UC Rice Blog

We are trying something this year that we have not ever tried. We are drill seeding rice into fields that have not been tilled this season. Why are we doing this? It is one way to save considerable amounts of irrigation water. We estimate that up to 0.5 ac ft/ac of water could be saved.

The 2023 Rice Production Manual is available for download here. The Manual was produced in association with the 2023 Rice Production Workshop; it describes the principles of rice production based on research conducted in the rice production areas of California.

I recently visited a field that had quite a bit of rice seed midge injury. In this case, the seedlings that were not injured were almost at the one leaf stage, and one could observe quite a few seeds still in the soil surface.

Coming out of 2022, where roughly half of all California rice fields were left fallowed last year, and others may have been fallowed for two seasons, many of us have questions about what weed management will look like in 2023.

In general, rice diseases are not a big problem in California. However, in some fields, disease pressure can be high and can result in yield losses. One disease that can be found in practically every rice field is stem rot.