UMass Crop & Animal Research Farm Tour

Join UMass Extension and the UMass College of Natural Sciences and Stockbridge School of Agriculture for the 2024 Crop & Animal Research Farm Tour! We will take a tour of the research farm and hear about ongoing research, then have pizza and plenty of time for discussion afterwards.

Tour Agenda

Dual-use solar

Stephen Herbert, Stockbridge School of Agriculture

There is a need for sustainable renewable energy sources to meet ever increasing demands for household and industry electrical needs and for reducing environmental impacts. Solar power is an area of greatest promise for Massachusetts. However, traditional ground mounted solar installations on farmland remove arable land from potential agricultural use when the world also needs more food. The main objective has been to demonstrate an alternative system of generating electrical energy while still maintaining the land in agriculture. Panel clusters were installed 7.5 ft (2.3m) off the ground with spaces between panel clusters varying from 2 to 5 ft.

Student Farm Enterprise

Amanda Brown, Senior Lecturer Stockbridge School of Ag, Director UMass Ag Learning Center and Jason Dragon, Farm Manager UMass Student Farm

The UMass Student Farm is the primary hands-on learning lab for Stockbridge Sustainable Food & Farming majors. Each season up to 15 undergraduate students take part in the cooperative planning and management for our 20-acre certified organic vegetable farm. As UMass student farmers, we commit to providing our campus community with nutritious, organically grown, local produce. We cultivate student empowerment through hands-on agricultural production and by educating our peers about the importance of creating a healthier food system.

How native plant species used in pollinator habitats affect disease transmission in pollinators

Emelia Kusi, Graduate Student, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; Lynn Adler, Dept of Biology

Flowers are essential food for pollinators, but can also be a place where diseases get transmitted between pollinators. PhD student Emelia Kusi in Lynn Adler's lab is studying the process of disease transmission on 15 native perennials often found in pollinator habitat. She is relating floral traits to where bees defecate and acquire pathogens on plants, as well as how long pathogen cells are viable on different plant tissues.

Effect of timing of floral resources on pollinator disease transmission

Simon Pinilla-Gallego, Post-doc Researcher, & Dr. Lynn Adler, Dept of Biology

Flowers are essential food for pollinators, but can also be a place where diseases get transmitted between pollinators. Postdoctoral researcher Simon Pinilla-Galleog in Lynn Adler's lab is asking how the timing of floral resources shapes how effectively diseases are transmitted. He is manipulating the timing of resource availability in large tents of flowering plants, each with an uninfected and infected bee colony, to see how flowers affect disease transmission between the colonies.

Vegetable Variety Trials for Disease Resistance and Heat Tolerance

Sue Scheufele and Genevieve Higgins, UMass Extension Vegetable Program

Cucumbers: For many years now, the UMass Extension Vegetable Program has evaluated new cucumber varieties with resistance to the damaging cucurbit downy mildew pathogen, with the aim of identifying resistant varieties for fall production. This year we are evaluating 11 commercial and pre-commercial varieties, including slicing and pickling types. Some of the varieties we have evaluated in the past with good DM resistance include Chaperon, Citadel, Espirit, SV4142, Bristol, NY264, and DMR401.

Basil: Downy mildew is the most common and most devastating disease of basil in the Northeast. It first arrived in the region in 2008 and there has been a significant effort to develop cultivars with resistance to the disease. There are now many different resistant cultivars that are commercially available, with more being developed. The UMass Extension Vegetable Program is conducting this trial along with Vitalis Seeds, to evaluate the relative downy mildew susceptibility of 13 cultivars, including Dolly, Piama, Eleonara, Evi Giuletta, Keira, Prospera, and Prospera Active, and several pre-commercial lines.

Lettuce: Growing lettuce through the heat of summer is challenging, as temperatures at or above 85°F causes bitterness and bolting. Last year we evaluated several strategies to mitigate the effects of high heat including variety, shade cloth, and mulches. Variety was far and away the most significant contributor to lettuce quality so this year we decided to focus on that and are evaluating 43 commercial and pre-commercial varieties of romaine, green and red leaf, batavias, butterhead, and gems from 3 different seed producers—Harris Moran, Vitalis, and Johnny’s Seeds.

Corn earworm genetics

Sue Scheufele and Ali Shokoohi, UMass Extension Vegetable Program

Sweet corn is an important vegetable crop in MA, but is susceptible to several different caterpillar pests. One tool farmers have to minimize damage and reduce pesticide sprays is to use varieties (or spray insecticide) containing the Bt toxin—a molecule made by a soil-dwelling bacterium. Corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea) is one of the most devastating of the corn caterpillars because it is so ubiquitous—it occurs across the country and has a wide host range including cotton, where it is also controlled with Bt.  There is evidence that it has overcome 2 of the 3 Bt genes used to control it, and may be developing resistance to the third gene. This year we joined forces with more than 50 other sentinel trials in 27 states and 5 Canadian provinces, and planted side-by-side Bt and non-Bt plots to monitor CEW resistance to Bt. We will compare our CEW population with those from other parts of the country; we expect our data will be different from much of the rest of the country since there is relatively less acreage of Bt-corn planted in MA. We will also simultaneously monitor for susceptibility changes and regional differences in European corn borer (O. nubilalis), fall armyworm (S. frugiperda), and western bean cutworm (S. albicosta) populations.

Corn and sorghum intercropping reduces nitrogen loss and greenhouse gas emissions

David Ahlberg, UMass Microbiology Department, Nüsslein Lab

Some plants, such as sorghum, have evolved the ability to out-compete certain microbes in the root zone for nitrogen rich nutrients and thus acquire more nitrogen fertilizer than other plants. In this experiment, we seek to leverage this trait in an intercropping system with corn, a notoriously nitrogen hungry crop, to not only increase the amount of fertilizer available to both plants but also to reduce greenhouse gas byproducts of microbial turnover of nitrogen fertilizers. In the field we take periodic soil gas emission measurements as well as measuring different forms of nitrogen in the soil to assess the effectiveness of sorghum's suppression of the root-zone bacteria. At the end of the season we measure plant yield and chlorophyll content as proxies for general plant health.

Exploring the benefits of living mulch for corn silage systems

Ashley Keiser, Assistant Professor; Sara Sadeghi, PhD student; Masoud Hashemi, Extension Professor, Stockbridge School of Agriculture

With living roots throughout the entire year, living mulches, or perennial cover crops, have the potential to consistently improve soil health. Living mulches have the potential to reduce fertilizer inputs, nitrate loss to waterways, soil erosion, and the time and labor required for farmers to establish a successful cover crop following corn harvest. While living mulches have been tested successfully in Midwestern corn-soy production systems with noted water quality improvements, they have not yet been applied to Massachusetts silage corn systems. This project seeks to demonstrate the benefits of living mulch in Massachusetts silage corn systems for retaining nutrients in agricultural fields, reducing external fertilizer inputs, improving soil health, and subsequently improving water quality.

Summer Cover Crops: Exploring a ‘Less Is More’ Response to Extreme Weather

Dr. Hannah Naughton, Assistant Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry, Stockbridge School of Agriculture, UMass & Marissa Hanley, Neda Nikpour Rashidabad, Arthur Siller, Masoud Hashemi

Summer cover crops are a good option to manage soil nutrients when heat and drought stress might hinder cash crop growth.  For instance, they may absorb excess nutrients that could impair downstream water quality or add nutrients like nitrogen to soil while improving water flow and preventing erosion.  We are growing four cover crops in monoculture and biculture to assess belowground nutrient dynamics under a no-till and conventional till system.  We hope to find a system that improves soil nutrient status and structure while conferring higher growth yields to a fall vegetable crop. 

Genes and genetics in agriculture

Madelaine Bartlett, Professor of Biology

There are mutants in your food! Bartlett lab trainees will discuss the mutations ancient and recent that were important in crop domestication and agriculture, with a focus on corn. They will also briefly discuss the work in the Bartlett lab focused on understanding how plant genes function, and how these genes have changed during natural evolution and domestication to improve crop productivity. The Bartlett lab's ultimate goal is to provide fundamental understanding of plant genetics that can be used for agricultural improvement, now and into the future. For more information: www.bartlettlab.org

There is 1 pesticide recertification credit available at this event.