Research

Research is at the heart of all endeavors at the Cranberry Station, fueling our ability to provide excellent, science-based information to cranberry growers. Station scientists are leaders in the cranberry research community and in their academic disciplines. Follow the link below to our individual programs and see below for highlights of our programs.

Excellence in Sponsored Research and Scholarly Endeavors

• Our faculty and staff have active grants totaling more than $2 million, including grants from MA-DEP, Mass Highway , EPA, USDA, Cranberry grower organizations, the Center for Agriculture, and the UMASS Faculty Research Council.
• Dr. Frank Caruso, leading a national team of Plant Pathologists, received an award from the USDA Pest Management Alternatives Program to continue studies on reduced fungicide use in the control of cranberry fruit rot.
• Dr. Carolyn DeMoranville, leading a Cranberry Station team, was awarded a grant from the NE Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program to work with cranberry farmers to demonstrate the feasibility of low-cost management practices for plant canopy management and irrigation scheduling.
• Dr. Hilary Sandler teamed with the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association and EPA to continue her research into integrated dodder management, focusing on the use of flooding to control this parasitic weed pest.
• Dr. Justine Vanden Heuvel was the lead investigator for a project funded by the Center for Agriculture for research into the effects of pre-harvest factors on post-harvest quality of cranberries and grapes. She will focus particularly on those compounds that are associated with human health benefits.
• Our success rate for grant applications in FY05 was 89% (16 of 18).
• Station faculty and staff were active in scholarly publication in FY05 with 10 papers published in refereed journals. Dr. DeMoranville was invited to present at a workshop held during the annual conference of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences.
• In the fall of 2005, two new graduate students joined our environmental physiology program and one of our staff members started a graduate program in weed management..
• In 2005, Nora Catlin completed her Ph.D. degree under the direction of Dr. Frank Caruso and Michelle Botelho completed her MS. degree under the direction of Dr. Justine Vanden Heuvel.
• Drs. Caruso, Sandler, and Vanden Heuvel, working with Amherst colleagues, continue to provide outreach and research support to the wine grape growers in Southern New England . This project is supported by a NE-SARE grant and two Center for Agriculture Grants.
• We continue to reinforce our working relationship with our colleagues at the Dartmouth campus. Dr. DeMoranville completed a project with Dr. Brian Howes of the UM-D SMAST program to study water quality in surface waters associated with cranberry bogs. Drs. Caruso and Sandler continue to work on projects with Dr. Pete Hart of the UM-D biology department. Dr. Vanden Heuvel works closely on research projects with Dr. Catherine Neto of the UM-D Chemistry Department to study the impact of field practices on the health components in cranberry and grape fruit. They have developed grant proposals to fund this research with expectations of further funding.
• Recently, a team of senior UM-Dartmouth engineering design students began work with our farm manager, Jen Friedrich on a project to design a custom boom sprayer that will be used on the renovated State Bog to demonstrate the feasibility of such technologies for use on renovated bogs in Massachusetts.