Basin Onion Field Day held in Quincy

Annual event for testing varieties, discussing disease

Friday will be a good day to be an onion grower.

That's the day of the annual Columbia Basin Onion Field Day, held this year from 9 a.m. to noon at the Wayne Ker Farms, west of Quincy, on Road S, just north off Highway 28.

"This is something we've done probably the last 20 years," said Gary Pelter, area extension educator for commercial vegetables and vegetable seed through Washington State University. "It's an annual event for the onion industry, and it's primarily designed as an opportunity for industry members to evaluate, compare and contrast a variety of onion cultivars."

Cultivars are the different varieties of onion, Pelter explained, adding that there are 46 different varieties of onions from nine different seed companies.

This year, the event will examine furrow irrigation on the Wayne Ker Farms.

"It's an opportunity to see how varieties perform under this particular set of growing conditions," Pelter said, noting that the point is to examine varieties under different irrigation systems. "We move around because onions are uniquely adapted, as opposed to other vegetables. They are more particular, (so we) tend to move around to different areas, to look at them under different conditions."

Another area of the industry that will be generating a lot of discussion this year is onion disease, Pelter said.

"Two diseases have come in, one particularly heavy in the Columbia Basin," he said. "Iris yellow spot virus is a fairly new problem, fairly heavy. It's very widespread, a potentially devastating disease … To add insult to injury, (there's) powdery mildew. It's a rare disease, but it's an opportunity to see how (cultivars) stand up to powdery mildew. It's an unintentional Onion Disease Field Day."

Pelter said that researchers will be lifting the onions from the fields in the coming weeks and testing for yield, bulk-size data and field data. Then the onions will be put into storage and evaluated in February. Then they will supply information back to the industry to help growers make decisions in what varieties to grow and what is risky to grow.

"Which is why we put (the onions) in the grower's field, so they face the things that they would ordinarily," Pelter said. "That's the purpose of the whole thing."

Pelter said he was expecting 125 people out at the event by the end of the day.

"It's important because it provides the grower an opportunity to make better decisions about choosing varieties for their farm," he said. "And in this case, varieties that are adapted for our area."

For more information on Columbia Basin Onion Field Day, call 509-765-2160.