XVI. Vegetables and Pest Management

29 October 2009

The primary purpose for this trip is to learn about citrus. However, when faculty at the Institute heard that I also work with vegetables, they decided I should also learn about vegetable production in Morocco. It has been very enlightening, so..let's talk about vegetables...

I’ve mentioned before that tomato production in Morocco has been very difficult this year due to a recently arrived invasive pest called Tuta absoluta…sometimes called “absolute disaster”. It’s a small brown moth, not more than ¼” long. The larvae mine the leaves and then start eating on the fruit.

Here's an example of a couple of mines...this is minor damage...because the pest is excluded, but in an open field, the entire leaf can be covered in mines.Tuta absoluta has destroyed thousands of hectares of open field tomato production.

T. absoluta originated in South America and moved into Morocco late last year from Spain. It has moved into all the vegetable growing regions very quickly. Interestingly, one of the things I’ve heard from some students and others is that they think that it came from Israel…intentionally! Israel is a real sore point and some media people choose to fan the flames with nonsense like this, which then spreads among the population rapidly.

Over the past couple of weeks I've visited a number of vegetable production operations and packing houses (not just citrus!), and Tuta absoluta is a major issue. However, in this area, most vegetable production is not open field, but protected cultivation. A different kind…high tunnels, but not covered with plastic, but with a very, very fine mesh to exclude pests.

The use of mesh may have started with banana production, and now it seems most of the tomatoes, peppers, and summer squash/zucchini in this area are produced in the tunnels. They call them serres, which in French means glasshouse or greenhouse, even though they are more like “nethouses”.

It is high quality vegetable production, and, like the citrus, mainly for export. The farms I’ve visited use IPM techniques, and some of them are “biologique” the European version of certified organic.

They use bumblebees for pollination and pheromones for monitoring and mass trapping, as well as releasing natural enemies within the houses. They also use Bt for the larvae and sulfur for Tomato russet mite.

I’ve been told that they grow tomatoes in the same place for 4-5 years, then change to a different crop. I asked about soil diseases and nematodes, and was told it wasn’t that big a problem(!!). But…I have seen some pretty heavy duty soil sterilants stockpiled in the fertigation stations of several of the operations, so they must have some really different regulations for “biologique” than we do!

As a result of Tuta absoluta, the net houses are carefully managed. They repair any tears immediately, painting over them with a kind of glue, and keep them as closed as possible.

Getting into most of the houses is quite an effort. It’s like trying to get into an envelope…three times, with the flap going in different directions each time. There is a with a rubber band along the edge of the curtain to snap it back in place, and a very narrow space to get through. It’s very awkward; you have to be very skinny or very agile to move quickly through them.

I don’t think the system is very convenient for workers, but they seem to be doing pretty well at excluding the moth. It apparently rides in on worker clothing, boxes, etc., so it takes vigilance.

They use the pheromones religiously…both for monitoring and mass trapping. It costs about $5.50 per ampoule, and it has to be changed every 3 weeks. They have water traps about every 50 m (165 feet) in the houses - with the pheromone, sometimes with an insecticide in the water to kill them if they don't drown first.

A couple days ago I visited a farm called Ourika with an entomology professor from the Institute, and they had a much better system. They had three self-contained rooms with traps for the moth in each one. You enter one, close the doors and then enter the next, etc. They were big enough that a small delivery truck could drive in, the vegetable lugs could be loaded and then it could drive out. The whole house was also covered with not just one layer of netting, but two. When we arrived, I wondered why I couldn’t see into them very well, and that was the reason.

With two layers, tears in the netting are not as critical. If the tomato foliage touches the inner layer, it is unlikely that the moth would be able to lay its eggs through both layers. Apparently with just one layer, they have to be very careful to keep foliage away from the netting or the moth lays its eggs through the net.

They are growing mostly “grape” type tomatoes, i.e. 4-5 salad size or 8-10 cherry/grape size on a cluster. The large ones are picked mostly red, packed in the cluster and sold that way. Ones which become detached from the cluster or do not have a calyx are sold on local markets. The fruit look very nice, but I’ve bought them in the market…they don’t come close to field grown for flavor. They are okay, but I wouldn’t want them in season!

They are grown in soil, and the net houses have more air movement than plastic, but they are pretty hot and muggy. I think it’s the whole fertigation regime and probably the varieties selected for shipping that mean little flavor.

The pepper varieties I’ve seen include California Wonder, a poblano-type, and a Serrano type pepper. The squash is mostly just ordinary zucchini, and boy does it grow fast…they said the squash grows 3 cm (about 1¼”) per day. They harvest it between 18 and 24 cm (7 to 9 ½”)…but some of them were very fat for the length…again, not my choice for top quality, but they said the buyer sets the standards.

I think we’ve infected the world with a desire for bigger fruits and vegetables…everything, probably…but the quality is not necessarily better! The last farm with the better nethouse system exports primarily to England, the others to France and other European countries. I don’t think any of the vegetables went to the States. They would certainly meet our supermarket standards, though. And with so much of the open field tomato crop destroyed this year; these guys will probably be supplying most of Morocco as well. They really jumped on the bandwagon to deal with the pest immediately, before it caused damage and have succeeded.

This pest issue demonstrates that growers who keep abreast of emerging pest issues and plan for them can succeed where others have failed dismally. Not that we can (or want to) grow any significant acreage of citrus in net houses, but certainly nurseries could produce planting stock that way. And growers need to make use of any available tools to fight. I think the whole pheromone deal was brand new to many of these growers, but they figured it out in a hurry.
Lesson for growers (and pretty much everybody in today’s world): Know what’s on the horizon, be prepared and take every measure possible to exclude it, and then deal with it when it comes!

XV. Food…Moroccan…and generic…

27 October 2009

As I sit here at the Institute at a quarter to two in the afternoon, my thoughts turn to lunch and food in general. In Morocco, the main meal is eaten at noon…and it is main, believe me. Most days I wait to eat until I get home because lunch at the cafeteria is a little too much food for me, if I intend to get anything done in the afternoon. Not that it’s not really good, just a set menu and way too much of it!

Moroccan food is generally really tasty…I haven’t had any bad food. Some is a bit bland, but a lot has been really good. From my experience Moroccan food is mainly tajines, couscous, or pastilla. Tajine or tagine, but the g is pronounced like a zh is a stew-like dish cooked in a ceramic pot directly over the flame. They can be made with lamb, chicken, fish or just vegetables…all of them usually have some vegetables in them. I have had a number of them and most are very tasty. The ones I like best have some kind of dried fruit-apricots, prunes or raisins, and often nuts as a garnish. Fruit and meat go so nicely together. I also love the preserved lemons that are sometimes used as garnish.

You are probably all familiar with couscous – in the States it’s made from durum wheat. Here, it can be made from wheat, barley or corn, or a combination of them. It will usually have vegetables and meat in a heap on top of it, often with the vegetables hiding the meat…like a secret ingredient, so you don’t know what it is until you uncover it! (There is meat hiding under the vegetables in the picture.) The secret to good Moroccan couscous is steaming it three times, which is pretty labor intensive, so it is traditionally a special dish…a Friday dish. Friday is when they go to the mosque - except it isn’t a day off here, although many businesses close at 1 PM so people can go pray. Morocco has a Saturday/Sunday weekend, which is different from much of the Islamic world, which usually has Thursday/Friday, or Friday/ Saturday, or where there is a significant Christian population, Friday and Sunday.

Pastilla - I have only had a few, although I saw online that there is a restaurant that specializes in them in Agadir, which I need to find. Pastilla is this enormous flaky pastry, stuffed with meat or fish. The best one I’ve had was at the fig conference…I think it was lamb, but it was seasoned with cinnamon and raisins and was a little bit sweet…I really liked it, despite the fact that I’m often picky about sweet things. They are really beautiful to look at as well. Again, I think they are labor intensive to make, so most restaurants don’t make them unless you order ahead of time.

Every morning I have breakfast at the café attached to the guesthouse where I'm staying. It consists of baguettes sliced in half and toasted, with butter, jam, and ‘Vache-qui-rit ‘cheese’, freshly squeezed Valencia orange juice, and strong coffee with milk.
I’ve had variations on this breakfast at most of the places I’ve stayed. Bread features greatly in all breakfasts...and at every other meal. There are baguettes of french bread, but far more common are a number of versions of round breads cooked on a flat surface...either quite thin, about twice as thick as a pita in the states, or 1" or more thick. They are mostly wheat, but may have barley or other grains in them as well. I like the mixed grain ones...more like whole grain bread. Here are pictures of Berber women making two kinds of bread.

Some places breakfast also includes pain au chocolat, sometimes a crepe-like pancake, and occasionally what seems like a fried phyllo dough pancake. At the Ryad in Meknès, I also had Moroccan doughnuts, which are like raised doughnuts, but not sweet at all. Coffee or tea is standard, as is the fresh squeezed orange juice. I don’t think I have had any processed orange juice since I have been here. At one or two of the big hotels, they have also served peach or other juice…bottled in Morocco, and quite tasty. Since Valencia season is over, this week the orange juice has changed to apple or banana "juice". It's more like a smoothie made with milk and bananas or apples. I had banana this morning...quite good, but a little sweet...I think they add sugar.

Agadir is a tourist place, a resort town, and while it is nice to be able to have something other than tajine or couscous, it seems like a lot of the food is pretty generic European. And it tastes generic, not anything really interesting or exciting or different...just kind of bland. The best thing I have had in Agadir in a restaurant is a hamburger and fries at the restaurant attached to the guesthouse. I think they make the hamburgers with kufta meat, which has spices and bread crumbs (or something) in it, so it’s really good.

I did have some really good calamari last night at a nearby restaurant, but it was only 1/3 of the plate, the rest was utterly unseasoned rice, and very tasteless vegetables. I think the cook spent all his effort on the squid and had no time for the rest. So while I’d give the squid an A, the rest was C-, so it barely made it to B-. Picky, picky!

One of the things that disturbs me here, (and it seems in Europe, as well) is that they have followed the American model of vegetable and fruit production…to the detriment of taste. Many of the vegetables you can find in local markets are packing house rejects. Not that they aren’t fine, they are certainly not culls, but they didn’t meet some export specification, so they are sold on the local market. At least when it comes to citrus and tomatoes, that means they are harvested mature green. The citrus are treated with ethylene to give them color, but they don’t taste like much. Neither do the tomatoes…they are very pretty to look at, but have no taste. The reject tomatoes from the packinghouse tend to be the redder ones which won’t survive shipping, but they just haven’t any flavor.

I’m hoping as the mandarin season goes on, there will be more tree ripe mandarins on the market…When I was here six years ago, I remember the taste of the mandarins as being excellent. The best ones I’ve had so far came from an irrigation experiment at the Institute…so they may have been somewhat stressed – like ours, and so had more flavor. The ones in the market have been very disappointing overall.

Some of what is happening here as well is that they are changing from their traditional sour orange rootstock (bigaradier) to Citrus macrophylla in order to get earlier production, and to give tolerance to calcareous soils. But it is definitely to the detriment of flavor…all the macrophylla fruit I’ve tried seems pretty bland. The trees may start producing a year or two earlier, but I wouldn’t put my name on the fruit flavor. The fruit doesn’t seem to have the aromatics which I can smell in the bigaradier fruit even though the it is not yet tree ripe.

So the export market requirements are driving production, and it’s the same as it has been in the US – quantity vs. quality. I have talked about the importance we put on flavor and quality to a number of people, but most don’t really understand. They are looking at volume and getting it to overseas markets. However, most are pretty clear that the macrophylla fruit is not desirable in local markets because of the lack of flavor. They still have over 90% of their mandarins on sour orange, so macrophylla hasn’t taken over yet, but every new planting I’ve seen is on it. They may learn the same lesson that we have…quantity is not always the answer to economics.

XIV. "Cabbage" and Mandarins

19 October 2009

Kabbage Souss (pronounced kah-baahzh soose, not the way it looks!) is the name of one of the biggest mandarin producers in Taroudannt. I’d seen trucks with the name on it, and thought oh, cabbage! A number of people had mentioned “kah-baahzh” orchards to me, that I must visit them. But…I didn’t put the two together until I went with Dr. El Othmani to visit Kabbage Souss Orchards. It’s another name I really like the sound of…Kabbage sounds so much more sophisticated than plain old cabbage. Of course the names have nothing to do with each other, except for the close spelling.

Anyway, Kabbage Souss is right near the city of Taroudannt, in a pretty much uninhabited area that looks like waste ground. The area is very arid, with little vegetation – even few Argan trees, and it is heavily eroded. You drive over dirt roads that seem to lead nowhere, until suddenly you see all this green…the citrus orchards. One of Dr. El Othmani’s former students works there, so he gave us the grand tour.

They have 400 hectares of citrus…about 1000 acres, mostly mandarins, and some oranges. They go through the season with an array of Clémentine varieties…starting with Bruno, Oro grande, Sidi Aïssa, Nules, Larrache, Nour, then a proprietary selection of Nour called KSN – Kabbage Souss Nour, then Afourer, also called Nadorcott.

They had been harvesting for almost two weeks, and had just finished harvest of Bruno, their first variety. They were on the second picking of Oro Grande. They export most of them, so they pick fruits with some yellow coloration, but they mostly look green to me, definitely not tree ripe. Also, they don’t color up as well as ours because it isn’t that cold.

We got the grand tour of the different varieties. Then we stopped to see the fully computerized irrigation & fertigation station. Beside it is their water storage basin…enough for 25 days…I can’t remember how many cubic meters, but a lot! It had a sign on it…No swimming! It was bigger than an Olympic pool, and I can see how one would be tempted when it's hot. They even have fish!

On the way to see the mandarin harvest, we stopped at the orange section…they grow Washington Navels, Cara Cara, and Newhall. They have a terrible problem with snails on the oranges; they are really destructive. It seems an oxymoron to have snails in the desert, but apparently the valley where the oranges are planted has harbored them for a very long time. The snails eat the rind and fruit…leaving big holes, and there can be 5 or more snails on the same fruit! Be thankful that we don’t have that issue!

Then we went to see the harvest. Many Moroccans do not like to have their picture taken, as I have mentioned before, but we found a picker who would let us take his picture, so I took a lot of pictures. It was pretty interesting. They are paid by how much they pick, so he was fast. They are using shears very similar to the little lemon clippers most of our growers use. At another farm, I saw shears that looked more like small wire cutters.

They pick into water…directly into what looks like a plastic wastebasket with holes in it, which in turn, is nested in a bigger bucket of water, with a very weak solution of 2,4 D in it. Apparently the 2,4 D holds the calyx on the fruit…if there is no calyx, it will not be acceptable at the packing house.

Then the wastebaskets are dumped into a plastic bin that holds about 38-40 pounds – about the size of some of ours. They stack the bins beside the row as they fill them…very carefully leaving an empty one on the bottom so the fruit does not touch the ground.

There are two pickers per row…one on each side of the row so they don’t have to go back and forth between the trees. The intrarow spacing is very close…about 9 feet between trees in the row, then about 15-18 feet between rows, depending on variety. They are keeping the trees low as well…no ladders to be seen in the mandarins. I saw some in the navels, though.

It is quite an operation. Trucks take huge piles of the bins to the packing shed. I see trucks on the road from Taroudannt all the time, with different colored bins for the different companies. The big companies have their own packing sheds, but some pack other fruit on contract.

I have not yet seen a citrus “Station de conditionnement” (lit. conditioning station) as they call packing houses. I visited a vegetable packing house this past Saturday with the group of Saudi lab technicians who are here for training. It was beautiful…immaculate, really nice equipment, and very efficient. At least as nice as and maybe better than some California packing sheds! I’m going to see the citrus packing shed tomorrow. More on that later.

I’ve been buying Clémentines in the various markets/supermarkets to see how they are. They are green, with some yellow orange color, attractive looking, but…so far, I am not that impressed. They are clearly being picked for shipping, and the sugars are no up yet and the flavor is not that great. What ends up in local markets are the rejects from the packing houses…smaller fruit, ones without their calyces, and ones with cosmetic flaws. I did buy some fully orange ones yesterday...figuring they had been treated with ethylene. They are a better tasting, but still not up to our standards.

Yesterday I went to the huge “First day (Sunday) market” which actually is open every day. It is an enormous market enclosed with big walls – like the old city walls in Taroudannt or Meknes. It has 21 doors, so you have to remember which door you came in to find your way back to the same spot. It was actually pretty easy to navigate because there is a huge open central area where you can identify which way you came. I didn’t go back out the same door, but it was in the general area, so I easily found a taxi. Taxis are pretty inexpensive as well…I paid about $1.25 each way.

They sell pretty much everything you could possibly want: clothes, furniture (ready made & made to order), cookware & dishes, hardware, TVs and appliances, carpets, toys, spices, fish, fruits, vegetables, etc. As well as the Moroccan crafts…leather goods, lamps and metalwork, shoes, jewelry, clothing, rugs, etc. You just have to know where to find what you want, I guess.

It was pretty wild, but really not a lot different than big city markets in West Africa or elsewhere I have been. I checked out the spice and craft sections for a while…the only thing I bought was a basket/purse to carry things in. I probably paid too much for it, but it’s not going to break the bank.

Then I went to the vegetable and fruit section. That’s where it is wild. There is one huge hall and it is jammed with people and vendors. There are two rows of cement tables down the middle, and the vendors are set up on them. So the crowd funnels through the middle to buy. After I had fought my way through the crowds and managed to buy some vegetables and fruit, I found another side section…without the cement tables and floor, but much quieter, with few people…so it was easy to buy. I spent a grand total of $5.25 for all my veggies & fruit -½ a kilogram (1.1 pound) of very fine green beans, another of sweet red peppers (about 1 pound for 35¢!!), a kilo of onions and a kilo of potatoes, half a kilo of lovely little butter pears and a kilo of Clémentines.

If you just eat fruit, vegetables, bread (about 12¢ for a small flattish loaf about 5” across), yoghurt (they make individual cups like we have and each one costs about 25¢) and eggs (about 12¢ each) - you can eat for next to nothing. Almost all the fruit is grown here…even the bananas, so it’s pretty cheap. The pears were the most expensive at $3 a kilo ($1.50 a pound) as they come from Meknes, which is quite a ways away. Even adding taxi fare into the cost of my fruits and veggies, it was still cheap!

It’s the imported stuff that costs a fortune…I bought a chocolate bar in a grocery store last week. It wasn’t priced (most supermarkets either label the items with the price or it’s on the shelves like ours.) It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the sales slip that I realized I had paid $4 for it! Expensive treat…but probably worth it occasionally! :)

XIII. Info Download: Citrus - Lumping or Splitting?

14 October 2009

So, I’m here in Morocco to learn about citrus…life, culture, and anything else that might be useful to Placer/Nevada growers. What have I learned so far?

In a long discussion with one of my Moroccan colleagues at IAV (the Ag & Vet Institute), we came to the conclusion that a culture survives and prospers because it is tolerant. Morocco and Moroccans are very tolerant…we might learn something from them about that. When we want to find a plant that will succeed in certain conditions, you expose it to whatever it is susceptible to…disease, conditions, etc. - the strong ones have or develop tolerance. I think it’s the same for human beings, so we need to get to know people whose culture or religion is different than ours, so we develop tolerance too.

Last week, I spent some time reading the first volume of a French manual on Mediterranean citrus production – the Arboriculture volume. What I learned is: Everyone classifies citrus differently. The Citrus family is complicated because of its tendency to hybridize, but...!! The two taxonomists that have had the most impact on citrus were at the two ends of the spectrum: Swingle who minimized the number of species, while Tanaka divided everything up (into over 160 species!).

Modern DNA testing tells us that there were 3 original, parent Citrus species, citron (C. medica), mandarin (C. reticulata), and pummelo (C. maxima) and everything else is a hybrid of those. Clearly we can distinguish more than these three now, but I’m not a fan of dividing it into so many categories that it is unmanageable.

As always with classifications, there are lumpers and splitters…the author of the French citrus manual, a certain Monsieur R. Loussert, is a splitter, Since his manual is generally used in this part of the world, people here follow the same idea. According to M. Loussert, mandarins are divided into:
· Citrus unshiu, Satsuma mandarins;
· Citrus deliciosa: common or Mediterranean mandarins, traditionally are large trees, with seedy but tasty fruits that used to be common in this part of the world. Willowleaf mandarins seem to be mostly under common or Mediterranean mandarins (but they are not always grouped together either!), but are C. reticulata or C. deliciosa, or both, depending on who is doing the listing.
· Citrus clementina: Clémentines: includes Nules and Algerians, as well as most of the cultivars grown here…Oro Grande, Bruno, Carte Noir, Sidi Aïssa, Nour, etc.
· Citrus reticulata which seems to include pretty much everything else, including a broad range of hybrids, e.g. tangors.…Murcotts, Nova, Ortanique, Pixie, Tango. Also W. Murcott Afourer, which is known here as Afourer (ah-foor-rare), after the family whose farm it came from. It is a proprietary variety with royalties not only on the plants, but on the yield as well!!

On the other hand, in Dr. Othmani’s lab, next to where I am sitting,, there is a a very nice citrus poster from a German fruit export company. It calls all mandarins Citrus reticulata, and Satsumas are C. reticulata var. unshiu. It has one that it calls Citrus reticulata var. tangerina…which doesn’t look much different than the others it lists as mandarins. It's the first time I've seen the word tangerine in any language except English! The word tangerine doesn’t exist in French or Arabic. And the poster does not separate Clémentines from other mandarins. Clearly, there is no a standard system.

I tend to be a lumper and want to put them all under C. reticulata. I'd rather just call them all mandarins, which seems to be the overwhelming opinion in the greater citrus world. Here people are really clear that Clémentines, including Algerians, are mandarins.
I would like to understand these classifications better…why people divide them up, are there are actually important differences? I like things to be organized! Given the complexity and the fact that in the States we often use a hybrid version of the two classification systems, I may not get to the clarity I’d like!

From farm visits, I’ve learned that we should take a look at some of the certification norms (EuroGAP, etc.) for export that the Moroccan farms follow…it may be helpful when food safety legislation starts coming down. They have very specific requirements for signage for informing workers and visitors to farms, about where to find things on the farm, hand washing, drinking water, eating areas, and they place highly visible trash cans on posts throughout the orchard. They seem to have many of the same posting requirements about pesticides and other hazards. Christine Turner would be happy about that! Some really good practices, but a few that we might not want to follow. More on that later.

One of the ideas that Dr. El Othmani is trying to test is the idea of planting the orchard rows on raised beds/bunds…It might have value in some situations in colder areas or areas with shallow soil. I’d like to see the comparison between planting on the flat and on raised beds. Those of you who have seen Rich Johansen’s orchard know he has trees planted on raised beds. It gives you more soil for the roots to mine for water and nutrients. It will keep the roots warmer and get growth going earlier in the spring in a wet year. However, the ridges will also dry out faster in summer and weed management, if you are not using herbicide, is much more difficult.

As far as cultural practices: irrigation: they have converted many previously flood irrigated orchards to drip with few negative impacts. However, their drip is not always what we would call low volume. Locally manufactured drip hose has emitters that range from 4L per hour (+/- 1 gal/hr to 40 L/hour – 10 gallons per hour). The upper range isn’t low volume by my standards! In French & Arabic it’s called goutte à goutte - drop by drop. 10 gal/hour is a lot of drops!

Water management is as critical to their future as it is to ours. Most of the farms on drip also fertigate, and have pretty impressive containment systems to be sure that fertilizers, etc. do not get into the water source or leak out from the fertigation systems. One I’ve visited is all computerized.

As far as nutrient programs…they also divide their fertilizer into at least 3 applications…many more if they are fertigating. Their general nitrogen recommendations for lighter soils…i.e. those of you with DG…are to put out ⅓ to ½ of the annual amount in February-March. A more accurate timing equivalent is about one month before flowering. So, more like March for us, as we are still getting a lot of rain in February, and it often doesn’t start warming up until March. Then, in April/May, another ¼ to ⅓, then in June, the final ¼ to ⅓. They don’t apply N fertilizers after June, which is a good recommendation. For us, it could stretch to early July at the latest, given our season starts a little later.

In some places they also intercrop alfalfa...this is a new planting of citrus, which has been almost swallowed up by the alfalfa. Intercropping may not be a bad idea, butg it really requires careful management...and too much N from the alfalfa the first years may not be the best for the tree.

Pest management. They have CA Red scale here – they call it “Californie”, the French word for California! Many release Aphytis wasps for it…the bigger orchards have their own insectaries.

Mediterranean Fruit Fly - Medfly is a huge problem for them. Because they export to the US, they have to be very careful about Medfly. They make straw traps with spinosad baits or sometimes permethrin. It takes a lot of vigilance and sometimes a number of sprays to keep the fly under control, though. They also do a cold treatment during the shipping process to meet US standards.

Here's a picture of the farm office at Melk Lotfi, one of the small COPAG (the ag cooperative) farms. The son of the owner is really into technology, and uses spreadsheets to manage the nutrient and pest management programs. He receives weather and evapo-transipration information from a nearby weather station on his cell phone each day, which he then uses to schedule his irrigations. Check out the farm map on the wall as well. (click on the picture to make it bigger) Pretty slick…

More on mandarins after I visit another orchard.

XII - Through the mountains, back to Inezgane

6 October 2009

Life has been pretty hectic, with barely time to think, much less write, for the last week, so I am taking a slow day to catch up on things. Last night about 8 PM I arrived back in Inezgane, from where I left a week ago. Since I knew the place, having been there a couple of times to buy my ticket and get on the bus, I was comfortable arriving at night. The local taxis…‘petit taxi’, as they are called…are compact cars of all nationalities…Toyotas, Renaults, Ladas, some Turkish brand, etc. They were just a block away from where the bus stopped, and the hotel was a few minutes drive away. When I arrived in Inezgane, I felt like I had come home.

I love the names of the places here…Ait Melloul, pronounced eight mill-ool, Inezgane, pronounced In-ez-gahn. They sound so exotic…it’s hard to believe sometimes that I am living here, even if only for a short time. I am feeling like it isn’t long enough…there is so much more I want to see and learn.

I’m sitting here in the garden of my home for the next couple of weeks…a B&B run by a French woman, called La Pergola. I’m eating breakfast and drinking entirely too much café au lait as I write. La Pergola is very French… last night at dinner, I felt like I was back in my Togo days, where many of the restaurants were run by expatriate French people. It’s very nice and the food is very French and very good, but I am going to have to go out to eat Moroccan food.

I’ll have to investigate the little cafes where it would be appropriate for me to eat alone. Public socializing is pretty much all men. La Pergola was hopping last night…it has a bar, restaurant, and I think a billiard or pool table, I didn’t go in to investigate that! It was full of people…well, to be precise, it was full of men. I was the only woman in the restaurant or bar - everyone was male, waiters and customers alike, until the owner, a Frenchwoman, and a French-Moroccan family came in as I was leaving. I was the only one eating at 8:30 PM, and the restaurant was starting to fill up as I was leaving around 9:45 PM! People come to life at night here…no wonder nothing moves before 8 o’clock in the morning, they are all sleeping off the late night.

The garden is lovely, lots of bougainvillea and other flowering plants, lawn, nice trees. The gardener was sweeping up this morning and his piles of debris were clouds of multicolored bougainvillea blossoms: pink, magenta, white, and orange… Well, technically, they are calyces, but their colors make them look like flowers.

Unfortunately traffic noise is a bit loud, as a busy road runs by it, so it’s not a peaceful as it might have been in the past. The garden includes a small pond enclosed with a stone wall, and covered in water lilies. Saïda is stalking whatever is in it…not sure if it is fish or a frog. She cornered a humongous toad – at least 6” in diameter…the other night when we stopped for dinner at a rest stop on the road to Marrakech.

I am glad of a slow day. The fig conference was non-stop for five days, most days were 12 hours or more. After it ended, Dr. Messaoudi Zerhoune, the organizer of the conference and professor of horticulture at the ag school where it was held, took four of us on a two-day agricultural tour.

The after-conference tour was supposed to be a larger group, but the Turkish contingent pulled out the night before, which left four of us, three Americans – myself, the other UC Farm Advisor, Maxwell Norton; his wife Diane, and Dr. Nasser El-Khalifi, a Saudi ag researcher. The change in plans delayed us a bit, but the small group was nice…very congenial, so we had a great time. Dr. Messaoudi is very high energy and fun…he just keeps going all day and expects the rest of us to keep up! With just four of us and Dr. Messaoudi driving, we stopped when we wanted to see things or take pictures.

It was really agricultural tourism…we stopped to look at the onion harvest and storage, to check out honey being sold along the road, to look at pomegranate and fig orchards, and to see the source of one of the major rivers that feeds the agriculture in the Tadla valley. It was fascinating, and showed us a real cross-section of Moroccan countryside and agriculture in the middle of the country.

From Meknès, where olives, figs, peaches, plums, and other fruit are grown, we drove up to Ifrane (pronounced ee-fron), which is around 5,000-6,000 feet in the Middle Atlas. We drove through beautiful cork oak forests on the way up, which is where the honey sellers were. It was very green from recent rains, with a grassy carpet below the cork oaks.

Ifrane is a resort area…cool in the summer, and it gets quite a bit of snow, so there are winter sports as well. It looks very European, with lots of gardens and lawns, more green than I had seen since I arrived in Morocco! The houses are also very different than other areas of Morocco…they have very steep, tiled roofs – because of the snow. Most of the roofs were red tile as you would see in Spain or Italy. Big wide streets…also because of the snow, according to Dr. Messaoudi.

We stopped in the town of Azrou, which means the Rock (with a capital R!), a huge outcropping that is the distinguishing feature of the town. There the roofs were green tile…a mixture of tones of green, very pretty…I’d like a Moroccan green tile roof on my house! It was cool there, and the landscape was cedar forests…I think it’s Atlas cedar.

Dr. Messaoudi’s brother-in-law lives in Azrou, and most of his family was there for a baptism the previous day. They invited us for tea, but it was a lot more than tea. Dr. Messaoudi’s wife had made a variety of delicious flavored nuts, pastries, and tiny cookies, with dates, sesame, ground nuts, etc. for the baptism and for our visit. They also served peach and orange juices and smoothie-like drinks made with yoghurt and fruit…either banana, avocado, pear, and almond. Very tasty! Since it served as our lunch, I’m glad it was more than just mint tea.

They were growing cherries, apples, and pears up in the mountains, as well as wheat and barley. I think the main industry is tourism, though…Moroccan and foreign, because of the mild summer climate. It reminded me a bit of Tahoe, with an exotic twist, but Tahoe doesn’t have a King’s palace overlooking it!

On the way down, we stopped at a scenic overlook, and I saw something jump down from a tree a little distance away…at first I thought it was a kid, but then he came ambling up to us…it was a Barbary ape. He was not afraid of us, but VERY interested in Saïda the cat. He didn’t want us to leave, so he jumped up on the hood of the car, and only got down when we started to drive off.

We came back down the other side of the Middle Atlas to the Tadla Valley, passing a very large man-made lake. In past decade, they have been building a number of dams to provide irrigation water for the valleys, and valley agriculture is pretty intensive- sound familiar? They grow olives, figs, almonds, stone fruit, and citrus up to about 1500 feet.

Then we went up to the sources of the Oum ir-Rbia river…It was lovely. It all comes flowing down the mountain…I guess normally it is crystal clear but there have been major thunderstorms in the last few weeks, so it was bright orange-red with eroded soil when we saw it. There were beautiful gardens, and a Kasbah at the top, with a scenic overlook. We came back down to Khenifra and Beni Mellal, visiting a pomegranate orchard and checking out the river which provides water to the orchards. Dr. Messaoudi showed us how the water from the rivers is pumped up to some of the orchards…by pumps run on bottled butane gas. Very creative set-ups - they are cooled with water piped around them during the summer. We stopped for dinner at a roadside rest stop. There are lots of them all along the roads, with gardens, a restaurant, often craft shops, and always a small mosque for travelling Muslims to pray. We had Moroccan-style fast food…ground beef with herbs and spices formed into little sausage shapes, with onions, tomatoes and bread. They ground it right then and there, then cooked it on a special kofta/kebab brazier. It was done before Drs. Messaoudi and el Khalifa were done praying.

Around 9:30 PM we arrived in Marrakech, which in Arabic is pronounced Mrrah-kish (rhymes with brackish) with a nice rolled r and the accent on the rah. It sounds ever so much more exotic that way! When I was waiting for the bus in Inezgane on the outward journey to Meknès, the man who checked in the bags asked me “Mrrahkish?” but I thought he was asking me if I was Moroccan, so I said no. So he asked for my ticket, then said very firmly, “Mrrahkish!” So I have been saying Mrrah-kish to myself ever since…I like the way it sounds. Dr. Messaoudi gave us a driving tour of the main sights of Marrakech before we went to the hotel…all of us to sleep very soundly after a long day!

XI. The Old City and More Figs

1 October 2009

Wednesday's sessions at the conference were about genetics and biotechnology, not my interest at all, so I didn’t attend. Instead I spent the day exploring Meknès old city and historical monuments with Maxwell Norton, another UC Farm Advisor and his wife, Diane. We walked our feet off, but it was very interesting, and a nice break.

We started at Bab Mansour…a huge tiled gate leading into one of the three walled cities of Meknès, and very near the Riad where I am staying. We explored the streets in that section then went over to the old city. Streets are narrow with multiple alleys leading off them, and most doorways are decorated, and it is utterly charming.

The old medinas are, however, a real maze…You have to pick out landmarks, and try to remember which direction to turn at each one. Maxwell had a compass and he got us out of a few places when we didn't know which way to go, but getting lost is part of the experience. Like a maze, often you have to backtrack in order to find your way out.

We spent the morning walking through and around the old city, including a beautifully decorated Madrassa (Koranic School) and mosque (from the outside, non- Muslims not allowed.) The decorative arts are really developed here…the detail and artistry involved is incredible, and it is everywhere. Sometimes the decoration is modern painted tiles, but mostly it is 1-2" tiles or sometimes tiny bits of those tiles cut into interlocking geometric shapes...amazing!

Minarets are visible from everywhere and are tiled with different colors of small tiles...many green, turquoise or blue, but I have also seen reddish brown.

We watched a man hand-painting a carved wooden ceiling panel. Typically the panels have geometric and floral designs, all incredibly detailed, and labor consuming, not only to carve, but even more labor to paint. Later in the day we watched wood carvers carving panels and the front of the benches that, along with big cushions serve as the furniture in most Moroccan homes. Even considering that average wages are low, the panels must be incredibly expensive. Like many Moroccans, the workmen did not want to be photographed, but the fellow varnishing the decorative front of the bench agreed.

We then walked through a vegetable & fruit market, where every kind of fruit and vegetable was available. Clouds of flies also come with it, but it's part of the atmosphere. I certainly didn't let them stop me from buying some mandarins. They were not as sweet as the ones in Taroudannt, but they were good enough. The golden delicious-type apples were really good.

The light bulb finally came on about prices...vendors give prices in old terms, not modern dirhams...so when the vendor said one sixty, I finally understood that it meant 16 dirhams (a kilo)...about $1 a pound. I had not been misunderstanding prices...I just didn't understand the system!

We walked through the “flea market” area - everything under the sun for sale...used phones, burnt frying pans, used clothes, you name it. The mattress stuffers' section was a landmark on the walk described in the guidebook, and we found it...There were lots of "mattress stuffer" stalls. They had huge plastic bags of stuffing...some of it was wool or cotton, and some looked like dryer lint, but was probably leftovers from rug making. I wonder which is the primo Moroccan mattress? We found a wool and cotton store later in the day, so we knew where they got some of the stuffing.

Many Moroccans do not like to have their picture taken, so you kind of have to take the pictures from afar so they don't notice..like the man in the shadows of the archways of the wool sellers.

Remember me wondering about where the leftover bread from lunch went? We found out! There is a whole section near the food souq (pronounced sookk, it means market) where there was dried bread for sale…it goes into animal feed. We were pleased to know that it would be used.

In one tiny square, I followed an odd mechanical whirring noise and happened on a shop that sold only spools of silk thread…presumably for embroidery on djellabas. Now that’s a specialty store! There was a man in the back supervising what looked like a 19th century machine that took the thread off a big roll and wrapped it on the small spools. When I asked to take a picture, he said yes, but then shut himself behind the door.

Later we visited the Dar Jamai Museum, a collection of Moroccan arts housed in a 19th century palace. The palace was beautifully tiled and had numerous ornately painted ceiling, as well as furniture, especially cupboards, trunks and doors painted similarly to the panels. As with anywhere here, there were lots of cats about. The workers obviously fed them and took care of them, as they looked much healthier than many we’ve seen. One climbed way up in a tree in the courtyard and settled down like it was her place.

Today we are back at the conference again, the agenda is focusing on production and pest management. However, we are again on a slow motion program. There are a lot of talks listed in the program, but fortunately a number of the people didn’t show up, otherwise, we would be here until midnight as we started at least 45 minutes late. I think we will have the coffee break with lunch again, as we seem to have skipped it again. I’m writing this because there have been several speakers whose presentation slides are not legible due to small text size. They are speaking in English, but their English is very limited, so I’ve gotten very little out of the presentations.

Eventually we got to pest management presentations, which were very interesting. It seems that Fig Mosaic is endemic everywhere, there is no clean stock, and it is a very complex problem. It is not a single virus, but they have recently identified at least four viruses, two viroids, and possibly a phytoplasma associated with the symptoms. Some are spread by aphids, some by mealybugs, and some by mites. We did talk about how the appearance of symptoms seems stress related, however, so the hypothesis is that most fig plant material has one or more viruses in it, and they manifest when the plants are stressed. We visited two fig nurseries and each had some plants exhibiting symptoms. The conclusion is that if you take good care of the fig trees, they will still be productive. They did show a few pictures of figs affected by the disease. The Turkish contingent, who are way ahead of the rest of us, said that fruit symptoms are not common, and if they appear, are often on a single branch, which is then pruned out.
n.b. Viroids are transmitted on pruning tools…so be aware when pruning figs, and use appropriate sanitary measures.

More figs tomorrow, but out in the field, thank heavens. I’m not cut out for sitting and listening all day, even if it is interesting, and the people are great!