Lettuce Days 2016 - part 2

See part 1 here:  http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2016/02/lettuce-days-2016-part-1.html

After seeing the research labs inside, we then headed outside to see a few of the research fields nearby.

This is a field producing lettuce seed - seeds that will probably be commercially available sometime around 2019. He said that they hand-cut the lettuce and roll it into windrows to dry. It is then combined to remove the seed. I think he said that the seed from here would go to California to get another production of seed during the summer (when it is too hot here) and then will come back here to Yuma for another round of seed production in the fall.

On the left is a field of spinach on which they are going to be testing a number of organic fertilizers to try to determine which is most effective. These are dry applications and will be applied by hand. I think he said that they are going to be testing 7 types of fertilizers and each will be applied 4 times. You might be able to see pink flags near the irrigation pipe - flags like those will be used to delineate the which plants are treated with which fertilizer.

This romaine lettuce field is just to the right of the spinach in the previous picture. Here they are trying to figure out why the romaine lettuce is yellowing. Kurt said that they are trying 100 different options to treat the plants to address the yellowing. "Stuff you can't google...."

This is a crop of wheat/rye cross (triticale) - Kurt said that a lady named Nancy Elliott (a senior citizen but still very active in plant research) was hand pollinating in this field as part of research that she was particularly interested in. I found a research paper that she and Kurt participated on writing in this area: https://ashs.confex.com/ashs/2009/webprogram/Paper2795.html

There are all different irrigation techniques used here. In the very small area that we visited, there were crops being irrigated by flood irrigation (the picture of the triticale shows the cracked soil of land that was flooded about 2 weeks ago), spray irrigation (the spinach and romaine lettuce) and drip irrigation. He indicated here that with the drip irrigation, they can introduce specific chemicals into the water, possibly controlling even what each row receives.

This was another area where they were helping in seed development - in this case, you might be able to tell that there are 4 rows of cauliflower that are blooming or close to it. The second from the left are "female" plants, and they are somewhat behind the majority of the male plants. What he is looking for are male plants that will be blooming at the same time as the female plants so they can be effective in producing seed with the female plants. This process is called "nicking".

Plants that were previously "nicked" - I think this was actually broccoli - goes into a shade structure like this. There are bees in there to do the pollination, and the shade structure protects from outside influences.

On to part 3 here: http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2016/02/lettuce-days-2016-part-3.html