the
growers have in the fi eld
today,” he said. “The main
benefi t of this large grant
is not a particular trait or a
thing. It’s to help us coor-
dinate all the breeding pro-
grams and train all the stu-
dents as a group. It will
allow us to avoid duplica-
tion of eff ort, to move eff orts
together. ... The important
thing is the coordination.”
Lawsuit fi led to halt BLM salvage
logging in North Umpqua watershed
Idaho Legislature panel backs bill on
Anderson Ranch Reservoir water right
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
By BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
EUGENE, Ore. — Envi-
ronmental groups have fi led
another lawsuit to block
post-wildfi re salvage logging
in Oregon’s Umpqua River
watershed.
Cascadia Wildlands, Ore-
gon Wild and the Klam-
ath-Siskiyou Wildlands Cen-
ter are challenging the Bureau
of Land Management’s plans
to cut down 12,562 acres of
dead and burned trees from
the Archie Creek fi re, one
of several large blazes that
amounted to a record wildfi re
season for western Oregon in
2020.
The complaint was fi led
Feb. 8 in U.S. District Court in
Eugene. It accuses the BLM
of rushing through its analysis
of the project, without consid-
ering impacts to spotted owl
habitat, protected streams and
old-growth forests.
A spokesperson for the
BLM said the agency does
not comment on pending
litigation.
The Archie Creek fi re
burned more than 130,000
acres, including 39,900
acres of BLM forestland. In
response, the agency autho-
rized salvage logging to
improve public safety and
recover economic value from
damaged trees.
It is the largest post-fi re
logging project in Oregon
following the 2020 wildfi res,
according to the lawsuit.
Yet
environmentalists
argue the BLM did not prop-
erly consider what eff ects the
work will have on the land-
scape. Agency offi cials pub-
lished an Environmental
Assessment for the Archie
Creek Project in August
A bill in the Idaho Leg-
islature addresses the state’s
application for the right to
additional water stored in
the Anderson Ranch Reser-
voir after it is expanded.
The House Resources
& Conservation Com-
mittee Feb. 17 voted to
send House Bill 584 to the
full House with a do-pass
recommendation.
The Legislature last
year and in 2020 appropri-
ated money to raise Ander-
son Ranch Dam, northeast
of Mountain Home, and is
considering adding funding
this year. The Idaho Water
Resource Board fi led a
water right application with
the Department of Water
Resources for the additional
volume.
The department director
evaluates every water right
application by certain crite-
ria set in state law.
HB 584 confi rms that cer-
tain elements of that criteria
are met — but continues to
require the director to con-
sider other criteria, includ-
ing the impact on existing
water rights.
The bill “declares that
the application is made in
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press File
Hillsides such as this one in the Glide, Ore., area were
blackened by the Archie Creek Fire in 2020.
2021, which only studied
two issues in detail — the
economic benefi ts derived
from logging, and impacts to
water and soil quality.
By narrowing the scope
of the analysis, the law-
suit claims that BLM “pro-
actively eliminated a host
of other social and envi-
ronmental impacts from
consideration” in fi nding
the project had no signifi -
cant environmental impact,
thereby side-stepping a more
thorough report under the
National Environmental Pol-
icy Act.
Specifi cally, the groups
said the BLM did not gauge
how logging would aff ect
endangered northern spot-
ted owl habitat. Fifty-four
spotted owl home ranges
are within the project area,
where the birds roost, nest
and forage.
“Post-fi re logging can
negatively aff ect owl use of
these areas and exacerbate
any negative eff ects associ-
ated with high-severity wild-
fi res,” the lawsuit states.
“The BLM’s failure to take
a hard look at the impacts
of this extensive logging is
illegal.”
Under the BLM’s 2016
Northwestern and Coastal
Oregon Resource Manage-
ment Plan, it originally antic-
ipated roughly 2,000 acres of
salvage logging across the
region from 2013 to 2063.
Instead, this one project calls
for more than fi ve times that
amount, raising alarm among
opponents.
Doug Heiken, conserva-
tion and restoration coor-
dinator for Oregon Wild,
described the project as an
“overzealous timber sale”
that will impact key tribu-
taries of the North Umpqua
River.
“Claims that there will be
no impact from clear-cutting
recently burned forests are
simply untrue and unjustifi -
able,” he said.
This is not the only law-
suit challenging salvage log-
ging from the Archie Creek
fi re.
Last year, Cascadia Wild-
lands, Oregon Wild and
Umpqua Watersheds sued
the Umpqua National For-
est to block salvage logging
along 65 miles of Forest Ser-
vice roads where the fi re
burned. Nick Cady, legal
director for Cascadia Wild-
lands, said a settlement may
be coming soon in that case.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Anderson Ranch Dam in Elmore County, Idaho.
good faith and not for delay
or speculative purposes,” its
purpose statement reads.
The statement said the
legislation addresses issues
that have arisen concern-
ing how the director eval-
uates water right appli-
cations for large storage
projects. It would allow the
board to focus on project-re-
lated issues other than estab-
lishing criteria in the rights
process.
The Idaho Water Users
Association proposed HB
584. Committee members
asked if it changes or adds
evaluation criteria, and if
the department director sup-
ports it.
Paul Arrington, asso-
ciation executive director
and general counsel, said it
states certain criteria are met
in the application. It does
not change criteria used
for evaluating this or other
rights applications.
He said an association
committee developed the
current proposal and ear-
lier drafts with input from
state water managers, com-
munities and various water
organizations.
The reservoir can hold
413,000 acre-feet of water.
Plans call for raising the
456-foot dam by 6 feet,
which would add 29,000
acre-feet of capacity.
USDA provides premium benefi t for cover crops
Capital Press
Agricultural producers
who have coverage under
most crop insurance policies
are eligible for a premium
benefi t from USDA if they
planted cover crops during
the 2022 crop year.
To receive the bene-
fi t from this year’s Pan-
demic Cover Crop Program
(PCCP), producers must
report cover crop acreage by
March 15.
This year’s program
comes on the heels of the
recently announced Part-
nerships for Climate-Smart
Commodities, which cre-
ates market opportunities
for U.S. agricultural and for-
estry products who use cli-
mate-smart production prac-
tices and include innovative,
cost-eff ective ways to mea-
sure and verify greenhouse
gas benefi ts.
PCCP, off ered by USDA’s
Risk Management Agency,
helps farmers maintain their
cover crop systems despite
the fi nancial challenges
posed by the pandemic.
It is part of USDA’s Pan-
demic Assistance for Pro-
ducers initiative, a bundle of
programs to bring fi nancial
assistance to farmers, ranch-
ers and producers who felt
the impact of COVID-19
market disruptions.
“Producers use cover
crops to improve soil health
and gain other agronomic
benefi ts, and this program
will reduce producers’ over-
all premium bill to help
ensure producers can con-
tinue this climate-smart
agricultural practice,” said
Marcia
Bunger,
RMA
administrator.
PCCP was fi rst off ered
in 2021, and producers with
crop insurance received
$59.5 million in premium
subsidies for 12.2 million
acres of cover crops.
PCCP provides pre-
mium support to produc-
ers who insured their crop
with most insurance poli-
cies and planted a qualifying
cover crop during the 2022
crop year. The premium sup-
port is $5 per acre, but no
more than the full premium
amount owed.
WE SPECIALIZE IN BULK BAGS!
BAGS:
• Seed Bags
• Fertilizer Bags
• Feed Bags
• Potato Bags
• Printed Bags
• Plain Bags
• Bulk Bags
• Totes
• Woven Polypropylene
• Bopp
• Polyethylene
• Pocket Bags
• Roll Stock & More!
HAY PRESS SUPPORT:
• Hay Sleeves
• Strap
• Totes
• Printed or Plain
• Stretch Film
(ALL GAUGES)
WAREHOUSE
PACKAGING:
• Stretch Film
• Pallet Sheets
• Pallet Covers
LOCATIONS:
Albany, Oregon (MAIN OFFICE)
Ellensburg, Washington
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Phone: 855-928-3856
Fax: 541-497-6262
info@westernpackaging.com
.......................................................
CUSTOMER SERVICE
IS OUR TOP PRIORITY!
w w w. w e s t e r n p a c k a g i n g. c o m
Best Prices on Irrigation Supplies
Fast & Free Shipping from Oregon
10% OFF
1-844-259-0640
PROMO CODE:
www.irrigationking.com
S280998-1
CAP10
S280802-1