Ferguson and Colleague Win for Best Presentation on Pistachio Pollination

Louise Ferguson and Sergio Castro-García and took the prize for their work on artificial pollination of pistachios, awarded at the 9^th International Symposium on Almond and Pistachios in Lleida, Spain. The meeting was hosted by the International Society for Horticultural Science.

Ferguson is a professor of Cooperative Extension in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences with a long trajectory in working with pistachios. She was also a keynote speaker at the event, along with nut crops breeder Patrick J. Brown, a professor in the department. Castro-García is a professor specializing in agroforestry engineering at the Rabanales campus of the University of Córdoba, Spain.

Ferguson has been working with Castro-García and a team of Spanish scientists to develop artificial pollination of pistachio trees. Individual trees do not pollinate themselves and need other trees to receive their pollen to grow nuts. But the male and female organs mature at different times, so orchards must also have the right combination of varieties, maturing at matching times, to ensure there is pollen available when the flowers open. These and other problems a farmer might face make it helpful to have a back-up plan.

At the conference, Ferguson discussed the results of two years of research testing strategies for both harvesting pollen and applying it in orchards. With that, she won the award for best presentation.

For harvesting, the team found that trees produce plenty of pollen, but conditions for collecting it must be adapted each year according to weather conditions. They looked at both vacuuming up pollen and collecting it from flower clusters. They found that picking the flowers and processing them in a lab was the most efficient overall.

For applying pollen to trees, the team tried putting pollen in both solid and liquid bases, then experimented with application by drone and hand-held systems. They found the hand-held system was the simplest and most efficient way and ideal for farmers with a limited supply of pollen.