Study recommends strategies for improved management of fresh market spinach
Throughout California's fertile central coast region, fresh spinach is a high-production, high-value crop. Spinach can be finicky, requiring sufficient nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation to ensure ideal growth, and to meet industry quality standards such as its defining deep green color. These production practices—combined with a shallow root system and the crop's intensive production cycle—can increase the potential of detrimental nitrate leaching. Recent water quality monitoring in the region has found widespread incidences of NO3 levels that exceed the Federal Drinking Water standard. As a result, growers have come under increasing pressure to improve crop nutrient use efficiency (NUE), and thereby minimize NO3 losses from production fields. In an effort to inform future spinach production practices, scientists Aaron Heinrich, Richard Smith, and Michael Cahn evaluated spinach nutrient uptake and water use in the Salinas and San Juan Valleys of California.