Planting broccoli to stop bugs

Seth Hancock shows off yarrow flowers in front of the broccoli plants that his class has grown for the farmscaping experiement.


Jamie Lamberski

ATHENS, GA. – University of Georgia agriculture students are helping a graduate student plant 30,000 broccoli plants for insect research this semester.

Obinna Aduba, an entomology graduate research assistant at UGA from Nigeria, is taking on the broccoli research project after two UGA professors received a grant.

Peter Hartel, an organic agriculture professor in the UGA Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, and John Ruberson, a professor in the UGA Department of Entomology at the Tifton campus, are the principle investigators of the $165,000 grant funded by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education organization.

Hartel is requiring students in his organic agriculture class to help Aduba plant the broccoli plants that will cover roughly four acres between the UGA farms in Athens and Tifton. The project will experiment with floral farmscaping, a farming method that uses flowers as additional resources for preventing crop damage by insects.

"Floral farmscaping is something everyone says works, but we don’t know if it’s really true," Dr. Hartel said. The research will help scientists understand how the process works in the Southeast. "All we know about floral farmscaping comes out of California," Hartel said, "so we have to figure out what works in Georgia."

The experiment involves planting two sets of broccoli plants using organic methods. One set has flowers such as yarrow and dill in the middle and the other set does not have flowers. The flowers are intended to attract predatory insects like lady beetles that feed on harmful insects such as caterpillar pests that destroy crops. The flowers also provide food and shelter for the insects that would naturally use broccoli for these resources and, in the process, ruin the crop.

"We are trying to find plants that encourage the good guys and prevent the bad guys, and that’s the tricky part," Ruberson said. "We are grateful for organizations like the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education that are able to fund something like this, which is pretty risky since so much can go wrong."

The students’ help will allow Aduba, Hartel and Ruberson to focus on anticipating and correcting complications.

Each of Hartel’s students is given a portion of the grant money to grow and maintain his or her own plot of broccoli plants. The students pick out the seeds, make the organic soil mix, sow the seeds, create their own drip irrigation, test the soil and moderate the plants’ growth until they are transplanted from the greenhouse to the farm in six weeks. The students spend one hour before or after each class at the greenhouse.

"We’re the only class that actually does farm work and field work," said Seth Hancock, an agribusiness junior from Sautee, Ga., who is helping with the project. "I really enjoy the hands-on experience, getting to plant everything and be out in the field."

Hancock said he is excited about the opportunity because he thinks that the organic department is limited in resources.

"We’re trying to build our research infrastructure, but like everyone else we could always use more resources," Ruberson said. "This research project has been really good because it is pulling in a number of students in on it."

Robert Tate, head of UGA’s organic production, is helping oversee maintenance of the broccoli plants. Tate said the experiment is not only important for farm research and for educating agriculture students, but also for the land.

"The land being used for the experiment is called transitional organic," said Tate. This means that it is not USDA certified organic land yet, but with the students using organic farm methods, the three-year certification process has begun.

The organic practices that will help certify the land include the use of plastic layering which prevents detrimental weed growth.

"Weeds are the sole issue in organic farming," Tate said. "The plastic trays are organically reliable as long as they are taken up afterwards."

It is an invaluable experience for UGA agriculture students to practice organic methods on transitional land, Tate said, because if farmers across the state convert to organic farming, then a vast amount of Georgia’s land will be transitional organic land.

"It’s good to have the different classifications for educating students and the public," Tate said.





Edited by Natalie Leff