Project Number: 5310-12130-009-02
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Feb 02, 2009
End Date: Nov 30, 2013

Objective:
Conduct research to develop new and improved methods to manage pesticides and other organic agricultural chemicals to maintain healthy agricultural systems. Study the fate and transport of agricultural chemicals and investigate the effect of various soil and environmental processes that affect chemical movement in soil. Conduct research that provides "real-world" solutions to improve efficacy, reduce cost and foster a healthy environment. Develop new low-cost management approaches that minimize volatile emissions to the atmosphere, and transport to surface water and ground water.

Approach:
An experimental site will be developed in Field 2B (UC-Riverside AgOps) to test the effectiveness of using solar heat pulsing to sterilize soils in preparation for planting various specialty crops. The experimental design will include standard 40” raised beds and have a bare-soil control and three solarization treatments with three replicates. Soil temperatures and heat flux throughout the raised-bed will be measured for several weeks. Various meteorological measurements will be made to allow determination of the solar energy input to the experiment. Several plant pests will be placed in the beds, be subjected to solarization for 4-6 weeks and then assayed for survival. After the solarization period, the plots will be fumigated with approximately 40% and 70% of the standard rate of Telone Inline to determine if pest control improvement occurs. The experiment will also include a negative control (no solarization, no fumigation) and standard fumigation treatments. Once the data is available, a modeling study will be conducted to investigate the heat transport and fate and transport of fumigant chemicals in the soil beds. Formerly 5310-12130-008-04S (11/10).