Virginia Tech to tackle spring frosts in apples, controlled environment agriculture

Virginia Tech says six projects with the Virginia Cooperative Extension have earned $550,000 in USDA Specialty Crop Block Grants. 

These projects address water treatment of crops, disease and frost damage protection and increasing greenhouse strawberry health, according to the university. Projects include:

• Validating in-field water treatments to enhance produce safety — This project will evaluate the effectiveness of different chemical treatments to reduce on-farm water contamination to specialty crops. As part of the findings, researchers will share the best EPA-approved sanitizers to treat water and reduce contamination.
• Use of drone spray for weed management in specialty crops — Researchers will evaluate the economic benefit of herbicides applied with drones in tomatoes and broccoli.
• Increasing yield in greenhouse soilless strawberries using growth-promoting bacteria — This project will study different strawberry cultivars' growth and yield when using beneficial microorganisms called bacterial endophytes in a controlled environment agriculture facility.
• Virginia-specific disease management strategies to protect sweet corn seedlings — Researchers will identify fungicide seed treatments most effective for Virginia growers and which soilborne pathogens are most common.
• Applying next-generation biofungicides in controlled environment agriculture — This project will develop and evaluate biofungicides for the control of common diseases of specialty crops grown in controlled environment agriculture.
• Preserving apples in the face of frost: Evaluating the efficacy of cryoprotectants — Researchers will study the impact of using cryoprotectants — chemical compounds developed by agrochemical companies to prevent damage from freezing — on apple trees in the mid-Atlantic region to reduce the impact of spring frosts on apple production.

Related: USDA awards Virginia Tech $80M for climate-smart ag pilot