Progress 05/13/16 to 04/10/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Landowners and agricultural producers (especially fruit growers) in the Intermountain west. Significant results will be communicated to the scientific community as well. Changes/Problems:We were not able to evaluate the Prunus and Pistacia collections for use as understocks we had insufficient space and time to accomplish this objective. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have used hourly student labor in orchard operations and in fruit evaluation. This has provided students the opportunity to learn pomological skills such as pruning, thinning, and using a refractometer. One graduate student spent a portion of his time learning about research orchard management and he subsequently obtained employment managing one of the UAES research farms that focuses on fruit and vegetable crops. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project leader produced a USU Extension Fact Sheet about growing almonds. The comparison of USU germplasm with NPGS germplasm is still underway and will be published when the work is completed. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have followed the plan of work to the best of our ability and with our resource constraints.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In 2015, Utah State University received a donation of exotic germplasm from a private foundation. Most of the germplasm was poorly maintained, and much of it was poorly labelled or mapped, making it difficult to know the origin of the material. Over the next five years the germplasm was evaluated and much of it was discarded as having either no commercial value or no scientific value. Evaluation of the remaining germplasm is continuing. This report will cover the various species and their current disposition. Walnuts, including black walnuts, English walnuts, hybrids, heartnuts, and butternuts were determined to have no commercial or scientific value. Thus, the orchard in Dayton, Idaho was sold and the trees on Spring Hill in Richmond, Utah are receiving minimal care. We shared nuts from some of the English walnuts with the clonal germplasm repository in California. Pistachios have proven very challenging to propagate. We have attempted stool layering, air layering, budding, and cuttings and we have obtained no success in being able to propagate these trees. Almost all of the trees have now flowered and the females have fruited. We have evaluated the female trees for six years. We have removed trees with small fruit or where the nuts do not dehisce. None of the pistachios appear to have commercial value. Filberts are mostly small and bushy. Some have been damaged by cold winter weather. One bush, originally planted at Dayton, Idaho has largish nuts and may be suitable for home gardens. However, we are unsure if this would be self-fruitful. Apricots are mostly of poor quality. Some of the foundation selections were from inferior parent stock. Most are soft or have low soluble solids content. None of the apricots appear to have commercial value. We have shared some apricots via MTA with Washington State University. Peaches were mostly seedlings from Rutgers University. As a result they are not well adapted to intermountain west conditions. Many were clingstone and many matured too late for our climate. The nectarines have skin finish problems. None of the peach seedlings appear to be superior to existing commercial peaches. We have shared some peach and nectarine germplasm via MTA with Washington State University. Almonds are mostly small. About 10% are bitter. We have sampled every tree and have worked with only the fifty trees with the largest nuts. We have identified about 10 trees that produce nuts with some quality. We have chosen four trees (two pairs of half-sibling trees) that have fruited consistently even through spring frosts. We have propagated some of the almonds and have made a second planting at Kaysville to preserve the germplasm. We have shared some almond germplasm with Washington State University via MTA. In 2020 we subsampled each of the half-sibling groups and extracted DNA from the tissue. We also obtained young leaves from the USDA clonal germplasm repository from their central Asian materials. PCR reactions were done and the data is currently being read at Washington State University. The trees have been maintained to research orchard standards. We have culled the least promising trees. We continue to work with the remaining germplasm. We have established a weather station at the Thatcher orchard and we are maintaining weather records for the orchard.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:New and existing landowners and farmers in the intermountain west who seek to diversify production and marketing opportunities. Changes/Problems:We had significant problems with deer rubbing on the small trees during the late fall of 2019. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Undergraduate students were given a day of pruning experience in the Thatcher orchards. We pruned peach, apricot, and apple trees. We also demonstrated appropriate pruning of bushes. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared additional almond and apricot accessions with Washington State University in 2020 via MTA. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have followed the plan of work in 2020.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During 2020 the germplasm collections at the Thatcher and Spring Hill farms were maintained to research orchard standards. Minimal work was done at the Spring Hill site because those two orchards contain primarily black walnut and our efforts in that area have stopped. Even with late spring frosts we set a good crop of almonds on most of the trees at Thatcher. Twenty-eight almond trees were sampled and nut quality evaluated. About a dozen trees show some promise. None of the seedling almonds have yet produced fruit that can be evaluated. The almond rootstocks that were budded in 2019 were evaluated for success in 2020. We had a significant problem with deer rubbing the trees during the late fall of 2019. Trees that did not have a bud successfully take were budded again in August 2020. Also, peach rootstocks that were budded to almond at Thatcher and Kaysville were re-budded in 2020. This will preserve the best germplasm for further evaluation. Four disclosures were made to USU in December, the first step towards licensing and release. We obtained leaf samples from the USDA Germplasm Repository representing their central Asian materials. We also collected leaves from one tree of about 80 half-sibling groups of trees at Thatcher. DNA was extracted from the immature leaves and PCR reactions are being run to fingerprint the trees. The objective is to see if the USU collection has genetic material that is not represented in the USDA collection. All of the apricots were evaluated at Thatcher in 2020. We determined that 12 trees did not have sufficient quality to continue evaluating. However, when compared to high quality commercially available apricot cultivars, the Thatcher materials are not of similar quality. The peach crop was entirely lost to spring frosts. The trees were maintained in good condition in hopes of a full crop in 2021. The standard trees were damaged by deer rubbing in the late fall of 2019, even with the use of deer repellent. The pistachios bore an excellent crop in 2020. Most of the trees have expressed their sex and the female trees bore enough nuts for evaluation. We sampled all of the female trees and weighed the nuts and noted of the shells that had dehisced. We removed individual trees that produced nuts that were small or where none of the nuts dehisced. We have also begun to remove some male trees that produced few flowers or that don't exhibit vigor. Many of the filbert trees suffered winter injury during the winter of 2019-20. We saw significant dieback in many of the bushes. These have been removed. The bushes moved from Dayton, ID have become established and are doing well.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/18 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:New and existing landowners and farmers in the intermountain west who seek to diversify production and marketing opportunities. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Undergraduate students who worked in the orchards were taught pruning, data collection, evaluation, and recording skills. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared almond and apricot germplasm with Washington State University via MTA. We will share additional germplasm in 2020. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The plan of work was followed in 2019 and will continue in 2020.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During 2019 the germplasm collections in Utah and Idaho were maintained to research orchard standards. The Dayton property was sold in October 2019 and the walnuts, butternuts, and filberts remaining were abandoned. Additional almond seedlings were planted in May 2019 in Thatcher. This will conclude planting of new almond seedlings. The trees will be encouraged to grow and fruit so the nuts can be evaluated. Seedlings planted in 2017 to be used as rootstocks were budded with some of the best selections in August. Success of the budding will be evaluated in spring 2020. We budded the best almonds onto peach rootstocks at Thatcher and Kaysville. This will allow the best germplasm to be preserved when the Thatcher lease expires. We are setting the stage to do a genetic analysis of the almond accessions. Hopefully this will begin in 2020. We evaluated all of the apricots at Thatcher this year. That gave us four years of data and we removed about 70% of the apricot trees. We'll continue to evaluate the remaining apricots. We had an excellent peach crop in 2019. We evaluated every tree. In the fall we removed about 70% of the peach trees as they produced poor quality fruit or were clingstone. We planted three groups of standard cultivars to use as standards for comparison. The filberts we moved from Dayton to Thatcher in 2018 survived the winter and even produced some nuts. Most of the remaining filberts at Thatcher produce nuts that are too small to be of value. We had an excellent crop of pistachios again this year. We are beginning to see alternate bearing on the female trees. Most of the pistachios are small and of modest quality. This year we evaluated the pistachios for dehiscence and removed the trees that produced nuts that did not dehisce. We will also begin to reduce the number of male trees. We have been unsuccessful at vegetatively propagating pistachios. We attempted to propagate some of the best walnuts identified at Richmond via seed. We had zero percent germination. We will be abandoning this walnut germplasm in the spring of 2020 as the lease expires. In consultation with the advisory committee, we have decided to abandon the work on black walnuts. We don't see a black walnut industry being established in the Intermountain West, nor do we see this as a suitable landscape tree.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Presentations
Johnson, S. (Presenter & Author), Roper, T. R. (Author Only), Black, B. L. (Author Only), Cardon, G. (Author Only), Fazio, G. (Author Only), Annual Meeting of the American Society for Horticultural Science, "Salt Tolerance in Apple Rootstocks," American Society for Horticultural Science, Las Vegas, NV. (July 22, 2019 - July 25, 2019)
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Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:New and existing landowners and farmers in the intermountain west who seek to diversify production and marketing opportunities. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Undergraduate students who worked in the orchards were taught pruning, data collection, evaluation, and recording skills. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Pistachio germplasm was shared with a private individual in Utah. We had one event when an unauthorized person collected germplasm but this was referred to USU police who reclaimed the collection. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The plan of work was followed in 2018 and will be followed in 2019.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During 2018 the germplasm collections in Utah and Idaho were maintained to research orchard standards. In early April 2018 we experienced a hard freeze with the overnight low in Thatcher, UT of 18F. Almonds were in full bloom, apricots were just beginning to open and peaches were showing pink at the time of the frost event. That freeze event killed almost all of the peaches and almonds and substantially reduced the crop of apricots. In 2017 we collected seed from selected almond and apricot trees. These were stratified and germinated in a greenhouse, then set out into the field in the spring. The seedlings grew well, much better than the nursery situation we had used in 2017. However, in the fall the seedlings experienced substantial deer browsing despite efforts to protect the young plants. The orchard is fenced, but it is insufficient to keep deer out. We evaluated all of the apricots this year. That gave us three years of data and we have begun to remove inferior plant materials. The apricots at Thatcher experienced significant grasshopper feeding and they did much damage before appropriate bait was put out to control them. Most of the apricots at Richmond were removed this year. The fruit was small and of modest quality. However, one early tree was identified and we have attempted to propagate it at Thatcher. We evaluated the filberts at Dayton and Richmond. We identified four superior individual filberts at Dayton and these plants were moved to Thatcher in the fall after leaf drop. We evaluated the remaining filberts at Richmond, but quality of the nuts in this planting is modest. The filberts in Thatcher suffered from the effects of the frost and produced few nuts and many of those were 'blanks' without a nutmeat inside. The remaining filberts at Dayton are being abandoned. We had an excellent crop of pistachios this year. We are beginning to see alternate bearing on the female trees. Individuals that had a good crop last year produced few if any nuts in 2018. Most of the pistachios are small and of modest quality. However, the Asian plant material we have appears to be hardy in the Intermountain west. We have been working on propagating pistachios. Stool beds have not been successful. Cuttings have not been successful thus far. We have also been working on budding on to existing plant materials, just to learn the techniques. During 2018, the Pyrus and Amelanchier collections were discarded. The Pyrus collection was small and of low quality. The Amelanchier collection was mostly from Saskatchewan and it showed substantial chlorosis from iron deficiency by mid-summer. This germplasm clearly was not adapted to conditions in the Intermountain West. We evaluated the English walnuts at Richmond. Most of the nuts are small, but two trees have large nuts with good quality kernels. Three trees have shown less walnut husk fly damage than neighboring trees. We have collected nuts and will attempt to propagate the best trees via seed to Thatcher. In consultation with the advisory committee, we have decided to abandon the work on black walnuts. We don't see a black walnut industry being established in the Intermountain West, nor do we see this as a suitable landscape tree.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17
Outputs
Target Audience:New and existing landowners and farmers in the intermountain west who seek to diversify production and marketing opportunities. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The PI attended an international symposium on Almonds and Pistachios in Adelaide, Australia in November and made important contacts to further the work. Undergraduate students worked in the orchards and were taught pruning and fruit evaluation skills. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Walnuts from Uzbekistan were shared with the USDA germplasm repository in Davis, CA. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The plan of work was followed in 2017 and I don't see any significant departures during 2018.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During 2017 the germplasm collections in Utah and Idaho were maintained to research orchard standards. We had very cold weather (-25F) in January 2017 that caused significant winter injury on some crops in some locations. The English Walnuts in particular at both Dayton and Richmond suffered winter injury. We also had flooded soils at Dayton as the heavy snow began to melt in March and April. The pistachio germplasm in Thatcher suffered extensive rabbit damage above the snowline during the winter. We collected seed from selected almond, apricot and filbert trees during 2016. These were stratified, planted in the greenhouse, maintained in a nursery through the summer and then planted at Thatcher in the late summer. The apricot and almond germplasm has individuals that will be evaluated as both scions and rootstocks. Unfortunately, the seedlings experienced significant deer browsing in the fall despite efforts to reduce the feeding. We evaluated fruit quality and yield on apricots and peaches. Apricots matured over about a month's period in July and August. We had a good crop in Thatcher, but no crop in Richmond due to a late spring frost. Apricot quality was variable, but most materials are not distinctive and are of modest quality. We have also planted commercial apricot cultivars at Thatcher to have references for fruit quality. Peaches matured through August and September and some into October. We have culled the poorest quality peaches along with the latest to mature. Peaches that mature after the first week of October are too late for Utah conditions. Most of the nectarines are poor quality. We have some green fleshed peaches that are interesting, but probably have no commercial value. We canned peaches from the 25 trees that were the best quality based on 2016 harvest. We have yet to evaluate this fruit. During 2017 we harvested nuts from the 100 trees with the largest nuts based on 2016 collections. We simply don't have the resources to evaluate the smaller fruited trees. Flowering in almond and peach mostly overlapped. Some of the nuts are large and are of commercial quality. Some of the largest nuts have a propensity to double kernels and this is undesirable in the marketplace. Buds from the 25 best almonds were set on peach rootstocks during 2017 and will be further evaluated in 2018 and beyond. The almond crop in 2017 was not as heavy as in 2016 because of poor pollination conditions and I believe the trees are still short of nitrogen. Walnuts, both English and black had almost no crop in 2017 in Dayton and Richmond. We are removing trees that showed evidence of winter injury last winter. This is evidenced by prolific root suckering. The advisory committee and the PI believe that Black Walnuts are not a crop that should be explored further. The existing trees will be maintained, but there is nothing exceptional about their vegetative or fruit traits. We had extensive damage in the butternuts at Dayton as well. Some few individuals show winter hardiness. Work continued by USU and the University of Idaho on thousand canker disease in this population. Trees tested are susceptible to the disease. The U of Idaho work shows promise with fungal antagonists to the disease. We sent walnuts from 12 walnut trees in Thatcher that originated from Uzbekistan seeds to the USDA germplasm repository in Davis, California this fall. This expands their collection to include materials from Uzbekistan that they did not have before. Most of the mature filberts at Dayton were removed. For the remaining plants, the crop was very light because of the cold winter and poor pollination. We are working at propagating some few individuals that show promise. We had extensive rabbit injury in the pistachio plantings at Thatcher. We spent much time pruning out the damage and try to salvage the germplasm. Because of the rabbit injury we had almost no crop in the upper pistachio orchard in 2017. We have wrapped these trees in protective wraps to try to protect them from injury during the coming winter. Less than half of the trees have flowered so we could determine tree sex. We harvested nuts for evaluation from the lower orchard female trees that produced a 2017 crop. Most of the fruit are small and the nuts don't dehisce. Much effort was expended pruning the lower orchard to make pistachio trees rather than bushes. We are discontinuing work on Serviceberries and pears and those plants will be removed to make room for other materials, likely almonds and apricots.
Publications
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Progress 05/13/16 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Target Audience New and existing landowners and farmers in the intermountain west who seek to diversify production and marketing opportunities. Changes/Problems:Changes/Problems Much of the soft fruit at Thatcher was damaged by a late spring hail storm in 2016. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Opportunities None to report for this year How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Dissemination We distributed some few nuts to interested individuals in 2016 via Material Transfer Agreements. This was coordinated and facilitated by the USU Commercialization office. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Plan of Work The plan of work was followed during 2016 and I don't anticipate significant departure from it during 2017.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Accomplishments During 2016 the germplasm collection was maintained to research orchard standards. Some few individuals were culled from the collection. Bloom dates were monitored for the Prunus and Pistacia materials. Because 2016 had a prolonged and mild spring, we had excellent fruit set across the collection. We sampled fruit from all fruiting trees and these samples are in the process of being weighed and evaluated for flavor and texture. Apricots showed great diversity in flowering date with about a 10 day variation from the earliest to the latest flowering. Maturity date showed greater diversity with a month difference between the earliest and latest maturing accessions. Fruit quality was also variable with some showing excellent quality and others being soft and mushy. We identified 25 individual trees that produce excellent quality fruit that will be propagated for further evaluation in 2017. Peaches were also variable in flowering date and peaches matured over a prolonged period from late July into October. Some few did not soften and remained on the trees until frozen. The quality of the peaches was highly variable with some being very good and others being very bad. I did not thin the peaches sufficiently, so the fruit tended to be small. We also experienced hail in late May that damaged both peaches and apricots at Thatcher, Utah. Pistachios matured in September and October. The nuts were mostly small, but of good quality. Only about 40% of the pistachio trees flowered and of those that flowered about 60% were male. Some trees produced good quality nuts that did not dehisce. Others produced small nuts that did dehisce. We also made a planting of diverse Pistacia germplasm at the UAES Nephi farm. The trees should germinate in the spring. It is unlikely they will survive the non-irrigated conditions there. The almond collection has huge diversity in bloom date, size, and quality. The earliest individuals flowered in March and the latest were well into April. The flowering of peach and almond mostly overlapped. Fruit set in almonds was excellent in 2016. Because this is largely a seedling population from Asia the fruit is highly variable. About 10-15% of the trees produce bitter almonds. Many of the fruit are small and not of commercial value. However, we have identified about 10 individuals for further evaluation. We also identified 25 individuals that will be working with as potential rootstocks for Almond. Black walnut trees were evaluated for susceptibility to Thousand Canker disease. The collection appears to have some individuals that show resistance to this fungal disease. The University of Idaho conducted a small trial testing a pathogen of the thousand canker disease organism. Black walnuts did not produce substantial quantities of nuts this year. Further, it is not clear how these should be evaluated, if at all. English walnut trees at both Richmond and Dayton, Idaho produced good crops of nuts. We had significant infestations of walnut husk fly, although some few individuals were not affected. Most of the English walnuts are of good quality, but are small by commercial standards. Filbert quality was also variable. Most produced very small nuts, but some few individuals produced nuts of good quality and size, but smaller than those produced in Oregon. One tree in particular has shown promise based on nut size and quality and this will be propagated in 2017. I made contact with the USDA Germplasm repository at Davis, California this fall and we are working towards comparing the diversity of the Thatcher collection to that found in Davis.
Publications
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