Buckeye Yard and Garden onLine

The trip got off to a late start since the group's scheduled departure was the Saturday of Ohio's March Madness snowstorm. However, once the group arrived in Tel Aviv, they exchanged presentations at the Ministry of Agriculture with the Israel Extension director Moshe Goren, his second in charge Omar Zeidan, floriculture specialist Shlomo Israel, and others detailing the innovations of their intensive covered-structure horticulture industry of vegetable, flower and herb production, and OSU discussing the $4.1 billion dollar nursery landscape industry here in Ohio as well as strong greenhouse and vegetable production areas throughout the state. It is amazing to see what Israel is doing with a land area about a quarter the size of Ohio and half of that in basically non-arable desert. Nevertheless, they have made a good portion of their drylands bloom with the help of intensive irrigation strategies, starting with the Sea of Galilee as a water source.

The group visited Danzingers, world class breeders and propagators of greenhouse ornamentals, shipping non-rooted cuttings and licensing to secondary growers worldwide, including Ohio. They had great praise from their Marketing Manager Chanochi Zaks for OSU and Claudio Pasian (OSU, Horticulture and Crop Science). Chanochi visits the U.S. five times each year, and he noted that a highlight is the OSU annuals trials done by Claudio in Columbus. Danzingers are world leaders in gypsophila, petunia and callibrachoa hybrids, torenia, New Guinea impatiens, and many other important floriculture crops. They have 10 full time breeders, an almost unheard of level of germplasm expertise.

The group got good technical updates on post harvest decay management techniques (mostly Botrytis gray mold control) at the Institute of Plant Sciences, one of the world's best post harvest research facility for vegetables. Other interesting Israel Ministry projects: enhanced growing house netting (ColorNet) options to help both with quality and scattering of light for greenhouse production, and excellent overviews of conventional and GMO germplasm development projects.

An unusual visit involved a farm that totally focuses on aralia production. Aralias are a tropical plant with large glossy fan-shaped leaves and Israel is the major producer of aralia leaves used for floral arrangements in Europe, supplanting the leadership of Italian aralia producers in the mid-1990s. It was a first-class operation with high quality control, complete with production lines using cameras and computer images for sizing and quality. The cut leaf production industry in Israel includes aralia, pittosporum, asparagus fern, and leatherleaf fern, among others.

One of the big problems in their aralia production houses is Botrytis gray mold. The production areas are dense and so there is high relative humidity, which is Botrytis-beloved. This was exacerbated recently by frost injury this past winter. Botrytis is an opportunistic plant pathogen, attacking declining, dying and dead plant tissue with much better success than on healthy tissue. So the leaf tissue killed by frost basically became a Botrytis breeding bonanza. The growers acknowledge that they have ongoing debates about balancing the risks vs. costs of various levels of sanitation strategies in their growing areas.

As with horticulture in Ohio, plant pests are also a major issue in Israel. It was interesting to learn that many of the Israeli growers are turning to bio-control methods to reduce pesticide usage. The group visited the Bio-Bee kibbutz that specializes in mass rearing of predatory insects and mites for U.S. and Europe fruit and vegetable growers and a ground-nesting bumble bee for pollination of various crops. Joe Boggs asked how he could join this kibbutz, and the group offered their support.

By far, water availability is the greatest challenge faced by the horticulture industry in Israel. In 2007, the rapidly growing Israel population reached 7.241 million residents on a land area of only 8,367 sq. miles. The Negev Desert covers 66% of that land. Israel currently requires 53 billion gallons of water per year. By 2010, 65% of the fresh water currently used for agriculture will not be available. Extension agents from the Ministry of Agriculture are intimately involved with their growers in helping them to solve water availability problems by encouraging their adoption of new technologies including water recycling. While Ohio does not currently face such dire circumstances with water management, the group noted that much could be learned from their Extension counterparts in Israel regarding strategies to reduce water usage.

On the day before Palm Sunday, the group descended from the Mount of Olives past the olive trees and native cyclamens in the Garden of Gethsemane, around the tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus) trees near the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount, and into Jerusalem where the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church was arriving for Palm Sunday services at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. As the group left Jerusalem, their wonderful guide Shelley noted: "on your left side you see the Valley of the Shadow of Death" [Kidron Valley]. Now that is a history lesson.

For more information, see: 

• The Negev Foundation
• Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development