Agendas
Session 1 – Strawberry Soil Health
8:15 am – Log in for DEC credits - 1.50 credits available for 10, 1a, 22, and 23
8:30 am – Soil Health – how does it impact plant disease? – Laura McDermott, CCE ENYCHP
Soil health and good soil management impacts plant health in many ways. Laura will discuss using zone tillage to plant, decreasing tillage over the life of the planting and crop rotation guidelines – all in hopes that improving soil health will decrease problems with soil borne disease.
9:00 am – Tips for identifying soil borne disease – Kerik Cox, Cornell
Pathogen identification is step 1 in pest management. Kerik will offer some easy tips that growers can use in the field.
9:15 am – Managing disease with fungicides – Kerik Cox, Cornell
Soil borne diseases can be decreased with proper fungicide application. New materials make this possible.
9:30 am – Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation: how we hope ASD will help northeast strawberry growers – Anya Osatuke, CCE Harvest NY
ASD is being used throughout the country to ‘biologically’ control soil borne pathogens, nematodes and even weeds. Anya will describe the first year of a NY trial.
10:00 am – Adjourn
Session 2 – Strawberry Production Systems
10:15 am – Log in for DEC credits - 1.50 credits available for 10, 1a, 22, and 23
10:30 am – Why are strawberries so weird? Strawberry Physiology Explained – Marvin Pritts, Cornell
Strawberries are uniquely unusual. Understanding how the different types of strawberries grow and how that impacts cultural management and pest control decisions is important for success.
11:00 am – Plasticulture vs. Matted Row; Day Neutral vs. Long day Plants – How to integrate strawberry systems on your farm – Laura McDermott, CCE ENYCHP and Marvin Pritts, Cornell
Plastic covered beds offer great advantages to weed, insect and disease control – but will they fit into a farm crop rotation? Using information from the physiology talk, this talk will take a more in-depth look at strawberry production systems.
11:30 am – Overwintering strawberries – Becky Sideman, UNH and Elisabeth Hodgdon, CCE ENYCHP
Advances in winter coverings offer growers flexibility and help avoid adding water to the field in the spring during frost protection. Water in the spring exacerbates root diseases and foliar diseases
12:00 pm – Adjourn
Session 3 – Raspberry and Blackberry Production
12:45 pm – Log in for DEC credits - 1.50 credits available for 10, 1a, 22, and 23
1:00 pm – New cultivars for new pest pressures and a discerning market - Courtney Weber, Cornell
Breeding to avoid SWD is extremely challenging, but progress towards better protection against root diseases and improved flavor and production could improve raspberry and blackberry profitability.
1:25 pm – Updates in Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) Management research – Greg Loeb, Cornell
Ongoing research into SWD chemical ecology and behavior as basis for behavioral management, overwintering and spring biology, monitoring and decision making, interactions with microbes, including biological control with entomopathogens, mechanical control using netting, and optimizing chemical control will be included in this talk.
1:50 pm – New progress in SWD monitoring – Julie Carroll, NYS IPM, Cornell University
Ten years of SWD monitoring in NY raspberries shows how we can best apply this information to protect raspberry crops. Learn about trap design advances that have proven most effective and also practical for growers and crop advisors to use.
2:10 pm – Success with brambles on my farm – Mary Concklin, Raspberry Knoll Farm, Windham, CT. Mary will discuss strategies employed to successfully manage SWD and other pest problems over the years. These strategies helped keep raspberries at Raspberry Knoll Farm profitable.
2:30 pm – Adjourn
Session 4 – Blueberries
2:45 pm – Log in for DEC credits - 1.25 credits available for 10, 1a, 22, and 23
3:00 pm – Virus diseases in Blueberries – Tim Miles, Michigan State University
Viruses continue to depress production and perplex growers. Tim Miles will help growers understand how to look for infected plants and steps to take for best results in management.
3:20 pm – Where and how can growers test samples? Anya Osatuke, CCE Harvest NY and Laura McDermott, CCE ENYCHP
AgDia kits are now the fastest, most useful way to monitor for virus diseases. Anya and Laura will discuss and demonstrate how this can be done.
3:40 pm – Organic blueberries at Ingalls Blueberry Hill – David Ingalls, Ingalls Blueberry Hill, Cooperstown, NY
David Ingalls has been growing blueberries organically for several decades. He will discuss his primary pest challenges, and how he has met them.
4:00 pm – Pruning Blueberries for best productivity, decreased pest pressure and long life – David Handley, University of Maine
Pruning impacts all aspects of the blueberry plant – production, pests, vigor and longevity. David will explain a straightforward approach to pruning that will improve plantings.
4:30 pm - Adjourn
Laura McDermott
Laura has has long been interested in horticulture, completing her undergrad degree at Cornell University and her master degree at the University of Florida. Laura joined Cornell Cooperative Extension in 1990 and, through the years, has fine-tuned her expertise in commercial small fruit and vegetable production including pest identification and management, soil fertility, food safety, and season extension techniques. Today, Laura leads small fruit outreach efforts in our area, serves as a liaison with grower organizations, and regularly participates in applied research and demonstration activities.
Dr. Kerik Cox
Dr. Cox specializes in applied plant pathology, mycology, and community/stakeholder education. The program's mission is to provide a better understanding of the relationships between life history features of fungal plant pathogens of fruit crops and applied disease management practices. Understanding the impacts that management practices have on aspects of pathogen life history such as survival, inoculum production, community structure, and propensity for resistance development will, in turn, allow for the sustainability and refinement of such practices to better manage disease.
Anya Osatuke
Anya is a berry specialist with CCE Harvest NY and is located in western NY. She has a broad background in berry and small fruit production and works in close collaboration with the New York State Berry Growers Association and other fruit specialists to develop and implement programs and trouble-shoot issues with berries and small fruit on commercial farms. She earned her M.S. in Horticulture from Cornell University with Dr. Marvin Pritts, focusing on field management and site characteristics and their effects on strawberry quality issues and fruit yield on New York State berry farms. Anya earned her B.A. in Botany and Russian Studies from Miami University.
Dr. Marvin Pritts
Dr. Pritts strives to seamlessly integrate teaching, research and extension into one program that is scholarly, credible and relevant to the multiple audiences he serves. Along with being the berry specialist, he strives to be broadly informed about the many issues that affect the food system. He served as department chair for 13 years, having played a major role in the merging of departments between the Geneva and Ithaca campuses, and the creation of the new School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS). My new position is Director of Undergraduate Studies for SIPS since August, 2015.
Dr. Rebecca Sideman
Dr. Sideman joined the University of New Hampshire in 2004, and has a split appointment as Cooperative Extension sustainable horticulture specialist, researcher with the NH Agriculture Experiment Station, and Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems in the Department of Agriculture, Nutrition & Food Systems. Before coming to UNH, I worked as a plant geneticist and lettuce breeder with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Salinas, California. I developed an appreciation for plants and agriculture on a highly diversified farm in Vermont.
Dr. Elisabeth Hodgdon
Dr. Hodgdon grew up on a farm in Vermont, where her interest in growing vegetables began. She studied plant science and agricultural economics at McGill University and later went on to complete her Master's degree at the University of New Hampshire, where she studied cover cropping for weed suppression. While at UNH, she also assisted with vegetable variety trials and high tunnel research. Elisabeth returned to Vermont to earn her PhD at UVM where she researched organic management strategies for swede midge, an invasive pest of cole crops.
Dr. Courtney Weber
Dr. Weber works to develop improved berry varieties to better serve the needs of the New York industry. He integrates new technologies with traditional breeding practices to investigate the fundamentals of disease and insect resistance and fruit quality. Through collaborative projects with food scientists and human health specialists, he identifies superior varieties containing beneficial phytochemicals. Cooperation with pathologists and entomologists are providing insights into important pest problems in New York to allow us to develop strategies for dealing with growers' problems. Increasing consumer demand for berries by developing new varieties that have enhanced health benefits combined with superior eating quality are as important as increasing yield and pest resistance. Improved strawberries and raspberries that consumers recognize as delicious, nutritious and attractive will keep New York growers competitive in the changing marketplace.
Dr. Greg Loeb
Dr. Loeb's research program seeks to understand the principal forces that influence species interactions involving plants, herbivores, natural enemies and more recently microbes with the specific applied goal of developing novel approaches to pest management with a focus on grapes and small fruit crops. Currently, considerable research effort is being directed at developing a better understanding of the biology and management of the invasive species spotted wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii), a significant pest of soft-skinned fruit crops throughout much of North America and abroad.
Dr. Juliet Carroll
Dr. Carroll is responsible for promoting the adoption of IPM practices for arthropod, plant disease, weed, and vertebrate pests by fruit growers. She works with Cornell Cooperative Extension educators, faculty, legislators, the fruit industry, consultants, and growers. She invented Trac Software, a pesticide spray record-keeping program for market traceability and pesticide reporting requirements. Under her leadership, the Network for Environment and Weather Applications (NEWA), a weather mesonet providing weather-based pest forecast models, grew from 45 weather stations in NY to over 500 in 12 states. Her collaborative research currently focuses on the destructive invasive insect spotted wing drosophila (SWD).
Dr. David Handley
Dr. Handley is a Vegetable and Small Fruit Specialist and a Cooperating Professor of Horticulture for the University of Maine. He has been based at Highmoor Farm, the Maine Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station in Monmouth, Maine, since 1983, where he carries out applied research regarding berry and vegetable variety evaluation, production techniques and pest management strategies. He coordinates statewide integrated pest management (IPM) programs for strawberries and sweet corn. Dr. Handley is the author of numerous Extension fact sheets, articles and newsletters, and co-editor of two regional small fruit production guides.
Dr. Timothy Miles
Dr. Miles is an Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist at Michigan State University and focuses on diseases of blueberries, grapes, hops and other berry crops. Current topics of study currently include: mycology, genomics, population genetics, pathogen detection, molecular diagnostics and host resistance.
David Ingalls
David grew up on his family farm when it was a dairy farm back in the 60s. He and his wife Darlene raised their four sons on the family farm. For the past 20 years, Darlene and David have operated the Ingalls Blueberry Hill Farm as a U-Pick, certified organic farm. David has spoken about transitioning to organic production at the New England Vegetable and Fruit conference and at NOFA-NY.