Cooperative Extension Service
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
The University of Georgia
George Boyhan, Extension Horticulturist-Vegetables
East Georgia Extension Center
Rosenwald Building, Third Floor
PO Box 8112
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA 30460
912-681-5639 | 912-681-0376, Fax | 912-682-3481, mobile
On July 27, the Georgia Department of Agriculture held another hearing concerning the adoption of two new varieties to the Vidalia onion variety list. DPS 1032 and PS 7092 are the only varieties the department is considering for adoption. DPS 1032 is a D. Palmer Seed Company variety and PS 7092 is a Petoseed (Seminis Seed) variety.
The hearing, held at the Lyons County Courthouse, was lightly attended and lasted only 30 minutes with representatives from several seed companies, a few growers, and University of Georgia representatives. Statements and letters from the attendees were accepted from those wishing to do so. Earl Harris presided at this meeting.
If only these varieties are ultimately accepted by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, it will raise the number of available varieties to 17 for this season.
Mark your calendar for Tuesday, August 14, 2001, for the annual Vidalia onion production meeting. This meeting will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. with a sponsored meal. The meeting will be held at the Captain's Corner Restaurant in Vidalia.
Scheduled speakers include Al Purvis, Ron Wolcott, David Langston and me. Dr. Purvis will be discussing controlled atmosphere storage research. Dr. Wolcott will be discussing his research on seed borne transmission of onion diseases. Dr. Langston will discuss onion diseases and their control. Finally, I will discuss onion varieties, direct seeding and onion fertility. Dr. Bill Randle will not be able to attend this meeting, but he will forward a report on his work with bitterness in onions. This will be available at the meeting.
The Vidalia Onion Committee will also be supporting the upcoming Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Grower Association meeting held in Savannah each January. We will be scheduling an educational session for onions at this meeting as well. Please encourage your growers to attend this meeting. It covers a wide range of fruit and vegetable issues and has grown every year since I've been here. Plans are to move it to the Civic Center because it has outgrown the Hyatt.
Please make every effort to attend the meeting in Vidalia as well as the meeting in Savannah, and encourage your growers to attend as well. This meeting and the Savannah meeting are the only educational opportunities for onion growers.
Recent research has shown that chelated Ca treatments of cantaloupe and honeydew melons can extend shelf life. This research relied on Ca chelate aqueous dips. Recently, a grower in Dodge County used such a treatment, but it was sprayed on his crop prior to harvest. We were able to collect cantaloupes from both treated and untreated sections of his field for study. The results of this preliminary study are encouraging.
In the first experiment, the untreated melons did better than the treated melons; it was noted, however, that the melons harvested from the treated field appeared to be riper than the untreated melons at the start of the experiment. In the second experiment, melons chosen from the treated and untreated field were selected to be at the approximately same level of ripeness. In the second experiment, the treated melons were rated better than the untreated melons. These results are very encouraging and future work is planned.
Field applications as well as fruit dips that would fit well with packing shed operations that use hydrocooling are areas we plan work on in the future. This could be a major aid for cantaloupe growers. A table of results follows.
| Evaluation of chelated Ca on ripeness and firmness of cantaloupe after 3 weeks of refrigerated storage. | |||||
| Experiment 1 | Experiment 2 | ||||
| Ripenessz | Firmnessy | Ripenessz | Firmnessy | ||
| Treated | 4.7 | 2.0 | 5.4 | 3.3 | |
| Untreated | 3.8 | 1.2 | 5.9 | 5.5 | |
| Prob. | 0.000 | 0.007 | 0.000 | 0.000 | |
| zRipeness
Scale 1-5: 1-green, 5-fully ripe, 6-disposed of yFirmness Scale 1-5: 1-firm, 5-soft (unmarketable), 6-disposed of |
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From My Desk
I was out in Sacramento, California, earlier this month to attend the American Society for Horticultural Science meeting. It was a great meeting with lots of interesting presentations and posters. I even got to visit Old Sacramento, the jumping off place for the 1849 gold rush in California. The trip home was a nightmare, however. It took 30 hours and two canceled flights before I got home. Talk to you next month.