Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
While the United States of America is currently the fifth-largest citrus producing country, less citrus is being grown than it has been historically. There has been a 72% reduction in fruit for juice and a 20% reduction in fruit for fresh consumption. This has led to significant economic losses in the citrus industry, particularly in Florida but also Texas. The effects have been smaller in California, but the future is uncertain. There are many reasons why growing citrus is becoming less common, but the largest reason nationally is a plant disease called huanglongbing (HLB), sometimes known as citrus greening. The disease causes citrus trees to slowly weaken so they do not produce as many fruit, and the fruit become unpalatable. The trees eventually die. In states where citrus is a major crop, is an important cultural focus, underpinning the livelihoods of many family farms. Citrus contributes to a stable United States food supply, where it is not necessary to import food in increasingly unstable times. It also brings joy to many residents to have citrus trees at their residences. Furthermore, citrus groves contribute to providing needed green spaces, allowing animals to find shelter, water to enter the soil, and cooler temperatures. It is important to support research that contributes to finding ways to fight HLB and grow citrus economically, so that it can remain part of the fabric of the United States.In the 15 years since HLB was discovered in Florida, a large citrus research effort by the USDA has concentrated on learning about the bacterial disease and the insect that moves it, along with how to grow citrus with the disease. While progress has been made on our knowledge of the disease, much work remains. Research discoveries, including those by the USDA,have had an impact on supporting success in growing citrus, although for many it is not economically sustainable. But growers find that they cannot easily access USDA research discoveries in an easily interpreted format, making it challenging to use that new research in their groves. This project will build a web-based portal resource to house USDA HLB research information in a non-technical, curated manner that is responsive to grower input. It will be organized and searchable by topic so that it is easily accessible in one place, especially for citrus growers and other citrus industry users. As part of the effort to make research discoveries more accessible by growers, we will use data to build two tools to help them make grove management decisions. The tool development will follow grower priorities and be guided by their input to achieve easily understandable information in the best format for their needs. Grower meetings and education events will be conducted in the citrus growing regions to explain what is available through the portal and the best ways to use the tools. Meeting grower needs is essential, as such it is also important to identify where the USDA has not enough research focus or communication gaps. Ongoing project evaluation will ensure that the project is meeting the needs of all intended audiences within the financial means and information available. The ultimate goal is to get the best and most current information to growers and USDA-NIFA in a manner that is most usable to them.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
50%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
While there have been generous, large, targeted USDA research funding programs (i.e., ECDRE, SCRI-CDRE), managing HLB remains challenging for the citrus industry. Until HLB was discovered in the United States, there had been relatively little research done on the system leaving huge knowledge gaps in areas like disease epidemiology, vector ecology, and physiological effects on citrus trees. Some of these gaps have been partially filled with the concentrated USDA research effort of the last 15 years but the large amount of data produced has not always been synthesized and relayed back to the citrus industry via the extension system. Citrus industry stakeholders are desperate for information but feel that relatively little has been provided compared with the immense research effort. Agoal of this project is to document and translate HLB research to the HLB community of growers.A similar set of problems have occurred for the HLB research community. There is a plethora of research studies being published as data about HLB have been generated in the United States for over 15 years and from other countries for much longer. However, it is very difficult for researchers to easily find specific information. Often data are not available for comparisons among studies, and it can be difficult to link various lines of inquiry together to generate new and novel findings. The project aims to develop tools to show what lines of USDA research have promise, those that are unlikely to lead to solutions, and those that have promise but there are key pieces of information needed to continue. This is essential for researchers to be able to generate new hypotheses to test and better address the identified knowledge gaps. To complicate matters, the HLB community has non-standard ways of referring to data or apply terminology in multiple, conflicting ways. This can lead to confusion in the literature and when comparing findings when comparing work. This will need to be partially addressed as part of the project and communicated back to the HLB research community.Growers are expressing dissatisfaction with the direction of research funding and NIFA-ECDRE need a way to show that they are addressing the concerns of growers but also that they are responding to those concerns. We will give a databaseto help them determine if the concerns are already being addressed and if not, how they can fill the gaps.We will use stakeholder input and direct consultation to guide our processes in developing the database and decision support tools. We plan to address these problems and assist NIFA-ECDRE to refine research priorities for the future by developing tools for citrus industry stakeholders, the HLB-research community, and research organization administrators. Our objectives for this project are:Objective 1. Develop database for stakeholders to access critical information about research findings on HLB.Objective 2. Develop high quality extension products from existing and future knowledge needs, assessing extension effectiveness and research and continued extension gap monitoring.
Project Methods
The first step will be to put together a global advisory committee that will contain two subcommittees. The global advisory committee will advise the team on the project direction and improvements. One subcommittee will guide the database building process from available data held by USDA agencies. The second subcommittee will consist of industry representatives from the citrus growing regions to provide feedback on the functionality and usability of the grower decision support tools.The second step will be to identify stakeholder priorities. The primary stakeholder groups are growers from the citrus producing regions, packers and processors, NIFA-ECDRE personnel, and NAREEE citrus subcommittee members. We will conduct needs assessments using listening sessions, focus groups, and surveys with the various stakeholders; data collection activities will be based on regions in recognition that growers will have different needs and priorities depending on location. To enhance product quality and effectiveness, we will collect data on the attributes, needs, and expectations of their intended users. Individual interviews, focus groups, and/or survey questionnaires will be used to collect data.Web portal users will be directed from a simple interface landing page based on answers given on a decision tree. There will be an area where the project team will record the progress of the project and up-coming goals. The sort of information available to the user will be determined by user type. Users will be provided with a username and password for logging into the site after they have completed the registration process, and the information they can view will be determined by enforcing role-based access controls. The navigation tools will guide users to the needed information by using structured trees or SQL queries running in the background. Once the user has defined their interests, they will be directed to content choices about their topic. We will develop grower decision tools for select topics with sufficient research.Data harmonization is needed among data sources, including metadata and raw data. A data dictionary is essential to harmonize how variables are labelled so that the data can be easily categorized, searched, and tagged. The data dictionary terms will require careful thought and coordination among the PIs, NIFA-ECDRE personnel, the citrus subcommittee, and USDA agencies so that it encompasses as many needs as possible. Additional input from the Citrus Industry subcommittee will be needed to identify the terminology growers are likely to use as search terms so that these can be included as tags. As the dictionary is developed, it will be periodically circulated to USDA agencies for input and suggestions. It may be necessary to develop a way for new terms to be suggested and evaluated if novel variables are being collected.Database development, grower decision support tools and webpages are important, but without content are ultimately meaningless. We will develop a pipeline to curate information that allows the database content to be understood by citrus industry stakeholders. The priority of topic areas will be determined in consultation with the advisory committee. The topics will be immediately deployable information, which may differ regionally. Once the topic priorities are determined, the program manager will work with the PD and Co-PIs to assign topics to the most appropriate project members to collect and synthesize the available data and evaluate available extension products.The extension portion of the website does not need to start from the very beginning but can build off existing resources like the UF/IFAS Citrus Research page (UF/IFAS Citrus Research) where public HLB research information conducted at the UF is housed. Ruth Borger, the UF/IFAS CREC communications specialist, is a collaborator on this project and will allow us to use the resources and information she has gathered. If excellent extension products already exist, they will be linked to the network so that users can easily locate the needed information without duplication. The original authors will be given full credit for their works, and extension products will be housed where the authors prefer with links from the CN project.To maintain the functionality of the web-portal, standard operating procedures (SOP) will be written for data base management and maintenance along with other required NIFA functions. Impact will be recorded like for land grant institutions (https://landgrantimpacts.org/).Bringing disparate data sources together and synthesizing them into a cohesive product is not always straight forward. Our grower decision support tools need to be high-quality, evidence-based products. They will also need to be updated and modified with new information as it become available. Research on HLB is highly varied, but we have identified four topic areas for grower decision support tools from frequently asked questions of growers and extension agents. We will work with the advisory committee to prioritize the topics. The topics are 1) cultivar and rootstock susceptibility to HLB, 2) tailoring nutritional regimens to support HLB-affected trees for a grove, 3) integrated Asian citrus psyllid management, and 4) whether to use an antimicrobial strategy and selection of appropriate application method. There will only be enough resources to develop two of these grower tools and possibly do the initial work for a third. We will design a grower decision tool where the choices are clear and simple, the outcomes are clear, and resources are linked. Another possible format to present data is as a searchable catalogue which is filterable based on traits to help growers select a variety that suits their growing conditions including disease tolerance. This would be an excellent way to present growers with information about the HLB sensitivity of cultivars as well as consumer preferences.The body of HLB research generated by USDA agencies since 2006 has not been synthesized into grower appropriate language. Based on advisory committee prioritization, we will synthesize the available information into short non-technical research summaries, linking to published scholarly articles or extension documents. They will give the objectives and study rational, summarize the results, and conclusions, emphasizing HLB management. Digital object identifiers (DOI) will take the reader to any original research papers for more in depth reading. It will not be possible to review every USDA project in the 2.5 years, hence the need for subject matter prioritization from the advisory committee. We will create a rubric to guide authors on how to draft new non-technical summaries for the future. These reviews will be housed in the database and linked to any appropriate tools. In-service trainings and webinars on how to get the most from the developed tools will be produced.Part of any extension program is ensuring that the information being generated and distributed is evaluated for effectiveness to the intended audience. This includes the web portal and the grower decision support tools. To promote the adoption of the developed products and their impact, key elements of the Diffusion of Innovations theory will inform the development of both the data collection instruments and the actual products. Specifically, we will use the 5 attributes of innovations that directly influence the adoption. These attributes are: 1) Relative advantage - how are these products better than the current practice? 2) Compatibility - how do the new products fit with the intended users' needs? 3) Complexity - how difficult would it be for the intended users to understand and use the products? 4) Trialability - how can we have the intended users try the new products? and 5) Observability - what are the observable outcomes of these products, and how can we make these more evident to the intended users?