News Stories - Page 175

Aspergillus crown rot disease is on the rise in Georgia peanut fields and University of Georgia researchers are working to pinpoint why. At present, university scientists recommend that farmers encountering this problem in their fields stop saving seed from year to year in an effort to reduce the disease while better control methods are found. The first line of defense has been fungicide application either in furrow or directly to the seed.

Nematode control is one of the costliest hurdles to blueberry production on replanted sites. Through research trials in Appling County, Georgia, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent Shane Curry found that adding pine bark mulch when replanting blueberry fields helps to combat the pests.

As part of an irrigation efficiency study by University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, a 29-person team of social scientists, agricultural economists, climatologists, agricultural engineers and UGA Extension agents from the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is studying agricultural irrigation in order to increase the water-use efficiency in row crops common to southern Georgia.

University of Georgia natural resource economist Craig Landry will use his portion of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how the economy and the environment are affected when humans and coastal regions commingle. The four-year project is a team effort with researchers from Colorado, North Carolina and Ohio.

Six million students across America participate in 4-H and, of those, more than 170,000 call Georgia home. To raise awareness of the state’s largest youth development organization, the week of Oct. 1-7 has been declared National 4-H Week.

Earlier this spring, representatives for former first lady Rosalynn Carter sought help from the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. UGA Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener Extension Volunteers, who are trained to help UGA Extension staff deliver research-based information about gardening and related topics to the public, began work on the project.

Summer may have ended, but Georgia’s silverleaf whitefly infestation has not.

Researchers have produced biofuels from corn, switchgrass and even algae, but researchers at the University of Georgia will soon study a new source of renewable biofuels: the lesser-known crop of carinata, also known as “Ethiopian mustard.”

Farmers aren’t the only ones busy working in their fields to repair damage from Tropical Storm Irma. As the University of Georgia’s peach specialist based on the UGA Griffin campus, my team and I have been busy trying to save young trees in our 3-year-old research orchard. Irma passed through Georgia with strong, sustained winds.