California Citrus Research

So my other purpose for the trip to CA was to check up on Research trials.  We have a foliar fertilizer experiment in citrus, or more specifically in Mandarin oranges.  This is South of Stockton, where AgroLiquid's California manufacturing plant is located.  Now who doesn't love a sweet, easy to peel Mandarin?  If your hand is  raised, please leave.  This is kind of a different situation as this is a sizable ranch with citrus and tree nuts, but the manager also does contract research.  

Well as luck would have it, there were Agro reinforcements. Here we see me, SAM Armando, the other CA SAM Dylan, chemist Chris and Agronomist JW.  Obviously this is overkill for personnel, but we were travelling on different missions, and met up here to see what's up in the research trial.  So it was a good thing to collaborate and exchange thoughts.  Which we did. I now see that the guys from Michigan are wearing short sleeves.  I guess we didn't exchange thoughts on that.  One of the research assistants showed us around and took this pic.

I was here last March to set up the trial and the trees were just about to flower.  Now you can see the oranges, although green.  They will be harvested in December.  I probably won't be back, but would love to take a bite of some sweet  Agro Fruit.  You can see the drip irrigation hose on the ground.  Without water and nutrients from that: no trees.  Very dry here.

We looked at the different tree plots.  Of course our unbiased eye thought the Agro foliar looked best.  We are testing two different foliar programs.  One simple and one more complex.  While simple is easy, is it as good as the complex one?  Time will tell.    

There were four foliar applications applied through the growing season, the last being in September as the fruit is gaining size.  Foliar fertilizer applications are quite common in citrus, so we look for a new market there.  Chris and JW wonder what Dylan is doing across the way in those other trees.  What do you think those trees are?

Those are pistachio trees.  I took this pic last March  from pretty close to the above pic.  Unlike the pistachios, citrus trees are evergreens, and keep their leaves.  The trees all look bigger now in late September.  Now who doesn't love to eat a handful of delicious pistachio nuts?  If your hand is raised, well you know the drill.

So we hope to have research in pistachios and other tree nut crops in the future.  There is AgroLiquid used on these crops, but research would be good support for wider use.  And who doesn't support wider use?