Barley harvest shows promise for summer trials

Interior Alaska is still under its winter blanket of snow, but inside the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station greenhouses on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Troth Yeddha’ campus, it’s harvest time.

Jakir Hasan, a research assistant professor for small grain crops breeding, gathered barley seeds from around the world — Canada, Russia, Egypt, Libya, Finland and France, among many others. He also included seeds from Sunshine barley, a hulless variety developed at AFES and released commercially in 2009. From these, he created about 5,000 new strains of barley, which he planted in the greenhouse in mid-December.

His goal, he said, is to create strains of barley that Alaska farmers can grow for food and for animal feed, as well as to look for a strain of malting barley for local distilleries. “If we can provide the barley from our program, that’s a win-win both for Alaska barley and the Institute,” Hasan said.

In mid-March, the greenhouse is full of barley of varying heights and stages of maturity. Some plants are tall, green and strong with full heads of seed. Others are yellowing and stunted with small seedheads.

Hasan said he is focused on developing barley strains with traits such as a high grain yield and a strong stem to keep the plant standing upright. In addition, Hasan is looking for barley that will mature in the same window as Sunshine barley, which is about 70 days.

One of the promising strains in the greenhouse is a combination of Russian and Sunshine barleys. It is producing 80-100 seeds per head, well above the standard 40-60 seeds. It matured in 70-72 days, as well. He is also looking for plants that can grow taller than Sunshine, which is only about 2 feet tall, without their stems bending or breaking. About 3 feet is an ideal height, he said.

Early in the process, he weeded out the plants that simply did not thrive or seemed susceptible to disease. From the plants that are left, he will harvest the seeds from the best 400 lines and plant them in test plots this summer in Fairbanks. He will also plant some strains in Delta Junction. Each plot will consist of the seeds from a single head of barley.

While the greenhouse can showcase promising traits, he said, he won’t know if a strain is successful until it is grown in the field, with wind, rain and the Interior’s long days of sunlight factored in.

He will take the best 40 strains from the 2024 trials, plant them this winter and repeat the process until he has winnowed out the best three or four strains that look promising for commercial growers. Overall, he is two years into a process that he predicts will take no more than 10 years maximum from seed crosses to new varieties arriving in the hands of farmers.

Sapmi Boazu — A visit to the Sami Reindeer Husbandry Range of Finland

Jackie Hrabok, UAF's Northwest Campus assistant professor of High Latitude Range Management, hosted and led an international cultural exchange for the Alaska Reindeer Directors. Delegates were from Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island, the Kawerak Reindeer Herders Association and the Kawerak Environmental Department.

The goals of the two-week overseas experience Nov. 11-24, 2023, were to interact with the Indigenous Sami and learn about their livelihood as reindeer herders north of 69 degree latitude in Finland. They toured reindeer-specific facilities and had business meetings with key colleagues: commercial slaughterhouses and a tannery, Sami Education Institute Reindeer Husbandry and Applied Arts Departments, reindeer roundups, Kutuharju research herd, and the Finnish Reindeer Herders Association headquarters.

Delegates included Ed Kiokun, Nunivak Island Mekoryuk; Terry Don, CEO of Nunivak Island Mekoryuk; Nathan Baring, director of Kawerak Reindeer Herders Association; and Anahma Shannon, Director of Kawerak Environmental Department.

Delegates have returned home to Alaska with new ideas to increase workforce development, commercial meat sales, and value-added byproduct production, all stemming from the development of the Alaska reindeer industry.

If you want to learn more about Alaska's reindeer industry, check out Part III of Sun and Soil's podcast "Feeding the Last Frontier: A Reindeer Called Rhonda," which features Hrabok. She also lists several books that have excellent information on reindeer. Sun and Soil is produced by C.C. Clark and Noah Spickelmier. You can find it:

IG, FB, TikTok: @sunandsoilpodcast

YouTube: @sunandsoil

email: sunandsoilpodcast@gmail.com

website: sunandsoilpod.com

Agrivoltaics debut at the 2023 Food and Farm Festival

Leaders in agriculture, farming, and cooking convened in downtown Anchorage for the 2023 Alaska Food and Farm Festival. Bookended by two bouts of heavy snowfall, the conference took place on the sunny reprieve during the weekend of Nov. 10-12.

Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension Co-Investigator Glenna Gannon and ACEP Researcher Savannah Crichton attended the festival to build community around a new project, Agrivoltaics: Unlocking Mid-Market Solar in Rural Northern Climates. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and CleanCapital, the research team includes collaborators from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska Pacific University, and Renewable IPP.

Crichton opened the presentation with the definition of agrivoltaics: the co-use of land for both solar and agricultural production. In the Lower 48, solar farms consist of panels spaced close together, meaning that farming or animal grazing usually takes place underneath the panels.

In northern latitudes, the angle of the sun is much lower, meaning panels need to be spaced farther apart to prevent shading each other. Solar farms with this design, like the new 8.5-megawatt farm in Houston, Alaska, have ample room between panels for crop plots.

Utilizing the state of Alaska’s largest solar farm, the research team will monitor the responses of vegetables, grazing crops, and wild edibles. Crichton said that the same plot of land will sell clean energy to Matanuska Electric Association while also providing the community with fresh produce.

Gannon reviewed the overarching objectives of the research with the crowd: increasing food sovereignty and energy security in Alaska and other northern climates. By involving stakeholders from the inception of the project, community voices provide a grounded understanding of how agrivoltaics may be adopted and the anticipated barriers or benefits.

At the end of their talk, Gannon and Crichton shared a QR code allowing people to sign up for the stakeholder pool. They spent the next few hours engaging with conference attendees, explaining how their organizations or farms could participate and eventually adopt agrivoltaic systems.

From farmers across the state, there is a desire to adopt innovative, renewable systems that could also potentially boost their crop production. For communities, this means strengthening local food systems.

Agrivoltaics research will provide interested parties with agricultural yield data, PV performance data, and a techno economic analysis. These figures will guide the next generation of farmers, utilities, solar industries, tribal entities, and government agencies toward renewable, regenerative growing technologies.

Hazelnuts a new trial crop in Alaska

Self-described "plant fanatic" Josh Smith is behind one of the new crops in both Palmer and Fairbanks: Hazelnuts.

Smith grew up in North Pole and has been growing food his whole life. During his Air Force career, he was stationed in North Dakota, where he noticed farmers growing hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, apricots and pears in conditions that were not so different from Fairbanks.

"I started thinking, wow, there's so much potential in cold climates," he said.

He ended his career at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage and immediately started testing some of the crops he had seen in his travels, including hazelnuts. One of the hazelnut trees at his home in Chugiak is 7 years old. He's also growing walnuts and chestnuts.

“Hazelnuts are one of the most resilient crops you can grow,” Smith said. “They’re drought-resistant, they’re flood-resistant. They’re resistant to cold and heat and every extreme you can imagine."

Hazelnuts are low-growing, bushy trees or shrubs, topping out at about 15 feet. Although plants produce both male and female blossoms, they do not self-pollinate, so multiple trees are needed to produce nuts.

"Not only do they serve as a valuable food source, but there's biofuels, there's oils we can extract from the nuts,” he said. Hazelnuts can also be used in alley cropping, the practice of interspersing perennial crops with annual crops, which could sequester carbon, hold water and reduce erosion.

A North Dakota farmer who has been growing hazelnuts for 30 years in an area with winter temperatures of minus 40 degrees, gave Smith a bag full of hazelnuts, which he sprouted. Some are planted at the Matanuska Experiment Farm, some at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm, and others in various locations in both Southcentral and Interior Alaska.

"I've known (UAF professor emeritus) Patricia Holloway for years," Smith said. "She and I have go back and forth when it comes to talking plants. I ended up mentioning hazelnuts, and realized I had some extras." He asked if Holloway was interested in trying hazelnuts in some of the microclimates around Fairbanks to test their hardiness.

"Some of these could be reliable at Zone 2 or even Zone 1, but the only way we're going to find out is planting a large number of them across Alaska and see what sticks," he said.

Glenna Gannon, assistant professor of Sustainable Food Systems at UAF, and Katie DiCristina, manager of Georgeson Botanical Garden, agreed to plant hazelnuts in the garden, as well in the agriculture field across the railroad tracks and about 100 feet lower in elevation from the garden. Gannon planted the seedlings in late September, nestling the young plants in compost and layering with a frost cloth to protect them as much as possible.

Smith's hazelnuts in Chukiak haven't produced yet, but a friend in South Anchorage has picked ripe hazelnuts from his bushes.

"Part of this is we want to start developing new crops and part of this is we really want to hit the point home that things are changing here in Alaska and my big mission is food security," Smith said. "The fact is you guys don't hit negative 50 every year nowadays, and the fact that your growing season is getting longer, that's opening up a lot of potential that wouldn't have existed even 20 years ago. "How do you bring people into that conversation? You do something bold, and I think these hazelnuts are part of that."

Restoration of vetch infestations to pollinator-friendly habitat

— Gino Graziano

Bird vetch is commonly seen climbing fences and trees along roadsides in Southcentral and Interior Alaska. Unfortunately, this isn’t good for the trees and other plants that vetch climbs and smothers along roadsides and where it begins to grow into forests which has led many of us to consider the plant invasive and in need of management. On the other hand, those pretty purple flowers are fairly attractive to some pollinators, and because pollinators are so important, we don’t want to remove pollinator habitat when we remove the bird vetch.

Here is where research at the Matanuska Experiment Farm is helping to find solutions. Others have been working to increase the availability of native plants that are attractive to pollinators for use in the revegetation of roadsides, gravel pits, and even for use in home flower gardens. We are comparing visitations of pollinators on these flowers with vetch. It is commonly thought that diverse plantings of native flowers will attract a greater diversity of pollinators, and we want to understand which plants do the best job of attracting those pollinators.

That’s not all. Before the restoration with the native plants, the vetch is removed. We have compared the removal of vetch with three herbicides that could be used to control vetch on roadsides or forested areas. We will next use soil from the treated areas to grow the desired pollinator species for restoration and evaluate the impact of the treatments used to remove the vetch on the potential success for restoring native pollinator plant species to roadsides and forest edges.

Swiss team visits AFES forest reference stands

On Sept. 2, Glenn Juday led a field trip to AFES’ long-term forest reference stands in Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest for Professor Markus Stoffel and staff of the Swiss Tree Ring Dendrolab. The lab is part of the Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva. Stoffel was on a trip across Alaska with his local research colleague Benjamin Gaglioti, research assistant professor at the UAF Water and Environmental Research Center.
 
The Swiss lab specializes in the application of tree ring information to geomorphology, climatology, ecology, archaeology and natural hazard assessment — especially gathering evidence to predict snow avalanche hazards in the Swiss Alps. The visiting University of Geneva Dendrolab group included Ph.D. student Mattias Coullie, and scientific collaborator Sébastien Guillet.

Juday prepared a series of field trip guides to each of the six forest reference stands in the experimental forest, and has been handing them out to 2023 season visitors to get feedback and evaluate their effectiveness. The guides are highly visual and are made up of color illustrations of graphs, air photos, historical photos, times series photos and key data series.

 

The Sept. 2 Bonanza Creek field trip's first stop was at Parks Loop South (200+ year-old white spruce stand), where the visiting team was delighted to learn about the interaction of climate, tree growth, spruce seed crops, squirrel populations, canopy ecosystems, insect outbreaks, and tree death and recruitment. After the rain stopped, the group managed to drive on the muddy Bonanza Creek Road and visit two stands burned in the 1983 Rosie Creek Fire – Reserve West (white spruce) and Burned Birch Control.

 

The measurements and monitoring in the AFES reference stands at Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest have been used in some national international research collaborations and syntheses, and the Swiss visitors may become part of another one.

Busy summer for Forest Soils Lab

The Forest Soils Lab had a successful summer of fieldwork in the boreal forest.

The team installed three new sites to monitor the spruce bark beetle outbreak near Cantwell and Denali National Park. This project is in partnership with Ahtna, the Alaska Division of Forestry, and the Geophysical Institute. Helene Thomas and Leo Ahlers collected weekly plant physiological data to monitor tree decline after they were infested.

Matt Robertson developed, constructed, deployed, and monitored the field installation, in addition to conducting weekly unmanned aerial vehicle flights to observe the physiological changes from a remote sensing perspective.

Jessie Young-Robertson, Sam Dempster and newest employee Nathaniel Bolter conducted weekly measurements at Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed to monitor forest physiology, stress responses and growth. There are 10 long-term monitoring sites at the research watershed, including areas where permafrost is degrading and deciduous woody plants are moving in.

A long-term monitoring site was installed at an aspen stand at Bonanza Creek LTER, where half the trees were sprayed with a pesticide to reduce the impact of the aspen leaf miner and the other half were left to experience the full impact. Researchers conducted weekly measurements to monitor the impacts of the aspen leaf miner on tree growth, water use, and physiology. This work is in partnership with Diane Wagner.

The lab also established a research site with Jan Dawe and OneTree Alaska in a birch stand off Farmers Loop Road to provide sap collectors with information about real-time sap flow in the spring.

The Soils Lab recently purchased a lidar to use with the UAV and multispectral camera to monitor forest growth, stand properties, and physiology from the air. This will help the team scale measurements to larger areas and better interpret remote sensing data with on-the-ground plant physiology measurements.

Bolter will be getting his master's degree in Natural Resource Management, in addition to being a research technician on the dendrochronology project (in partnership with Glenn Juday). Bolter attended the University of Arizona tree ring course in June to learn the basics of dendrochronology and visited Dr. Greg Goldsmith at Chapman University in August to learn how to measure wood anatomical features (to relate dendrochronology to other physiology measurements). We are excited to have Nathaniel join the lab!

The entire lab took the Alaska Soil Geography course this summer, with Jessie teaching the plant ecology portion. The team collected samples, brainstormed research ideas, and dug soil pits and learned about soils and permafrost.

Young-Robertson also presented a talk on her wood harvesting project at the Alaska-Canada Wood Energy Conference in early October.