News Stories - Page 14

The gardens JoHannah Biang imagined creating when she was an undergraduate student were filled with ornamental flowers and trees, lush and beautiful, nourishing to the soul. Now, as a doctoral student and long-time manager of UGArden, University of Georgia’s student-run farm, Biang is an integral part of creating and sustaining an operation that has put food on the plates of thousands of underserved individuals and families in the greater Athens area.

It’s a familiar sight for many — a ground sprayer slowly making rounds in a field, applying pesticides to row crops to give producers the best chance of protecting crops from pests and seeing high yields at harvest. These ground sprayers, with booms that can be up to 120 feet wide, are the tool of choice for producers who are spraying large areas with agricultural chemicals.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have received numerous calls from curious homeowners and frustrated farmers regarding the dreaded fall armyworm. Damage to established turf is most often aesthetic. However, newly planted sod or sprigs can be severely damaged or even killed by fall armyworm feeding.

The new irrigation demonstration site on the University of Georgia Griffin campus opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially launch the site, which will be used for training, research and education on the latest irrigation technologies for industry professionals, homeowners and researchers.

Samuele Lamon, a doctoral student in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia, has been selected for the 2022-25 cohort of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Fellows program.

The University of Georgia Turfgrass Team welcomed approximately 700 people — including turf industry professionals, golf course superintendents and local homeowners — to the UGA Griffin campus for the 2022 Turfgrass Research Field Day earlier this month.