Research Roundup: July 12, 2016

Progress made on cutting costs in controlling invasive aquatic plants

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, from 2008 to 2015, $125 million was disbursed by state and federal water resource managers to combat the spread of invasive aquatic plants.

According to a release, $66 million of that amount concentrated on containing just one plant species: Hydrilla.

Recently, researchers at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences announced substantial progress in the fight against Hydrilla, including other invasive aquatic plants, according to a release.

Current research focuses on a system known as integrated pest management, which combines different control methods, said Lyn Gettys, an assistant professor of aquatic and wetland plant science at the IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie, Florida.

“Instead of relying solely on herbicides,” Gettys said. “Other methods — including grass carp, biological control and mechanical harvesting — are used in conjunction with herbicides.”

Combatting invasive aquatic plants not only reduces herbicide use, but it also has the potential to revitalize waterways and lakes once choked by Hydrilla and others, said Bill Haller, the acting director at the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants at IFAS.

“If a lake is full of Hydrilla, people won’t go out in it,” Haller said. “People will choose to go fishing somewhere else.”

- Justin Ford

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UF study finds people don’t know about benefits of blueberries

UF researchers conducted a study to gauge how much people know about blueberries’ health benefits.

The study also sought to determine if there is a gap in knowledge about these health benefits across different demographics.

Shuyang Qu, a 29-year-old doctoral student in agriculture education and communications at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, led the study.

Qu said the study found while people don’t know about some of the benefits of blueberries, like how the berries revert aging, they do know certain ones: Most surveyed were aware of the berries’ ability to prevent cancer and lower risk of heart disease.

“The fact that cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death in America may have led to more personal research related to preventing the diseases,” Qu said.

While the study didn’t find a significant difference of knowledge between income or gender, they did find one key differentiating factor: education.

“People with some college or more education were found to have higher levels of knowledge than those with high school or less education,” Qu said.

Qu said one way to communicate the benefits would be to hold events during the blueberry season, like tastings.

The study was performed through a survey of more than 2,000 people across 31 states, mostly on the East Coast and in the Midwest, according to a release.

-Ryan Serpico

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UF to study greenhouse gas emissions

UF researchers will use a $710,000 grant for a study about the environmental impact of cattle ranches, said Patrick Inglett, an associate professor at UF and a member of the study’s research team.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture selected UF’s proposal out of hundreds of other proposals based on its plan to study mitigating greenhouse gas emissions released from the soil at cattle ranches, Inglett said.

The goal of the research, which will last three years, is to build a model that can predict greenhouse gas emissions from soil on cattle ranches despite increasing temperatures and more intense wet and dry seasons, Inglett said.

He said cattle farms have been difficult to understand because of irregular variables and numerous “hot spots” of concentrated organic matter, like manure.

“Microbes chew up organic matter like food, and they begin to release carbon dioxide just like we do,” he said.

“In a cattle ranch you have things like fertilizer and manure, which contain carbon and nitrogen, and the way you manage the system determines how the microbes process it,” he said.

Inglett said the team will focus on nitrogen in particular because one molecule of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is equal to 300 molecules of carbon dioxide.

Researchers will begin in the Fall, he said.

-Nealy Kehres