My Life In Agriculture : Book 2 The 1970'S

The 1970's were the years of family growth. We constructed a new deck and added a new addition to our mountain cabin in Pine Cove. These were the years where family and friends enjoyed the beauty and the love that emanated from the walls of our cabin. We traveled to the Sierras each summer to embrace its beauty, and enjoy its high mountains, trees, lakes and streams. Our children graduated High School, went on to graduate college and entered into their new young adult lives. In 1979 our eldest daughter Robin married Dave Kinzer under the willow tree in our back yard. They began their new married lives in beautiful Northern California, in an area surrounded by its magnificent redwood trees.The 1970's had to be the most intensive and productive years of my Life in Agriculture. These were the years where the research of my earlier work in thermotherapy came to fruition when I was able to pre-condition citrus plants at warm temperatures and then using hot water, I could eliminate many citrus pathogens, but citrus viroids could NOT be eliminated using any type of heat therapy. The one great accomplishment was to rid the Meyer lemon of the tatter leaf virus using hot-moist air, a technique of Professor Lin Kung-hsiang in China. When I gave him due credit for this original technique during my lectures in Wuhan, China in 1982, I did not realize that I had liberated him and his family from the difficult years of the Cultural Revolution. The new Improved Meyer lemon originated from a single budstick treated in hot-moist air and since 1975, by California State legislation, all Meyer lemon trees produced in California from this budstick had to be labeled as the "Certified Improved Meyer Lemon." Thus, I claim, that "All Meyer lemons are my children" and published on this. In the 1970's, the viroid nature of exocortis and cachexia was discovered and indexes for these two viroid diseases were developed. I describe what I called the "crazy viroids," which are nucleic acids. They are so minute, that 23 billion of them would fit inside the head of a pin or the eye of a needle.In the 1970's I met Drs. Murashige and Luis Navarro and shoot tip grafting was born. Luis Navarro perfected the technique and I did the indexing. We both sincerely believe that this technology to be one of the most important discoveries and contributions to the history of Plant Science. We were awarded the Wilson Popenoe Award for our paper on Shoot Tip Grafting by the American Society of Horticultural Science.In 1979 I went for my first consultancy to Venezuela and daughter Dawn was my interpreter. I warned the Minister of Agriculture and others of the impending destruction of their Citrus Industry by the Citrus tristeza virus. My warnings went unheeded and in the subsequent years, their Citrus Industry suffered severe destruction by tristeza.In the 1970s I was invited to South Africa to teach shoot tip grafting and lecture on citrus graft transmissible diseases and greenhouse practices for growing excellent citrus indicator plants. I tell the story of how I believed that the power of folk music may have contributed to my receiving an Honorary Doctorate degree in 1999.Yes, the 1970's were memorable, productive and very important years in my life, both in Agriculture and family. Chester Roistacher

• | Author: Chester Roistacher
• | Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: Jan 25, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 100 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 172768849X
• | ISBN-13: 9781727688498