THE CHANGING FACE OF THE DESERT

[Music] in the ancient world the date palm was called the tree of life dates were cultivated in the middle east more than eight thousand years ago but it was less than a hundred years ago that the first date palms were brought to the united states we'll find out more about the exciting story of dates today as discovery takes a firsthand look at the changing face of the desert [Music] discovery 70 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen and virginia gibson hi welcome to discovery today we're in the coachella valley in southern california a desert surrounded by mountains millions of years ago this was a great inland sea that's the water line on the rocks you see behind us the name coachella is derived from a word that means shell and you can still find seashells today out here on the desert floor most of this valley is actually at or below sea level it's part of a larger area called the colorado desert although we're in california it's the colorado river 150 miles away that makes it possible for this desert to grow and there's no other place in the united states that can provide both the great amount of water and the high temperatures that the date palm needs this is the telescodica state garden date gardens are sometimes called groves although the date is a fruit the term orchard has never been used for dates [Music] most of the dates we see in our grocery shelves are a variety called deglit newer which means date of light there are almost 100 other varieties grown in this valley but only seven or eight in any great quantity the codice family has grown up in the date business telus kodikis has been growing dates for almost 28 years [Music] mrs codice helps out in the family date shop the three girls pauline 14 elaine nine and catherine seven go to school in the nearby town of thermal when they're at home the 55-acre date garden behind their house becomes their backyard [Music] telus kodikis has 145 additional acres with 10 000 date palms in all he also grows tangerines grapefruit and grapes none of this would be possible without plenty of water and since the annual waterfall in this desert is only two and a half inches a year irrigation is an absolute necessity but before this desert land can respond to water it has to be carefully prepared practically the only water this field will receive will come from irrigation so it has to be made level if the field is graded unevenly the low spots will get too much water and the high spots not enough [Music] and the soil itself has to be leached washed free of the alkali and salt it absorbed when this desert was the floor of the sea it'll take two to three weeks to wash away the alkaline salt depending on how much of these chemicals are in the soil as the water runs off a large amount has to replace it more than would be needed for irrigation alone since the purpose of this water is to flush out the chemicals after the land is prepared it'll need a steady supply of water for irrigation this is the coachella branch of the all-american canal that brings the colorado river water up from the main branch of the canal which is right at the mexican border the canal runs up the eastern edge of the valley past the chocolate mountains orocopia mountains and the cottonwood mountains at various points along the canal sub-canals branch off then still farther on these small canals reach the fields and gardens they're able to supply a specific amount of water at a certain time of the day these men who follow this tight schedule are called sun heroes or ditch riders it's the individual owner's responsibility to see that his water gate is open when the water comes if it isn't and the excess flow goes onto his neighbor's land he's responsible for the damage it might cause in washed out plantings there's an old saying that the only way a date palm can thrive is to have its feet in the water and its head in the blazing sun and the date palm can thrive in temperatures as high as 130 degrees higher than any other productive plant strong as it is there's no other crop that needs so much careful hand work for it to produce well the palms that we see here with bunches of dates are all female over there is one male palm necessary for the production of the females fruit the fertilization doesn't take place automatically man must arrange for it we'll see how that's done in just a minute the date palm is one of the world's oldest fruit bearing trees early written records on clay tablets and crude pictographs tell us that the cultivation of date palms very much like these began in the valley of the euphrates along the shore of the persian gulf about eight thousand years ago early in the 1900s bernard johnson a german immigrant who had traveled widely before coming to this valley decided that dates might be able to flourish here in this climate he left the coachella valley and went to algeria to learn something about date cultivation in the fall of 1903 he was back here with 129 young palm trees representing six varieties because there were so few palms then and so few offshoots on the new trees there was an early effort to grow date palms from seeds it was unsuccessful for a very simple reason half of the seeds planted produced male trees which are non-fruit bearing since a tree is several years old before the sex can be known it was soon evident that the only way you could be sure of having a grove of all fruit-bearing palms was to plant offshoots from a female tree [Music] male trees are important in a grove but only one is needed for every 49 female trees the male trees pollen bearing flowers are much larger and showier than the female flowers however since nature's day pollination is so random pollination is done by man to ensure greater productivity the pollen has to be collected by hand from the male tree early in the morning before wind or bees can get to it with fresh pollen two or three strands of the male flower are inverted between the strands of the female flower during the first two or three days after it's opened to keep them in place a slip knot of twine is tied around the two flowers after the female palm is pollinated the fertilized flower clusters are tied to the mid rib of one of the lower fronds earlier in the winter the spines on the lower stems are removed so that it's possible to pollinate the palm as well as tie the developing bunches to the lower fronds for support when dry these spines are as hard as metal and in the more primitive countries they're used for needles [Music] a date palm does not shed its leaves as many other trees do it also varies in other ways it's a monocotyledon which means it has a single growing point or bud and does not grow a cambium layer of new wood each year if the single growing point or bud is damaged the date palm dies the prawns on these trees are arranged evenly in 13 vertical columns on some trunks they spiral slightly to the left on others to the right by counting the number of frauds in one of these columns at the top of the tree multiplying by 13 it's possible to estimate almost precisely the number of fronds on a tree 13 fronds are needed to provide food for each bunch of dates even though there's very little rain in the desert that small amount during the ripening season can cause the skin of the dates to blister as well as cause souring or fermentation these paper cones protect the fruit from the rain and from being eaten by birds [Applause] september is the start of the day picking season they can be harvested several times each time only the ripe bunches are picked the early harvesting methods in coachella valley in the data industry were really weren't methods it was just one method and that was picking dates by hand we uh had the men climb the trees approximately three or four times they climb up by ladder and hang from the palm fronds in a saddle or something that looks like a boson's chair they had buckets with them pick the dates one at a time by hand put them in the buckets which were hanging along with them and lower them to the ground they would move around the tree and harvest the entire palm at that time they would then go back down the ladder and empty the buckets into the lug boxes which were then sent onto the plant the way mechanical harvesting works is that we have a vehicle upon which we have a boom mounted now this boom will be raised and then extended up into the bunches that are hanging on the date palm this boom can go as high as 60 feet the man at that time will begin cutting each bunch from the palm and put it into the basket he'll cut one at a time and go completely around the tree until all bunches are harvested he'll then have all the bunches in the basket the operator of the boom will then retract the boom and lower it the dates will be dropped into a large hopper we then have an operator of our mechanical shaker he will pick up the bunches one at a time and insert them into the shaker and in a few seconds all the ripe dates are removed from the bunch the unpollinated fruit and the unripe fruit is left on the bunch as it adheres more strongly to the strands of the bunch a normal crop would be approximately 36 million pounds last year's crop was exceptionally heavy it was 42 million pounds which was just about i think an industry record this year's crop we're estimating to be 27 million pounds now the reason that this crop is so light is that during the spring we had warm weather with brought all the blooms on at one time therefore the pollination was not as good as it should have been that in turn reduced the amount of fruit however what fruit we do have is a very good quality the dates here are deglat newer the most popular date for commercial use since it doesn't bruise easily in handling deglaneur palms usually produce a larger amount of fruit than most other varieties some of the other date palms here are the kadrawi like these the halawi the medjool and the barhi and sometime soon they may be an entirely new variety from some of the trees that haven't matured yet cutting a new palm tree away from its parent tree is a difficult process that must be handled very carefully we'll see how that's done in just a minute these are barhi palm trees barhi means hot dry wind the barhi is a soft date and almost round these are ripe some of the others will ripen later on the tree the bar he is delicate and as a fresh date it's difficult to ship so it's usually consumed here in the valley this is the medjool it's one of the largest states and it's also a soft date like the deglitt newer it's a large producer and yields as much as 300 pounds a tree its extra large size is created by thinning out the fruit before it matures so much hand work is needed that it makes it much too expensive for mass production in the short time the date palm has thrived in the coachella valley there has been a constant research program to find new improved varieties of dates this is roy w nixon consultant to the united states department of agriculture he spent a good deal of his life studying and writing about the date and these are some of the experimental date palms that have been grown from seed a male palm can be distinguished from a female palm only by the flowers which should begin to appear about the third or fourth year however if you propagate from offshoots as all the varieties commercial varieties are you know that this palm will be exactly like the parrot variety on the other hand if seeds are planted the young palm will not be determined as whether it's a female or male until it begins to flower about the third or fourth year we have to continue research because no sooner is one problem solved and another arises in the beginning we were studying cultural problems we pretty well understand that now but in recent years the scarcity and high cost of labor has caused us to re-examine most of our operations [Music] because the date crop has increased to millions of pounds in the past few years it's been necessary to find newer and faster methods of processing and packaging dates since the deglet newer are picked in quantity there are different degrees of ripeness on each stamp first the dates that do not come up to standard are eliminated then the softer dates are sorted by touch and color the paler ones are under right next the dates are pitted this pitting machine can remove date pits at the rate of 8 000 an hour the uniformly sorted dates drop into these chambers the rows of dates move under the plungers which drop down into the center of the date forcing the pit out the bottom [Music] [Applause] after curing and pitting the dates are quickly packaged each day's production is tested by the department of agriculture inspectors they check moisture content and size these young date palms are five years old but they won't produce an acceptable crop until they're eight to ten years old they'll reach full productivity when they're about 20 and could continue to produce until they're over a hundred years old however at that age their extreme height makes it too difficult to pollinate tie them down bag them and inspect them during the season careful date cultivation requires a lot of attention as many as 10 to 12 trips up the tree each season the higher the tree the harder it is to care for it so every date grower has to plan to replenish his growth by starting new growth to replace the older ones these are called offshoots or suckers and are only produced by young trees up to 15 years old this female palm will produce only female offshoots and the pollen producing male only male any male tree can pollinate any female palm of any variety the variety will be determined by the female tree cutting off the offshoot at the base of a mature tree is a very delicate operation care must be taken not to injure either the parent tree or the offshoot the offshoot is three to five years old and has produced its own roots before it's ready to be separated from the parent tree it can weigh from forty to a hundred pounds and be eight to 14 inches in diameter it's a two-man operation one man guiding the chisel the other hammering it between the chute and the tree at no time must the offshoot be pulled away from the parent tree here we see the growing bud sometimes called the heart of the palm if it's injured the future growth of the day palm is endangered they're planted 30 feet apart a great distance for such small trees but in 15 years it will be just [Music] enough [Music] as with most new plants a great deal of water is necessary for the young date [Applause] palm [Music] just a few short years ago this whole valley was a dry burning desert pioneers in this area had hard lives trying to find a way to live here now here in the coachella valley with summer temperatures in the hundreds and abundant water used carefully the face of the desert is fresh and growing all year round we'll be back in just a minute [Music] we hope you've enjoyed today's program about dates and the changing face of the desert if you'd like to find out more about life in the desert then ask your librarian for any of these books american desert animals by bfb southwest desert wonderland by norman hammond wakeman and this book elfowl by marion conrad buff be sure to be with us next week for another exciting program as discovery continues to discover the world bye bye bye [Music] the discovery production unit's domestic transportation and promotional consideration provided by united airlines [Music] hey [Music] this has been a jules power production in association with abc news