Page 8
East Oregonian/Hermiston Herald
Farmer
testing
mineral
oil to
protect
potatoes
By JOHN O’CONNELL
EO Media Group
ASHTON, Idaho —
Eastern Idaho farmer Clen
Atchley is conducting an
experiment in his seed potato
¿elds to determine if mineral
oil can effectively protect his
crops from diseases spread
by aphids.
He may start using
mineral oil routinely if
winter
seed-certi¿cation
testing in Hawaii con¿rms
the 130 acres he sprayed
this season with the low-cost
protectant harbor less virus
than his other seed ¿elds.
Though Atchley is a
pioneer with the product in
his home state, mineral oil
has become a ubiquitous
tool among Montana’s
early generation potato seed
growers in recent years.
A small
percentage
of disease can mean a
substantial economic hit
in the earliest stages of
seed production, including
nuclear seed, which is the
¿rst seed crop planted in
native soil, or the subsequent
crop, called generation 1.
“For nuclear seed and
generation 1, I can’t think of
a single (Montana) grower
who isn’t using mineral oil,”
said Nina Zidack, Montana’s
seed potato certi¿cation
director. “A number of them
are using it in generation 2,
and there are some people
who are using it to a limited
extent in generation 3.”
Atchley said he decided
to give the product a try
based on a conversation with
Dan Lake, a Ronan, Mont.,
seed grower, during the
National Potato Council’s
annual meeting in July. The
product is cheap — less than
$5 per acre — but Atchley
said Montana seed growers
spray it on a weekly basis,
and application costs can be
considerable.
Atchley ultimately opted
to try mineral oil in a tank
mix this season because he
had to aerially apply fungi-
cides every 10 days anyway
to control late blight. Atchley
said an early spring led to
extreme aphid pressure this
season, and he used the oil
in conjunction with his usual
insecticide program.
“If we wind up with
considerably less virus,
(mineral oil) will be some-
thing we use more of for
sure,” Atchley said.
Retired University of
Idaho Extension potato
pathologist Phil Nolte once
tried mineral oil in an Idaho
trial, with poor results. He
suspects he didn’t apply the
product often enough.
Montana State University
plant pathologist Barry
Jacobsen has assisted in
mineral oil trials in Herm-
iston, Ore., with Zidack
and Phil Hamm, director of
the Hermiston Agricultural
Research and Extension
Center.
Jacobsen
explained
mineral oil blocks certain
aphid-vectored
diseases,
such as potato virus Y, from
being transmitted from an
insect to a leaf, or vice versa.
Once the oil dries on a leaf,
Jacobsen said it doesn’t
easily wash away.
In the Hermiston trials, he
said an integrated program
involving scouting ¿elds
for infected plants, applying
insecticide
and
using
mineral oil reduced heavy
virus infection by up to 80
percent. He said oil alone
cuts infections in half, which
is far better than insecticide
alone. He said many gener-
ation 3 growers in Montana
have also had great luck with
spraying only ¿eld borders,
given that aphids often
enter ¿elds from the edges.
Jacobsen warns growers
mineral oil can’t be tank
mixed with certain fungi-
cides, such as Bravo.
“If I had to pick some-
thing you’re going to spray,
oil is by far the best thing,”
Jacobsen said.
FARM FAIR
November 2015
Onion growers relieved by
FDA’s ¿nal rule on water quality
By SEAN ELLIS
EO Media Group
ONTARIO — Idaho and
Oregon onion growers say
they can live with the water
quality provisions included
in the )'A¶s ¿nal produce
safety rule, which was
released Nov. 13.
Two years ago, they
were worried the proposed
water quality provisions in
FDA’s originally proposed
produced rule could put
them out of business. But
industry of¿cials said the
FDA heard their concerns
and re-wrote the rule in a
way that onion growers are
OK with.
To go from a rule that
would
have
seriously
impacted the economics
of the onion industry “to
a rule that’s livable for us
and allows us to stay in
business is a huge victory,”
said Kay Riley, chairman of
the Idaho-Eastern Oregon
Onion Committee.
:hen FDA ¿rst proposed
its produce safety rule in
2013, it included water
quality standards limiting
how much generic E. coli
bacteria could be present in
agricultural water.
If the water didn’t meet
those standards, farmers had
to immediately stop using
it. Virtually none of the
surface water used by onion
growers in Eastern Oregon
and Southwestern Idaho
meets those standards.
The water quality stan-
dards still e[ist in the ¿nal
rule.
But FDA altered them
to allow growers to meet
the standards, even if their
water exceeds the minimum
bacteria levels, if they can
show through scienti¿c
evidence that bacteria dies
off at a certain rate from the
last day of irrigation until
harvest.
The bulb onions grown
in this region are left in
the ¿eld to dry for a few
weeks following harvest.
Field trials by Oregon State
University researchers have
shown these onions will
meet the so-called die-off
provisions.
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
Yellow onions grown in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho and Oregon are sorted at the JC Watson Co. packing
facility in Parma, Idaho, Sept. 15. Growers say they can live with the water quality provisions included in the
FDA’s final produce safety rule, which was released Nov. 13.
“The thing that’s great
about it is they actually
listened to us,” Riley said.
“I would deem it a tremen-
dous victory compared to
what it could have been.”
But the ¿nal rule still
requires farmers to test
their water annually,
even if they meet the
die-off
provisions.
Onion growers say the
testing will be costly and
time-consuming and they
hope to be able to skip
them.
“They are still going to
require testing and that’s
going to be the hardest
thing to deal with,” said
Stuart Reitz, an OSU
cropping systems exten-
sion agent in Ontario.
“The ¿nal rule is not ideal
but it’s not that bad. It’s
one onion growers can
live with.”
Reitz said the industry
is working with FDA
to see if it’s possible an
entity such as an irrigation
district could conduct water
quality tests in canals and
have the results apply to a
large group of farmers.
“That would get each
individual farm out from
having to do the testing
themselves,” he said. “We
really need to get some
more details from FDA on
what type of format that
would potentially be.”
According to the FDA
rule, farmers may use data
collected by a third party,
such as an irrigation district,
but the “testing data may
only be shared if there is
no reasonably identi¿able
source of likely microbi-
ological
contamination
between the sampling sites
and the farms involved.”
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