News Stories - Page 16

University of Georgia Griffin campus plant pathologist Alfredo Martinez-Espinoza has been awarded the 2019 D.W Brooks Award for Excellence in Extension. The award recognizes his UGA Cooperative Extension and applied research program that focuses on the management of new and recurring diseases of turfgrass, small grains and nonlegume forages and his delivery of relevant information to stakeholders and fellow Extension professionals.

Muscadines are often recognized for their disease and insect resistance, but recent research has shown that the South’s native grapes are vulnerable to parasitic nematodes.

The students and faculty of the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences came together Nov. 12 to celebrate the progress that agriculture has made in the past 50 years and the promise of innovations to come.

A plant pathologist at the University of Georgia Tifton campus is using a grant from the Georgia Farm Bureau to study a bacterial disease that is harming the state’s blueberry crops. 

Georgia farmers devote about 900 acres to growing pumpkins — technically a squash and a cousin to the cucumber. Most Georgia-grown pumpkins come from the northernmost part of the state where the climate is cooler and there is less disease pressure. UGA-bred ‘Orange Bulldog' is disease resistant.

University of Georgia Cooperative Extension plant pathologist Bob Kemerait cautions Georgia peanut producers in the midst of harvesting this year’s crop that it’s never too early to look ahead to 2020, especially with regards to tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV).