Annual Report, 2002

IPM in Action: People in the News

Anil Shrestha joined UC IPM as a Regional IPM Advisor/Weed Ecologist in March 2002 and is stationed at Kearney Agricultural Center, Parlier. Anil has several years of experience in weed management, cropping systems, and sustainable agriculture.

Dr. Shrestha's education was international in scope including a B.Sc. in Agriculture from Narendra Dev University, India; a M.S. in Crop and Soil Sciences from Cornell University; a Ph.D. in Crop and Soil Science from Michigan State University; and postdoctoral experience at the University of Guelph, Canada.

His extension and research efforts will encompass row, vegetable, forage, fruit and nut crops, and vegetation management. Anil will focus on weed biology, ecology and eco-physiology, crop-weed competition, cropping systems, agroecology, environmental aspects of vegetation management, and site-specific technology. He is collaborating with UC Cooperative Extension advisors in Tulare and Madera counties on the effect of cotton planting patterns on weed dynamics and is working with an industrial partner and researchers from California State University, Fresno on the effect of elevated CO₂ on tomato-weed competition.

This fall he will work on a canal-bank vegetation management study in collaboration with UC Cooperative Extension Advisors in Madera County. He will also work on projects with the Conservation Tillage Workgroup. Anil has been participating in various county meetings and field days and will be working with Fresno County Farm Advisors Richard Molinar and Kurt Hembree to organize a "Weed School" at Kearney Agricultural Center.

Mary Louise Flint, Director of IPM Education and Publications, received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of integrated pest management from the Association of Applied IPM Ecologists (AAIE). The association, which represents independent pest control advisers, presented the award February 4, 2002 at their annual meeting in Berkeley.

Mary Lou has been with the IPM Program since its inception in 1980. She has been Director of IPM Education and Publications for 22 years, and responsible during that time for overseeing the writing and production of all UC IPM publications. Dr. Flint also holds an appointment as an Extension Entomologist in the Entomology Department at UC Davis.

Tim W. Stock has joined the Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP) to take a leading role in a new collaboration among PSEP, the Western Region Interregional Research Project #4 Program (IR-4), and the California Minor Crops Council.

Collaborators in this project will work with California specialty crop growers, developing and extending training and resources that are designed to reduce environmental and human health hazards and minimize risks associated with managing pests in California’s specialty crops. The project was made possible by a two-year, $1.2 million California Department of Food and Agriculture grant, part of Governor Gray Davis’s Buy California Initiative.

The broad goals of the collaboration will be to develop among specialty crop growers an infrastructure and increased capacity that foster ongoing skillful and safe pest management programs. The expected outcomes include: reduced numbers of human exposures to pesticides; fewer adverse environmental impacts such as drift, groundwater contamination, or nontarget organism kills; adoption or increased utilization of IPM concepts that reduce pesticide use; greater public awareness of pesticide and pest management risks and benefits; and more effective use of reduced risk/knowledge intensive pest management products.

Tim Stock is fluent in Spanish and has a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Extension. He has served as a Farmworker Education Specialist in Washington state and training specialist in Nicaragua.

Forming new relationships is the stock-in-trade of integrated pest management, and the same is true for the Statewide IPM Program. To implement IPM, IPM advisors are located in county Cooperative Extension offices and at Research and Extension Centers. There are IPM advisors with linkages to Extension Regional Centers and the Statewide IPM Program. We now add a county-based farm advisor to our ranks.

This year, we welcome Kern County Entomology Farm Advisor David Haviland. David’s primary responsibility will be to develop a local applied research and extension program for insect pest management in Kern County. The Statewide IPM Program is supporting his local program by providing resources that will enable dissemination of his IPM projects over a wider area, including Tulare and Kings counties. David will interact with other IPM advisors and will participate in the IPM Program’s review of research grants, thus contributing a county UCCE point of view. He will also participate in IPM training and receive support from the other IPM advisors while he develops his projects.

David recently received his Master’s degree from UC Davis in the Plant Protection and Pest Management Program. He is no stranger to UC Cooperative Extension, having conducted research for his Master’s thesis with Larry Godfrey, Entomology Extension Specialist. He also served with the Monterey County Extension office as a field technician for vegetables and vineyard extension. We are certain that the addition of David to the ranks of county IPM advisors will strengthen IPM outreach and implementation in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Rick Melnicoe, Director of the Western Region Center for Pest Management and Statewide Pesticide Coordinator for ANR, has assumed the additional title of Assistant to the Director of the UC IPM Program. This new position will provide a link between the activities of the Western Region Pest Management Center and UC IPM.

Melnicoe will also work with UC IPM in coordinating needs for pesticide information and training within ANR and reviewing UC pesticide recommendations. Another function will be to link the WRPMC Web site with the IPM Information Systems unit.

In a special recognition of their contributions to the Mexico National Training Program Team, Jennifer Weber, Pesticide Safety Educator with UC IPM's Pesticide Safety Education Program, and Grace Robiou, US EPA Office of Pesticide Programs, were jointly awarded US EPA’s Honor Award for Excellence in Teamwork at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.