Week of July 10th
This week involved further work on my summer project by getting the basics of my poster completed and beginning to compile the collected data into graphs. The corn field that I have been collecting samples for the sentinel plots was free of rust but had stalks begin to break at the nodes and seemed to suffer from brown and necrotic lesions on the stalks both on the living and dead stalk tissue. While there was no rust in the kudzu plot there were plenty of kudzu bugs and some bacterial infections that could be seen. As part of a new grant to run nutrient analysis on Georgia Citrus, myself and ANR agent Mark Frye began collecting tissue samples from local growers citrus trees to determine how well their respective fertilization had done. So we traveled to each citrus grove and collected samples from each variety, each unique variety and root stock combination was sampled, with each sample consisting of around 75-100 mature leaves (~ 5 leaves per tree).
Week of July 17th
During this week we collected materials from Dr. J. Michael Moore in order to collect and store nematode samples for him until he could be able to retrieve them from us. During this time I removed the flags from the tobacco fields where I had been monitoring the levels of TSWV for my project and was able to watch some of the harvesting occur. This marked the true conclusion to my project as harvesting had begun and any data collected from here on would revolve around yield. With this data collection being over I ensured all my information was labelled correctly on my poster and had it printed off for the upcoming intern graduation. Also during this week we visited a few watermelon fields to determine how bad infections of Anthracnose and gummy stem blight were. The grower wanted to know if the levels of the diseases would be too high to continue with his crop for further harvest, but given only a select few spots were afflicted he was recommended to treat the fields in order to shut down the diseases and retain his crop for future harvest.
Week of July 24th
This week was the week of intern graduation and it was very enlightening to see everyone’s work on what they had completed over the summer and to see all the other agents and UGA staff. It was great to met with everyone and see what their experiences were and how they differed based on region or if their focus was on FACS, ANR, 4-H, or a combination of them all. Also during this week we scouted peanut fields in the County for the levels of TSWV infections to be compared with the planting date, variety, and insecticide treatment employed. While doing this we also monitored for the presence of white mold in the fields with one having the start of a flare up but since it was detected earlier and a spray was highly recommended its spread should be contained. We also assisted in calibrating a boomless sprayer for a gentleman who was trying to spray for weeds in his pine stands.
