Mike Hair- interim Farm Advisor for Rice in Colusa and Glenn Counties.

(50% time as Post Graduate Researcher (PGR))

Mike grew up on a rice farm in Louisiana and moved with his family to Davis in 1989. He finished his graduate studies at UCD in 1996 with a PhD in Ecology. His dissertation was on the seedbank dynamics of barnyardgrass and watergrass, which is the most troublesome rice weed. As a graduate student and since 3/98 as a full time PGR Mike has been working on various field projects with the UCD rice group headed by Jim Hill, Dave Bayer, and Albert Fischer. These included a winter vetch cover cropping study, a wild rice study, statewide variety trials, herbicide treatments and evaluation at the Rice Experiment Station at Biggs, and studies on the Delayed Phytotoxic Syndrome (DPS) problem with thiobencarb herbicides. He has been site manager for the rice straw management project at Maxwell for the last 2 years and is now increasingly involved in field projects studying watergrass herbicide resistance management.

The principal duties of the interim advisor is:

1) to continue work on the statewide variety trials,

2) to continue management and weed research at the straw management site,

3) to continue research and monitoring of herbicide resistant watergrass populations.

The rice straw management site is a 72 acre field farmed by Canal Farms, near Maxwell. Fall baling, disk incorporation, and rolling straw treatments in both winter flooded and non-flooded plots are being compared with the conventional practice of burning in an effort to develop information needed by rice growers as they are obligated to cope with increasing burning restrictions. Many UC groups in various disciplines are using the site for research. In particular, straw management practices have been seen to affect disease, insect pests, fertility, and weed control. Mike is presently conducting 3 separate studies within the main plots in an effort to understand just how the straw treatments affect watergrass population dynamics and control.

Watergrass populations resistant to the standard granular grass herbicides (molinate and thiobencarb) are increasing in number. This "epidemic" (as it has been recently described) is perhaps the most serious threat to continued profitable rice production. Alternative herbicides increasingly being used are foliar sprays which require field draining, investment in ground applicators, and have drift problems. A 20 acre site at Maben Farms in Glenn County is now being used to evaluate resistance management and drill seeding. Most alternatives require different water management and other cultural practices. A straw management trial will be initiated at the Maben site in the fall of this year in an attempt to expand and apply the observations we made at the Maxwell straw project for resistance management. At both sites watergrass seedbank sampling and continued monitoring over several years is a key tool for evaluating the various cultural and chemical practices.