California Rice Research Board Page 1

Back in the budgetcycle of 2001, your elect-ed representatives saw theneed to replace the agingSweco plot harvester. Theplot harvester is used allover the rice growingregion to gather informa-tion on varietal test plots,fertilizer trials, strip trials,and anywhere productionresearch areas need to beharvested and evaluated.Five different UC depart-ments depend on this har-vester.

The Swecois over 20years old andthough it hasheld up well,it lacks fea-tures thatwould maker e s e a r c hmore accu-rate and use-ful. Many improvementshave been made to theSweco and it will continueto be used as a backup har-vester or for disease isola-tion.

Researchers from UCDavis canvassed the avail-able manufacturers of plotharvesters to see what wasavailable. They also visit-

ed with other riceresearchers in Californiaand the South to see whattheir experiences had beenwith various models. Afterconsider-a b l eanalysis ,they set-tled onone madein Iowa byAlmaco.

Almacowas estab-

lished in 1888 in Ames,Iowa as Allan'sBlacksmith and Welding.After 85 years of perform-ing repair work and sell-ing hardware to the localpopulation, the business(now known as AllanMachine Company orALMACO) started pro-ducing and marketingequipment for the agricul-

tural research industry. In1983, Almaco moved itsoperations to Nevada,Iowa, due to continuedgrowth.

Since 1965, Almacohas evolved from manu-facturing a few basicproducts to over 40 mod-els of equipment. Theseinclude one and two rowtest plot combines, a widevariety of planting equip-ment, and various types ofstationary threshers. Inaddition, Almaco providesand installs many types ofelectronic data collectionand sensing systems onequipment.

In the mean time, theRRB committed to gatherfunds over time to pay fora plot harvester. During

Issue # 18, Summer 2006

In This Issue

New Plot HarvesterArrives ..............1

Weather Access ...2

RRB MemberElection ..............2

The California RiceResearch Board

Operating under the authority of the

Secretary of Food andAgriculture,

State of California

Dana Dickey, Manager

P.O. Box 507

Yuba City, CA 95992

Phone: 530-673-6247

Fax: 530-674-0426

www.syix.com/rrb

New Plot Harvester Arrives

New Almaco harvester above,Sweco harvester on left.

Page 2 California Rice Research Board

2001-3 the RRB set aside$150,000 for their portionof the harvester. This rep-resented 2/3's of the totalamount allotted. The UCresearchers, being the pri-mary users of the har-vester, agreed to assemblethe remaining 1/3 of thefunds.

Numerous meetingswith Almaco were held torefine the features of thisparticular harvester. AnRRB committee wasformed to review andadvise on features, dura-bility and capability.Changes were made to thetire size, four wheel assist,

and adding a turbo to theCat engine. Theresearchers added ways toclean out the machine,weigh samples in variousways, collect samples atmultiple points, andinstrumentation.

The biggest change wasin the development of a"California" type header.Engineers from Almacocame out to see how ourheaders are different andwhat would be required.Lots of work went intocreating the right type ofheader for our conditions.Arrangements were alsomade to provide local ser-

vice for the harvester.Finally, after many

years of work, the newplot harvester was deliv-ered in April of 2006. Theenclosed pictures show offsome of its features andconstruction. We look for-ward to testing it out thisyear and getting every-thing working correctlyfor many years of produc-tive service. So if you seea little blue harvesterworking on plots this fall,you will know that yourfunds are working hard foryou helping researchersevaluate the next genera-tion rice.

WeatherAccess

Many of youhave used theweather informa-tion on the RRBwebsite for sometime. The CRC isnow financing theongoing expenseof maintainingthe weather sta-tions since this isno long a researchproject.

R e c e n tchanges in theprovider ofweather informa-tion means thatthere is now analternate sourceof weather infor-mation. It can beaccessed athttp://www.west-ernwx.com/crc/using the user-name “rrb” andthe password“grorice”

RRB MemberElection

Included with thisnewsletter is the ballotwhere you can elect thosewho represent you. Pleaseread the instructions care-fully and vote. Thoseselected will serve on theBoard for three years anddetermine the assessmentrate and the researchselected during that time.