Horticulture Commons^™

Consumers' Perception Of Quality For Ladies' Swimwear Based On Price And Brand, Jennifer Avila, Laurie M. Apple, Lance M. Cheramie, Leigh Southward

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Consumers shop at multiple retailers for different needs, and it is understood that many choose a retailer for an experience and others will shop at another retailer for better savings. In a time where E-commerce is at an all-time high, retailers need to consider how they compare against online retailers in the apparel sector. In this study, three retailers were compared against one another since they are all swimwear competitors. As these retailers adjust to store and production shortages, it is important to understand how the quality of clothing will keep sales consistent. Consumers are likely to keep shopping at …

Discovery: The Student Journal Of Dale Bumpers College Of Agricultural, Food And Life Sciences- Volume 23 2022, Several Authors

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Featured Faculty Mentor And Student Explore The Dynamics Of This Research Relationship, Matt Bertucci, Gracie Morrison

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Lemongrass Essential Oil On Galleria Mellonella Hemocytes, Kyndra Chastain

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In modern agriculture, the use of pesticides is unavoidable. However, improper use has resulted in pest resistance and negative impacts on the environment and human health. Changes are needed in the agricultural industry to account for the damage already caused. Researchers have turned to essential oils as key ingredients for potential biopesticides, with some mixtures already on the market. Most studies involving essential oils and a pest’s response concentrate on mortality or interruptions in development during and between life stages. My study, however, focused on immune responses; specifically, lemongrass essential oil’s impact on Galleria mellonella. Such responses include a …

Garlic Curing: Post-Harvest Nutrient Remobilization From Leaves To Cloves, Mary L. Books

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is grown on small and large scales worldwide. After harvesting, garlic undergoes a drying process for long-term preservation, called curing. Some producers cure with leaves intact, while others will remove and discard the leaves, curing only the bulbs. Due to the ability of plants to remobilize nutrients from leaves to underground storage organs, such as bulbs, the curing method of garlic may affect clove nutrient content. This study explores nutrient remobilization responses in garlic when cured with leaves intact compared to leaves separated from bulbs. Four cultivars of garlic, German White, Chesnok Red, Romanian Red, and …

Field Validation Of A Farmer Supplied Data Approach To Close Soybean Yield Gaps In The Us North Central Region, José F. Andrade, Spyridon Mourtzinis, Juan I. Rattalino Edreira, Shawn P. Conley, John Gaska, Herman J. Kandel, Laura E. Lindsey, Seth Naeve, Scott Nelson, Maninder P. Singhi, Laura J. Thompson, James E. Specht, Patricio Grassini

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

CONTEXT: Producer-reported data can be used to identify suites of management practices that lead to higher yield and profit. However, a rigorous validation of the approach in relation to its potential impact on farmer yield and profit is lacking.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to validate a producer-data approach on its capability to guide on-farm evaluation of management practices with greatest potential for increasing producer yield and profit. We show proof of concept using soybean in the North Central US region as a case study.

METHODS: We used a combination of regression tree analysis and a spatial framework to determine practices …

A New Perspective When Examining Maize Fertilizer Nitrogen Use Efficiency, Incrementally, Newell R. Kitchen, Curtis J. Ransom, James S. Schepers, Jerry L. Hatfield, Raymond Massey, Scott T. Drummond

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

For maize (Zea mays L.), nitrogen (N) fertilizer use is often summarized from field to global scales using average N use efficiency (NUE). But expressing NUE as averages is misleading because grain increase to added N diminishes near optimal yield. Thus, environmental risks increase as economic benefits decrease. Here, we use empirical datasets obtained in North America of maize grain yield response to N fertilizer (n = 189) to create and interpret incremental NUE (iNUE), or the change in NUE with change in N fertilization. We show for those last units of N applied to reach economic optimal N …

Inactivation Of The Entire Arabidopsis Group Ii Gh3s Confers Tolerance To Salinity And Water Deficit, Rubén Casanova-Sáez, Eduardo Mateo-Bonmatí, Jan Šimura, Aleš Pěnčík, Ondřej Novák, Paul Staswick, Karin Ljung

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) controls a plethora of developmental processes. Thus, regulation of its concentration is of great relevance for plant performance. Cellular IAA concentration depends on its transport, biosynthesis and the various pathways for IAA inactivation, including oxidation and conjugation.

Group II members of the GRETCHEN HAGEN 3 (GH3) gene family code for acyl acid amido synthetases catalysing the conjugation of IAA to amino acids. However, the high degree of functional redundancy among them has hampered thorough analysis of their roles in plant development.

In this work, we generated an Arabidopsis gh3.1,2,3,4,5,6,9,17 (gh3oct) mutant to knock out the group II …

Root Exudates Impact Plant Performance Under Abiotic Stress, Yen Ning Chai, Daniel P. Schachtman

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Plant root exudates serve pivotal roles in supporting plant development and interactions with the physicochemical and biological factors in the rhizosphere. Under stress conditions, root exudation is involved in enhancing plant resource-use efficiency and facilitating the crosstalk between plant and soil microbes to ameliorate stress. Although there are a large number of root exudates that remain to be characterized, recent technological advancements have allowed for the function of many exudate compounds to be elucidated. In this review, we discuss current knowledge about the key root exudates that modulate plant resource-use efficiency under various abiotic stresses including drought, aluminum toxicity, phosphorus, …

Ecological Intensification With Soil Health Practices Demonstrates Positive Impacts On Multiple Soil Properties: A Large-Scale Farmer-Led Experiment, Fernanda Souza Krupek, Daren D. Redfearn, Kent M. Eskridge, Andrea Basche

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Improving soil health is critical to reversing trends of soil degradation and is of increasing interest to a range of stakeholders including policymakers, agricultural industry leaders, food companies, and farmers. Crop and soil management practices focused on ecological functions can be effective in restoring fundamental biological, chemical and physical soil properties. The call for ecological intensification of agricultural systems has the potential to improve soil health and input-use efficiency. In this study, we developed a framework to classify spatial and temporal ecological intensification with soil health practices: tillage, crop rotation, cover crop, organic amendment, and crop-livestock integration. We applied this …

Genome-Wide Association Study And Genomic Prediction Of White Rust Resistance In Usda Grin Spinach Germplasm, Ainong Shi, Gehendra Bhattarai, Haizheng Xiong, Carlos A. Avila, Chunda Feng, Bo Liu, Vijay Joshi, Larry Stein, Beiquan Mou, Lindsey J. Du Toit, James C. Corell

Horticulture Faculty Publications and Presentations

White rust, caused by Albugo occidentalis, is one of the major yield-limiting diseases of spinach (Spinacia oleracea) in some major commercial production areas, particularly in southern Texas in the United States. The use of host resistance is the most economical and environment-friendly approach to managing white rust in spinach production. The objectives of this study were to conduct a genome-wide associating study (GWAS), to identify single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers associated with white rust resistance in spinach, and to perform genomic prediction (GP) to estimate the prediction accuracy (PA). A GWAS panel of 346 USDA (US Dept. …

2022 Dsac High Tunnel Bell Pepper Variety Trial, Bronwyn Aly

Midwest Vegetable Trial Reports

This paper reports on seven bell pepper cultivar entries evaluated in a high tunnel production system during the 2022 growing season at the University of Illinois Dixon Springs Agricultural Center (DSAC) located in southern Illinois (Pope County).

Impacts Of Nitrogen Rate And Source Following Green Manure On Broccoli Yield, Charlie Rohwer

Midwest Vegetable Trial Reports

Cover crops are beneficial to soil structure and processes and can provide nitrogen (N) to a subsequent crop. Practical studies of N availability from cover crops and organic fertilizers in naive (transitioning) soils are helpful for growers to achieve desirable yield. Microbial soil inoculants (biostimulants) may enhance availability of organic N sources. We found a spring-planted pea-oat cover crop provided less than 27 pounds of N to a subsequent broccoli crop, and no impact of a commercial biostimulant on broccoli yield or development rate. Availability of N from organic amendments used is discussed.

2022 Personal-Sized Triploid Watermelon Cultivar Evaluation In Indiana, Wenjing Guan, Dean Haseman, Dennis Nowaskie, Dan Egel

Midwest Vegetable Trial Reports

Personal-sized (mini) watermelons refer to fruit weighing 4.4 to 8.8 lb (Vinson et al., 2010), with 6-7 lb considered the ideal size. Both seeded and seedless personal-sized cultivars are commercially available. In the annual cultivar trial, we evaluate the performance of personal-sized triploid watermelons in southern Indiana.

2022 High Tunnel Fresh Market Determinate Tomato Cultivar Trial For Southern Illinois, Bronwyn Aly

Midwest Vegetable Trial Reports

A determinate tomato cultivar trial was conducted at the University of Illinois Dixon Springs Agricultural Center (DSAC) located in southern Illinois (Pope County) during the 2022 growing season. The objective of this trial was to compare performance of thirteen fresh market determinate tomato cultivars in a high tunnel production system.

2022 Standard-Sized Triploid Watermelon Cultivar Evaluation In Indiana, Wenjing Guan, Dean Haseman, Dennis Nowaskie, Dan Egel

Midwest Vegetable Trial Reports

A total of 6,600 acres of watermelons were planted in southern Indiana in 2021, making Indiana the sixth largest watermelon production state in the US, following Florida, Texas, Georgia, California, and North Carolina (USDA, 2022). Farmers select cultivars based on yield, disease resistance and fruit quality. This annual watermelon cultivar evaluation trial aims to provide watermelon producers and seed companies with information on the performances of different watermelon cultivars in southern Indiana.

Solid-Green Watermelon Cultivar Comparison, Wenjing Guan, Dean Haseman, Dennis Nowaskie, Dan Egel

Midwest Vegetable Trial Reports

No abstract provided.

First Plant Cell Atlas Symposium Report, Selena L. Rice, Elena Lazarus, Christopher Anderton, Kenneth Birnbaum, Jenniofer Brophy, Benjamin Cole, Diane Dickel, David Ehrhardt, Noah Fahlgren, Margaret Frank, Elizabeth Haswell, Shao-Shan Carol Huang, Samuel Leiboff, Marc Libault, Marisa S. Otegui, Nicholas Provart, R. Glen Uhrig, Seung Y. Rhee, The Plant Cell Atlas Consortium

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

The Plant Cell Atlas (PCA) community hosted a virtual symposium on December 9 and 10, 2021 on single cell and spatial omics technologies. The conference gathered almost 500 academic, industry, and government leaders to identify the needs and directions of the PCA community and to explore how establishing a data synthesis center would address these needs and accelerate progress. This report details the presentations and discussions focused on the possibility of a data synthesis center for a PCA and the expected impacts of such a center on advancing science and technology globally. Community discussions focused on topics such as data …

A Non-Destructive Approach For Measuring Rice Panicle-Level Photosynthetic Responses Using 3d-Image Reconstruction, Jaspinder Singh Dharni, Balpreet Kaur Dhatt, Puneet Paul, Tian Gao, Tala Awada, Paul Staswick, Jason Hupp, Hongfeng Yu, Harkamal Walia

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Our understanding of the physiological response of rice inflorescence (panicle) to environmental stresses is limited by the challenge of accurately determining panicle photosynthetic parameters and their impact on grain yield. This is primarily due to lack of a suitable gas exchange methodology for panicles, as well as non-destructive methods to accurately determine panicle surface area. To address these challenges, we have developed a custom panicle gas exchange cylinder compatible with the LiCor 6800 Infra-red Gas Analyzer. Accurate surface area measurements were determined with a 3D panicle imaging platform to normalize the panicle-level photosynthetic measurements. We observed differential responses in both …

Identification Of Beneficial And Detrimental Bacteria Impacting Sorghum Responses To Drought Using Multi-Scale And Multisystem Microbiome Comparisons, Mingsheng Qi, Jeffrey C. Berry, Kira W. Veley, Lily O'Connor, Omri M. Finkel, Isai Salas-González, Molly Kuhs, Julietta Jupe, Emily Holcomb, Tijana Glavina Del Rio, Cody Creech, Peng Liu, Susannah G. Tringe, Jeffery L. Dangl, Daniel P. Schachtman, Rebecca S. Bart

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Drought is a major abiotic stress limiting agricultural productivity. Previous field-level experiments have demonstrated that drought decreases microbiome diversity in the root and rhizosphere. How these changes ultimately affect plant health remains elusive. Toward this end, we combined reductionist, transitional and ecological approaches, applied to the staple cereal crop sorghum to identify key root-associated microbes that robustly affect drought-stressed plant phenotypes. Fifty-three Arabidopsis-associated bacteria were applied to sorghum seeds and their effect on root growth was monitored. Two Arthrobacter strains caused root growth inhibition (RGI) in Arabidopsis and sorghum. In the context of synthetic communities, Variovorax strains were able to …