Purpose
This page explains the shared sanitation logic that applies across the compliance agreement exhibits. It focuses on the practical sequence for reducing broomrape spread on equipment, trucks, trailers, and harvest machinery, and on the areas where sanitation effort matters most.
Required Under the Current Compliance Agreement
Across the current exhibits, equipment, trucks, trailers, and harvest machinery must be cleaned reasonably free of soil and plant debris before movement out of the field, facility, or designated zone context described in the applicable exhibit. In high-risk grower situations, the field management program must identify a designated area for equipment entering and exiting the field. The exact trigger points and operating context vary by exhibit, but the core requirement is the same: equipment that moves among fields, yards, processors, or transport routes must not leave without being cleaned reasonably free of soil and plant debris and sanitized.
UC Recommended Practices
Sanitation works best when it is treated as a sequence rather than a single spray step. First remove loose soil and plant debris, because that is the most important step. Use compressed air, scrapers, brushes, or similar tools to knock off bulk debris. Then pressure wash to remove fine debris, caked mud, and greasy areas that can harbor seed and can also deactivate sanitizer. After visible debris is removed, apply a quaternary ammonium compound sanitizer to cleaned wet surfaces and allow the equipment to dry without rinsing. QAC is the only sanitizer identified in these materials with confirmed efficacy against broomrape seed, but it works on contact and loses effectiveness when soil or plant debris remain.
Choose and use one repeated designated cleaning area inside the field perimeter where practical. Do not clean on roads, turn rows, or driveways where dropped debris can be redistributed. That repeated cleaning location should be monitored in later crops because it may become an at-risk point for future broomrape emergence.
Focus effort on the places that hide or pack debris, not just obvious outer surfaces. Across the sanitation materials, the highest-value cleaning work is usually on axles, frame members, wheels and wheel wells, undercarriages, hitch areas, fan areas, ducts, chippers, and other spots where soil or plant debris lodge and stay put. Spring tillage work also points to the parts pushing directly against soil as especially important risk points.
Chemical sanitation should be presented as a supplement to physical cleaning, not a substitute for it. Current work shows that increasing QAC concentration and spray volume can improve performance on exposed or lightly covered material, but thick mud and compacted soil still protect seed. The current research direction is to better define how physically clean a surface needs to be and when higher-volume or higher-rate QAC use adds value.
Related links or companion pages
- Footwear Sanitation
- Trailer Sanitation
- Harvester Sanitation