Funds will be used for regional meetings, databases, publications, and videotapes. Ron Voss , director of UC's Small Farm Program and a UC Davis vegetable crops extension specialist, is heading a five-state project with more than a dozen investigators. The project is comparing conventional, low-input and organic systems and is headed by entomologists Ted Wilson and Mike Hoffman , and agronomist Steve Temple . Fourteen farms growing fresh-market tomatoes in Yolo, Sutter, and Sacramento counties are being intensively monitored for their soil, plant, water, pathology, and insect effects by Laurie Drinkwater and Carol Shennan of UC Davis' vegetable crops department, UC Davis plant pathologist Ariena van Bruggen , UC Santa Cruz ecologist Deborah Letourneau , and Phil LeVeen , an independent economist.
Projects funded in other states in the Western Region are also of interest to California producers.
In their initial trials, seeds coated with a particular strain of Pseudomonas bacteria provided equal or better control of damping-off than did chemical treatment when seeds were planted into cold soil.