Progress 06/01/07 to 05/31/08
Outputs
OUTPUTS: OUTPUTS: 1. Field Days - tours of SBIR project out in field during twice-annual High Mowing Seeds Field Days in Wolcott, VT 2. Conference Presentation - gave a 45-minute talk on this project at the Organic Seed Alliance conference in Salem, OR in February, 2008. DISSEMINATION: 1. Newsletter articles - two articles in The Seed Bin, the official newsletter of High Mowing Seeds. 2. Other articles - the project has been mentioned in numerous publications about High Mowing Seeds and the work we are doing to promote organic seed across the country. PARTICIPANTS: (1) Principal Investigator: Jodi Lew-Smith, Ph.D. Designed project, assembled materials, hired staff, created work plan, oversaw implementation of plan, analyzed data, handled reporting. (2) Research Assistant: Craig J. Slaughter. Planted seeds, implemented gas treatments, transplanted seedlings, hand-pollinated controls, hand-emasculated male plants, collected data. Also assisted in building hoophouses and pollination cages. (3) Assistant: Dave Howard. Assisted in building hoophouses and pollination cages. (4) Consultant: Mark Hutton, Ph.D., University of Maine. Consulted on selection of germplasm, design of experiment, analysis of data, redesign of Year 2 experiments. TRAINING/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Craig Slaughter, Research Assistant, has received an extensive training in reproductive biology of cucurbits, response of cucurbits to hormone treatment, and commercial-scale production of hybrid cucurbit seed. TARGET AUDIENCES: TARGET AUDIENCES: Commercial seed growers and seed industry specialists, as well as commercial-scale organic vegetable growers. The project seeks to make it feasible to produce organic hybrid cucurbit seed on a large scale, thus serving the needs of both the seed growers and the seed users, who will see an increase in availability and a reduction in price. Without conclusive results as of yet, no efforts have been made to change knowledge for the target audience. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: The one major change in approach was to shift from doing fewer, larger experiments involving transplanting cucurbits out to the field to more frequent, smaller experiments where cucurbit seedlings are transplanted into small pots and grown for only a few weeks further. This approach has greatly amplified our ability to tweak the treatment conditions to better elucidate the specific set of conditions that will provide the result we seek, namely the delay of male flowering until significantly later than female flowering. This change resulted in a request for a no-cost extension of the project into a second growing season, but does not alter reporting requirements.
Impacts
To date this project has resulted mainly in Change of Knowledge, as we have begun to elucidate the relationship between application of ethylene gas and the response by the plant with regards to reproductive biology. We have seen a clear response to ethylene when plants were treated for 24 hours at a six-leaf stage, but this response is not of commercial value due to the difficulties of working with larger plants on a large scale. At present, in the second year of the project, we are treating smaller plants with varying doses of gas to attempt to reproduce this effect of delayed male flowering on a smaller plant.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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