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Thursday, December 15, 2011

SWD Webinar & upcoming meetings

Thursday, I recorded an update of our spotted wing drosophila research & extension activities.  We will be closing out our 2011 SWD*VMN activities 31 December 2011.  For those of you who were not able to make it, the recording of the session is available here.  To access the session, you'll need the session password fruitfly.  


I also have several upcoming meetings where I'll be discussing SWD, among other things.  For those of you interested, these meetings are:

Southeast Regional Fruit & Vegetable Conference
January 6-7; Savannah, GA
I am presenting in the Blackberry & Raspberry (January 6, morning), Blueberry (January 6, afternoon), and Muscadine (January 7, afternoon) sessions.  A brief program for the SE Regional Fruit & Vegetable Conference is here


Blueberry Open House
January 10-11; Clinton, NC
My talk on SWD is at 8:50am on January 10th. A draft program for the BBOH is here.


Arkansas Commercial Fruit Growers Meeting
January 24; Conway, AR
I will be presenting at this meeting via webinar.


North Carolina Winegrowers Association Annual Meeting
February 3-5; Winston-Salem, NC
My talk is on February 5th and will cover the GRB*VMN and SWD status and biology in grapes.


North Carolina Commercial Blackberry & Raspberry Growers Association
February 7; Shelby, NC
My talk on SWD will be in the afternoon. A draft program for the NCCBRGA meeting is here.


Southeastern Branch ESA Meeting
March 3-7; Little Rock, AR
I am leading a symposium on SWD in the southeast.


7th International IPM Symposium
March 27-29; Memphis, TN
I am facilitating a mini workshop on "Improving the handoff: invasive species regulation to research" which will use SWD as a case study.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Definitions of sustainable agriculture

I was part of an interesting and productive meeting Monday dealing with the tobacco side of my research and extension program where the conversation turned to definitions of sustainable agriculture.  The consensus was that there is not consensus among growers, regulators, and the public as to what sustainable agriculture really means. Being a visual thinker, this conversation inspired me to plug the definitions used by some of the sustainable agriculture resources I trust into a Wordle

The most frequently used terms in definitions of sustainable agriculture are represented, and their size is proportionate to their frequency.  While the words pest and pests appear, albeit relatively infrequently, pesticide is absent but was frequently mentioned in our conversation Monday.  Labor and economic sustainability are also absent from the sources included above and were key components in our conversation.  What did appear as important were environmental concepts, such as water and soil.  I used definitions from the following resources to create this word cloud if you are interested in repeated my results or adding different sources:
UC Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition 
The Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program (SARE)
USDA - Sustainable Agriculture Information
Ecological Agriculture Projects - McGill University

While bouncing around the site, I also created a word cloud for my twenty six most recent blog posts.  It's pretty clear what's been on my mind lately!



Tuesday, December 13, 2011

SWD monitoring videos from NC Cooperative Extension

This summer, Shawn Banks, NC Cooperative Extension Horticulture Agent in Johnston County, recruited me to participate in a series of videos on spotted wing drosophila monitoring.  The first two videos are now online!

The first video follows Shawn as he checks his traps as part of the spotted wing drosophila volunteer monitoring network (SWD*VMN).



The second video features me walking your through the construction of a spotted wing drosophila monitoring trap.



 A third video detailing larval sampling methods is in the works. You can find these videos and others at the NC Cooperative Extension YouTube Channel.

More information
Spotted wing drosophila volunteer monitoring network
North Carolina Cooperative Extension - YouTube

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