New Specialist Named to Help Pennsylvanians Implement Integrated Pest Management

Oct 10, 2024

By Hannah Tiffin

The Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management (PA IPM) program, which is a collaboration between Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, has announced the appointment of Raymond R. Delaney as its new community program specialist.

The PA IPM program provides educational and logistical resources to help develop and implement effective, sustainable and environmentally conscious pest management practices to serve Pennsylvania’s diverse regions and sector-specific needs.

Program leaders pointed out that to protect human and environmental health, Pennsylvania residents should implement an integrated pest management, or IPM, approach to reduce the risk of pesticide use and exposure while mitigating pests in and around properties. However, many residents do not have the expertise to develop effective IPM programs for a variety of settings — including agriculture, and urban and suburban areas around homes, schools, businesses and other facilities.

Based in Philadelphia, Delaney will offer services to residents and organizations seeking expertise and advice on implementing integrated pest management in urban and suburban communities. With a wealth of knowledge in environmental public health, vector control and pest management — and experience working with pest control service providers — Delaney will help identify areas prone to pest infestations and develop IPM plans targeted to these areas and the overall needs and available resources.

As part of his role as the community program specialist, Delaney will work to establish and sustain integrated pest management programs in homes and facilities, as well as provide training and educational resources for teaching IPM concepts.

Specifically, he will share expertise with the community in the following ways:

— Diagnosing causes of pest challenges
— Developing IPM strategies for homes and buildings
— Offering guidance on implementing IPM
— Providing in-person IPM assistance and training
— Delivering IPM presentations and staffing educational displays at events

A life-long Philadelphia resident, Delaney said this role will allow him to bring his experience in public health and integrated pest management to the residents of the Philadelphia area. PA IPM leaders noted that his appointment signifies the program’s continual commitment to supporting safe and effective pest management strategies throughout the commonwealth.

For inquiries or to schedule consultations, contact Delaney by phone at 814-863-4111 or by email at rmd5595@psu.edu.

About the Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management Program

The PA IPM Program is a collaboration between Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture designed to promote integrated pest management in both agricultural and nonagricultural situations. Its mission is to promote effective pest management that results in the efficient protection of food, fiber, health, home and industrial resources in a manner that is profitable, safe and environmentally compatible. For more information, visit https://extension.psu.edu/ipm.

Source : psu.edu

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.