Location: Application Technology Research
Project Number: 5082-21000-001-025-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 30, 2019
End Date: Sep 29, 2024
Objective:
The overarching research objective is to increase plant resilience in floriculture products to reduce crop losses at production, retail, and consumer phases through evaluation of production parameters.
Approach:
Our project will identify production techniques, pre-shipping treatments, and
postharvest handling guidelines to maximize plant resilience to decrease losses and increase profitability. The specific approaches include:
• Fertilizer, growing media including wood products, and irrigation practice
impacts on post-production performance for the consumer, shrinkage, and
profitability.
• Quantify how light, temperature, and plant growth regulator applications during
the production phase influence postharvest performance, and determine whether
short-term (e.g., 1-2 week) treatments prior to shipping improves plant resilience during shipping and in retail.
• Determine whether application of biological control agents and/or induction of
plant defense responses increase plant stress tolerance during production and/or
postharvest performance.
• Determine whether biological control agents including parasitoids, predators, or entomopathogenic nematodes, bacteria and fungi applied to transplants will survive subsequent shipment and transplant, and provide carryover benefits (protection) to plants in finished containers against pests and diseases.
• Identify whether differences in plant susceptibility to diseases and pests is due to differences in the ability of a plant to defend itself, and if so, to what
degree those defense responses are inheritable.
• Assess if some commonly-used pesticides and fungicides (including previously
developed novel treatments, SC) that are applied to suppress populations of the
pests and diseases impact the longevity of transplants during shipping and
subsequent transplants into finished containers.
