Grower Survey for Proposed Project: “Shielding Cucurbit Crops for Resilient Agroecosystems”

Dear Cucurbit Grower:

We need your help.
A team of extension and research workers from five universities is preparing a proposal to USDA’s Specialty Crops Research Initiative. Our goal is help growers produce more profitable and sustainable cucurbit crops (squash, melons, pumpkins, cucumber, etc.). We plan to do experiments and on-farm trials in 5 states (IA, KY, MI, OH, PA) over 3 years to:
•    Develop crop varieties that are resistant to bacterial wilt, a disease that is spread by cucumber beetles.
•    Develop and demonstrate new tools to mechanize installation, removal, storage, and re-use of row covers (for example, Reemay and Agribon).
•    Show how using strip tillage with cover crops can improve yields, reduce soil compaction and erosion, increase biological control of insect pests, and conserve bees that pollinate cucurbit crops.
•    Share our findings with growers through: a mobile application for in-field identification of insect pests, diseases, and pollinators; an interactive project website; “virtual field days” that are available 24/7 online; and traditional extension activities (field days, meeting presentations, trade journal articles, etc.)

Where do you fit in?
It is critical that USDA hears from cucurbit growers about how you view the importance and value of what this project would do. Your participation in this short survey would help us to accomplish this. The survey is located at http://www.plantpath.iastate.edu/survey/843.  The survey will take approximately 5 minutes to complete.

The information you provide in the survey will be kept strictly confidential. To protect your privacy, all identifiers from the replies will be eliminated. In addition, people who process the replies are independent of the proposal team. Information from the survey will be used only in this proposal, and then only as summaries in which no individual’s answers can be identified.

Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts in contributing to this proposal. Your help is very much appreciated. If you have any questions or comments about this survey, please contact me by phone [515-294-0579] or email [mgleason@iastate.edu].

Sincerely,
Mark Gleason, Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Iowa State University
   
PROJECT TEAM:
University of Kentucky: Mark Williams, Tim Coolong, Ric Bessin
Ohio State University: Sally Miller, Celeste Welty, Mary Gardiner
Penn State University: Shelby Fleischer, Elsa Sánchez, Mark Mescher
Michigan State University: Mathieu Ngouajio, Zsofia Szendren
Iowa State University: Donald Lewis, Laura Jesse, Mike Duffy, Cindy Haynes, Ajay Nair