A UF researcher has won a prestigious award for her strawberry monitoring system.
Natalia Peres, a UF associate professor of plant pathology, developed the Strawberry Advisory System, which uses a web tool where growers can log in to a website and sign up for email or text alerts.
Growers input their location’s weather data and the frequency of their fungicide applications in the past. The system then shows the risk level of strawberry crop diseases around Florida and recommendations on how often growers should spray fungicide.
For her work, Peres won the Lee M. Hutchins Award from the American Phytopathological Society in August.
“Helping the growers is the biggest award,” she said.
According to the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Peres’ Strawberry Advisory System has been tested in several states and is expected to be used by growers in South Carolina this spring.
“The benefits of such a tool is that growers will be able to apply fungicides only when conditions are favorable for disease development, thus reducing the number of applications and production costs without compromising disease control,” Peres said in her published findings.
Seth Poppell, a UF animal sciences senior, said his brother’s farm had problems with fungi on strawberries last year.
“The problem went back to the nurseries,” said Poppell, 21.
Peres’ Strawberry Advisory System, which focuses on preventing diseases before they occur, will soon expand to include nurseries in addition to fields.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 10/10/2014]
