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Funded Project |
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Funding Program:
IPM Enhancement Grants |
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Project Title:
Experiential Nursery IPM Workshop Series to Enhance Grower Adoption and Extension Agent Facilitation |
Project Directors (PDs):
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Lead State: NC Lead Organization: NC State University |
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Cooperating State(s):
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia |
| Undesignated Funding: $39,982 |
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Start Date: Jan-01-2014 End Date: Dec-31-2014 |
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Pests Involved: weeds, arthropods, disease, |
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Site/Commodity: Nursery Crops |
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Area of Emphasis: IPM, education |
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Summary:
The Southern Nursery IPM (SNIPM) Working Group is a collaboration between research and Extension professionals in FL, GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, TX, and VA that has formed to provide timely IPM information to commercial horticulture growers, green industry professionals and extension educators; to identify and solve nursery-based IPM problems; to develop technology to encourage use of and improve the efficacy of IPM practices and advocate the adoption and retention of IPM principles and practices to commercial growers and policy makers. SNIPM members have successfully competed for funding through the Southern IPM Center and other sources and have conducted stakeholder needs assessment meetings that established preliminary research- and Extension-based priorities; have developed and published a multi-state Pest Management Strategic Plan (PMSP) and Crop Profile (Adkins et al. 2011a,b); have surveyed over 200 nursery producers on pest management practices and attitudes affecting adoption of IPM (Fulcher et al. 2012a; LeBude et al. 2012); have designed and introduced the first IPM mobile device applications for the green industry and homeowners, IPMPro and IPMLite, respectively (Fulcher et al. 2012); and published an e-book titled IPM for Select Deciduous Trees in Southeastern US Nursery Production (Adkins et al. 2012). Members have presented information at numerous research and extension venues and have published results widely in trade journals and the popular press (SNIPM 2013). Information gathered at stakeholder meetings, results from grower surveys, and conclusions and recommendations from the aforementioned outputs have been used to obtain further funding of IPM specific research or extension related activities from federal and state agencies as well as commodity groups. Working group and Capstone funding would be used to facilitate a focus group of commercial nursery crop producers to update critical portions of the PMSP and to develop a curriculum for a series of experiential learning workshops for growers and Cooperative Extension Agents within the southeastern US. Results from previous survey data collected from growers in the southeast indicated that scouting, monitoring and pest identification are candidate areas that present the greatest opportunities to affect change within this group. Therefore, components of the proposed program will consist of (a) a demonstration of cost benefits resulting from active and deliberate scouting using a standardized plan; (b) demonstrated methods for actively monitoring key pests using pheromone lures, sticky tapes, growing degree days, and plant phenology to target scouting for various pests based on emergence and vulnerable life stage present; (c) hands-on pest and disease identification using collected or mounted samples; and (d) use of sanitation and resistant cultivars. Workshops will be administered in high nursery-density areas of three participating states to ensure attendance and optimize outreach value. Survey instruments will be administered pre- and post-workshop, as well as after a growing season, to estimate short- and medium-term impacts of the practical instruction, and the knowledge, skills and abilities adopted and retained by attendees.
Objectives: Objective 1: Facilitate one meeting with at least two growers from all workshop areas in order to develop a teaching curriculum. Discuss methods for evaluation of the effectiveness of the content delivered, instruction methods, and growers ability to implement the techniques both immediately and after a growing season. Objective 2: Update research and extension priorities for IPM and the pest and disease management portions of the PMSP. Objective 3: Develop and present three IPM professional development opportunities for commercial nursery crop growers and county Extension agents based on stakeholders needs and information developed by SNIPM utilizing a hands-on component for pest and disease I.D. Objective 4: Provide 105 copies of IPMPro to workshop attendees. Objective 5: Evaluate attendees change in perception regarding their intended adoption and retention of IPM practices by comparing baseline survey data previously gathered from a similar population with pre- and post-workshop responses. An additional survey will be sent to attendees after the 2014 growing season in order to determine retention and adoption. |
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Final Report: |
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Impacts 1. Nursery crop growers increased their knowledge and skills, and changed their behavior by adopting pest management practices after attending a two-day, hands-on, experiential learning workshop on IPM. 2. More growers are now scouting arthropod and plant disease pests deliberately using a standardized sampling plan. 3. Greater than 80% of growers completing the practice adoption survey indicated they trained other employees at their place of business about the concepts learned at the IPM workshop. 4. Growers estimated the combined economic value of knowledge, skills, or abilities learned at the workshop and their subsequent impact from adoption and implementation on nursery production over the summer at a value of less than $5000. Based on 15 respondents that is approximately $50,000 USD of economic impact after the cost of the workshop is excluded. |
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Outcomes 1. A focus group meeting was held in Quincy, FL, to assess the needs of nursery crop growers in that area. 2. A revised Pest Management Strategic Plan for nursery crops in the southeast US was published by the Southern Nursery IPM (SNIPM) working group in 2015. 3. Approximately 54 nursery crops growers from three nursery dense cities in the southeastern US attended three, two-day, hands-on, experiential learning workshops about IPM practices. |
| Report Appendices |
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