Spanning the Globe

Today we learned!

I haven’t taken so many notes in one day since graduate school!  The plant sciences and agronomy faculty from the University of the Free State explained about South African cropping systems and the research employed to maintain production viability.

South Africa has many new specialty crops including amaranth, kenaf, hoodia, prickly pear catus, and agave.  Researchers here use an approach called Holistic Crop Health Management which is less reductionist and more interdisciplinary than crop management research has been in the past.  They look at everything from microclimate to biodiversity when tackling insects, diseases, and other plant health problems.  This approach is very proactive in that plant health is promoted and need for pesticides tends to be greatly reduced.  In agronomic crop production, pesticides are very costly; UFS plant pathologists focus their work on plant breeding for genetic disease resistance, thereby decreasing costs to farmers.  They are currently looking at soybean varieties that show delayed onset of soybean rust symptoms following infection as a way to manage this devastating disease. 

In the afternoon, we visited a local farm that grew maize (corn), sunflowers, potatoes, and wheat.  Here, we saw maize streak virus for the first time.  This is another potentially devastating disease, but only a few plants were found to be infected.  In the evening, faculty of the UFS Plant Science Department treated us all to a Braai (barbecue).

We all enjoyed the excellent food and new friends we have made.

1. Sounds like you all are learning alot and having a great time.
   Posted by  on  03/07  at  05:10 PM
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