GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Coffee and tea drinkers, take note — a University of Florida study says a beverage made from a native holly tree might be just the thing to give you a caffeinated kick-start, plus a dose of antioxidants.

Yaupon (YO-ponn) holly is the only U.S. plant that produces substantial amounts of caffeine, said Jack Putz, a botany professor affiliated with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. A popular ornamental species, yaupon grows wild throughout the Southeast and can be grown in most coastal states.

Centuries ago, American Indians and Spanish settlers steeped yaupon leaves and twigs in hot water to make a stimulating beverage, but that use of the plant is virtually unknown today.

The resulting brew is dark brown and tastes much like green tea. If it makes a comeback, yaupon may spawn a cottage beverage industry, Putz said. And the antioxidants might be useful in nutritional supplements.

“A few years ago we were contacted from a pharmaceutical company in Texas,” he said. “At first, we thought their interest was in caffeine but they said that with all the decaffeinated beverages around, caffeine is cheap. What they were interested in was the antioxidants.”

Nitrogen fertilizer can boost yaupon production and caffeine content, according to a paper Putz co-wrote, published in this month’s issue of the journal Economic Botany. Nitrogen had little effect on antioxidant content.

The researchers focused on a popular ornamental yaupon variety called Nana, said Matt Palumbo, a botany master’s graduate and co-author of the paper. After receiving nitrogen fertilizer, Nana plants yielded 35 percent more leaves; caffeine concentration in the leaves shot up 265 percent.

Nana had about half the antioxidant content of green tea, he said.

“I have found genotypes with antioxidant concentrations at least as high as green tea,” Palumbo said.

Similarly, Nana’s caffeine content was low compared with concentrations reported in previous studies, he said.

Dry, unprocessed yaupon leaves contain between .65 percent and .85 percent caffeine by weight. Coffee beans are about 1.1 percent caffeine by weight and tea leaves about 3.5 percent caffeine.

More research is needed to learn which yaupon varieties have the greatest caffeine and antioxidant content, Palumbo said. Afterward, new cultivars can be developed.

One point seems clear — if U.S. residents begin drinking yaupon tea it could reduce demand for coffee, which may ease ecological pressure on coffee-farming regions of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, he said.

It’s uncertain whether large-scale yaupon farming would be economically feasible in the U.S., but the antioxidants appear to have commercial potential, he said. And home gardeners might enjoy growing and using yaupon.

One caveat — before making yaupon tea it’s critical to obtain the correct plant, Putz says. There are numerous U.S. holly species, many of them not safe for consumption.

The taste of yaupon tea will be the make-or-break factor for potential users, says Dan Austin, an ethnobotanist based at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.

If they don’t like the flavor — something Austin says is quite possible — then they’re unlikely to drink the beverage regardless of the health benefits.

Still, he says, “if the proper spin is put on it, the potential is there.”

On bell pepper plants in greenhouses, the mite consumed enough chilli thrips to keep the population to less than one per leaf, compared with 70 per leaf on control plants. Similar results were obtained with peppers grown outdoors. The study was published this month in the journal Biological Control.

Native to Asia, the invasive pest attacks more than 100 host plants, including corn, citrus, peanuts and tomatoes. Established first in the Caribbean, it spread to Florida in 2005 and then to Texas. Adult chilli thrips are about 1 millimeter long.

According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate, if chilli thrips become more widely established in the U. S., they could cause agricultural losses of almost $4 billion per year.

For greenhouse crops — including bell peppers, strawberries, basil and flowers such as Gerber daisies — the mite could provide a much-needed alternative to pesticides, said Lance Osborne, a professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and an author of the study.

“This mite has a lot of potential for greenhouses, which is where it’s used now,” Osborne said. The mite, which has no common name but is known scientifically as Amblyseius swirskii, is available commercially to manage whiteflies and broad mites.

Because the mite is already approved for use in Florida, growers can try it against chilli thrips, he said. Osborne cautioned that the mite is not likely to be successful on every crop the pest attacks. Researchers were happy to find the mite held up well outdoors on bell peppers. Previous attempts to establish the mite outside on rose bushes have been unsuccessful, he said.

“Maybe there is a plant issue — they prefer peppers, but not roses,” Osborne said.

An upcoming project will investigate the use of peppers as “banker plants” — the mite equivalent of birdhouses, said Cindy McKenzie, a research entomologist with the USDA’s Horticultural Research Laboratory in Fort Pierce.

In the project, ornamental peppers will be planted outdoors among rose bushes, to see if they can harbor mite populations that protect both plant species, said McKenzie, another author of the study.

If successful, this approach could be helpful to rose gardeners, especially in the Orlando area, hard-hit by chilli thrips. And if you’ve never heard of ornamental peppers, McKenzie said they make a nice addition to the landscape.

“We screened more than 20 ornamental peppers and narrowed it down to four,” she said. “They’re very pretty varieties, with dark purple and green leaves.”

Researchers also hope to develop a pesticide-resistant strain of the mite, Osborne said.

“That way, if a grower has to come in and spray, it won’t disrupt the biological control,” he said. Osborne previously developed a resistant strain of another predatory mite.

The current study was part of an ongoing collaboration between scientists with UF and the USDA, aimed at minimizing chilli thrips damage.

For more information on chilli thrips, see http://mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/lso/thripslinks.htm.

According to the annual Florida Land Value Survey, conducted by the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, rural land and land outside of metropolitan areas — eagerly sought by developers in recent years — is now commonly being offered for sale at a fraction of its cost.

“In some cases, it’s almost like a fire sale,” said Rodney Clouser, the UF professor of food and resource economics who led the survey. Some respondents reported large blocks of land being offered at 20 to 30 percent of their purchase price.

A population boom between 2002 and 2006 contributed to a dramatic rise in land prices throughout Florida. But now, the state’s annual population increase is expected to be only 10 percent of the boom years’ growth, according to UF population projections.

The survey, which does not cover urban land values, showed that land outside of cities primed for development, dubbed transition land, decreased by as much as 55 percent in the northern half of the state.

Transition land within five miles of urban centers in the southern half of the state lost nearly 40 percent of its value.

However, in the one exception to the otherwise gloomy economic picture, transition land more than five miles away from urban centers in the southern half of the state increased by 5 percent. Most likely, this is because its low price and relative location to large cities was seen as the best deal by those still looking to buy real estate, Clouser said.

Nevertheless, the 5 percent increase is significantly smaller than the nearly 17 percent increase for the same area last year.

Lagging development hasn’t just affected areas destined for shopping malls and homes. It has also contributed to drops as large as 26 percent in farmland values.

Although such land is typically evaluated primarily by the profitability of the crop produced, urban expansion was so rapid in recent boom years that many began to evaluate the land based on what it would bring if used for housing or other development purposes, Clouser said.

Land prices are expected to continue their drop through 2009 — although not as dramatically as in 2008. Survey responses from individuals involved in the Florida real estate market predict an overall drop between 5 and 17 percent.

Even after the national economic picture brightens, Clouser said, a surplus of homes and other existing development would need to be sold before demand would once again drive land prices up.

The report can be viewed at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE798.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — With the nation’s economy withering, University of Florida experts say many state residents are looking to put food on the table — by growing it.

Sydney Park Brown, a UF extension specialist with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, said extension agents around the state have noticed a big uptick in interest about vegetable gardening.

Extension agents have seen higher than usual numbers of people with questions about how and when to grow vegetables. And a videoconference IFAS hosted on the subject Feb. 28 drew more than 450 viewers, Park Brown said.

“We’ve been overwhelmed with people interested in growing their own vegetables,” she said. “And it’s really picked up in the last year.”

Extension agents’ interaction with the public dovetails exactly with the National Gardening Association’s recent survey, that shows 7 million more American households plan to grow their own fruits, vegetables, herbs or berries this year—a 19 percent jump from 2008.

There was also a 10 percent increase in households with gardening plans from 2007 to 2008.

The NGA’s Bruce Butterfield, involved with the survey for 30 years, said the results are tied to the economy. When people feel anxious, they often literally return to their roots, he said.

“There’s this whole sense of, in a world gone crazy, things might be terrible out there, but I’m not helpless, here’s something I can do,” he said.
But, he noted, the survey also showed that the economy wasn’t the only factor.

The annual survey, sponsored by Scotts Miracle-Gro Company and the Garden Writers Association and conducted by Harris Interactive, found that while 54 percent of those planning to grow food were doing so to combat high grocery bills:

• 58 percent hope to grow better-tasting food;
• 51 percent hope for better-quality food, and
• 48 percent plan to grow their own food to ensure its safety.

Butterfield said the survey results feel to him a bit like “back to the future.” When he was first involved with the study around 1978, Americans were also turning to gardening as a way to be more frugal.

Floridians face challenges as gardeners, he said, most notably from the wilting heat, sandy soil and ever-present bugs.

Park Brown, based at UF’s Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, said that’s where IFAS extension can offer help. County extension agents are well-armed with tips for even the most inexperienced gardener.

Among them: online presentations from the Feb. 28 vegetable gardening videoconference have been posted on the Solutions for Your Life Web site: http://webdev.ifas.ufl.edu/sfyl/hot_topics/lawn_and_garden/spring_veggie_gardening.html#.

The recently updated Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide, with a comprehensive list of vegetable varieties best suited for growing in Florida, can also be found at the site. Another online IFAS resource for Florida vegetable gardening: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/TOPIC_Vegetable_Gardening.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Today’s economically spurred resurgence of the home vegetable grower can’t entirely be dubbed a “return to the earth.” Many burgeoning farmers aren’t breaking soil, they’re using hydroponics.

“There are a lot of new people interested in growing, and many of them are realizing that hydroponics just makes a lot more sense,” said Bob Hochmuth, a multicounty agent with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “It’s one of the most reliable ways to grow crops. And, for people that don’t have a lot of land, which I think is a lot of these new growers, it’s a more cost-effective investment.”

In fact, interest has been so high that IFAS’ first multiple-day course on hydroponic techniques this week, offered at the North Florida Research and Education Center in Live Oak, Fla., became overbooked to the extent that a second course was added at the last minute.

In total, the courses have drawn more than 70 attendees — not just from Florida, but also from Alabama, Ohio, New York and Georgia.

“Across the country, there’s been more and more interest in locally grown products. Now, these economic conditions are coming in into the mix and making people think long and hard about the best way to do it,” said Tim Carpenter, owner of Verti-Gro Inc. in Summerfield, Fla.

Carpenter is one of the suppliers of hydroponic equipment who says that demand has nearly doubled over the past year.

“Hydroponics involves mechanics and plumbing, and it’s not going to be right for everyone,” he said. “But for a good percentage, it’s just going to be a very practical choice.”
Simply put, hydroponic techniques are used to grow plants in structures that supply water and nutrients without soil.

These structures allow plants to be grown in greater density and with better control of variables such as pests, the overuse of fertilizer and exposure to foodborne pathogens like salmonella.

Additionally, hydroponic techniques usually involve growing the crops inside greenhouses or in tight clusters. These methods mean protection against bad weather and a year-round growing season — big boons to growers interested in using their crops for supplemental income.

“Hydroponics isn’t easy, and it’s not something that just comes to you,” said Belinda Cheney, who uses hydroponics to grow vegetables and ornamental flowers on her small farm in O’Brien, Fla., as a way of supplementing her family’s income while remaining home with her children.

“I think this would be pretty inaccessible to a lot of people if it weren’t for help and information from UF extension agents,” she said.

For more information on hydroponics, please visit: http://smallfarms.ifas.ufl.edu/crops/hydroponics/index.html.

Computer-assisted genetic analysis could change that, say University of Florida scientists who have completed a demonstration study of a new method. It was published online this month in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources.

The method, known as massively parallel sequencing, reveals small parts of the DNA code for multiple nematodes simultaneously, said Dorota Porazinska, a courtesy assistant professor with UF’s Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center. It can do the same for other invertebrates that live alongside nematodes, including bacteria, fungi and mites.

There may be more than 1 million nematode species, but only about 20,000 have been formally described. Nematodes live in almost every environment on Earth. Some species are parasites that prey on plants, animals or people.

By providing “who’s who” information on micro-organisms in crop fields, lawns and golf courses, the method may help explain why harmful nematodes attack plants in some sites but not others. It could also provide clues on how to keep sites healthy.

“We often look at agricultural systems only in terms of the organisms we think are bad,” said Porazinska, the study’s lead author. “But we skip over what’s being done by other organisms that don’t bother us. And they may be doing things to assist in the system.”

Once scientists know which micro-organisms live in a plot of land, they can begin manipulating variables and developing agricultural practices that discourage pest species, said Robin Giblin-Davis, a professor at the Fort Lauderdale center and another author.

In the study, UF researchers took a new approach to an instrument called a genome sequencer, commonly used to sequence the DNA structure of a single organism. Here, they sequenced small bits of DNA from samples taken from an artificially assembled community of known nematodes. Then they checked the results against DNA databases used to identify nematodes.

The study showed massively parallel sequencing identified nematode species with a high degree of accuracy. But it didn’t perform as well at determining how many individual nematodes the samples contained. So the researchers are working to refine their approach.

When massively parallel sequencing is used in the field, any nematodes that don’t match known species can be isolated for further study, Giblin-Davis said.

Previously, researchers identified nematodes one at a time — an approach that worked but was painfully slow, because genetic and morphological analysis was often required to confirm the species.

“With the traditional method, in two years we identified 360 nematodes from a tropical rainforest and now we can get thousands,” Giblin-Davis said. “This will give us a good chance, hopefully, of not only recovering what’s there commonly, but the rare things.”

The UF approach is an exciting development for scientists studying nematode populations, said Paul De Ley, an assistant professor with the University of California, Riverside.

“This is an approach that is likely to be adopted in the U.S., Western Europe and some Asian countries,” said De Ley, who researches nematode genetics. “The major limiting factor is that these kinds of sequencers are not widely available yet.”

Because the technology is costly, it may be difficult to employ in tropical regions where crop plants are often attacked by nematodes, he said. However, if government officials streamline current import policies, researchers may be able to easily transport soil samples from tropical regions to laboratories in industrialized nations, solving the problem.

A new study forecasts when climate factors such as temperature, humidity and rainfall will match at geographically distant airline departure and destination points, which could help to shuffle invasive species, and the diseases they may carry, across the globe along existing flight routes. The findings provide a framework that could help people who monitor airline flights — and the people, baggage and cargo aboard — to plan more efficiently and accurately for detecting and intercepting invasives.

Andy Tatem, who holds a joint position at the Emerging Pathogens Institute and the University of Florida’s geography department, said his model uses the latest forecast data for climate change and air traffic volumes.

“The problem is that as the global transport networks expand, we’re getting more and more invasive species and pathogens coming from different parts of the world that have survived isolated for thousands of years,” said Tatem, who joined UF in January. “But now they have this high-speed link going between different regions of the world.”

The study was published online Jan. 22 in the journal Ecography, and the work was performed in his previous position at the University of Oxford.

Tatem predicts a peak risk will be reached in June 2010, when multiple factors converge to create a month when the climate factors at many flight origin and destination airports would be most similar.

“The model shows us that climatic shifts are not greatly significant over the next few years,” Tatem said. “But the great increase in traffic volumes from expanding economies in India and China are likely to have a significant effect on moving species. This gives us much more of a detailed idea on the importance of key risk factors and how these change over time, compared to previous work we did in 2007.”

Tatem reached his conclusions by comparing fine-scale global climate models for 2009 and 2010 prepared by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research with models forecasting traffic volumes on existing airline networks, prepared by OAG Worldwide. The airline models include more than 35 million scheduled flights between 3,570 airports on more than 44,000 different routes.

But exactly how native species wind up aboard an outbound passenger or freight aircraft is still being studied. Tatem said it can be a combination of goods, transport and people bringing things aboard either accidentally or knowingly.

“Some studies have shown that mosquitoes can fly on randomly, or they may get into baggage,” he said. “But some things, like plant pathogens, happen when people purposely bring fruit aboard, or they may bring in a plant that makes it through inspections, or they may just have seeds stuck in the soles of their shoes.”

These activities compound over the entire global system, threatening local economies, public health and native ecosystems. In 2007, a biological invasion was documented from a single invasive insect in a study conducted by York University biologists Amro Zayed and Laurence Packer. A different 2007 study by Andrew Liebhold, published in American Entomologist, examined records of U.S. Department of Agricultural inspectors encountering invasive species in airline baggage. Liebhold, a research entomologist with the Northeastern Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service, reported that infested fruit, mainly from the tropics, was the most commonly intercepted commodity, and that flies, cicadas, planthoppers, aphids and scale insects were the most commonly intercepted invasive insects.

Liebhold said Tatem’s study provided fascinating predictions about expected trends in the accidental transport of invasive species among continents.

“Unfortunately, unwitting air passengers have too frequently provided transport of plant pests and human diseases and this trend has increased with elevated intercontinental passenger traffic,” Liebhold said. “Hopefully, government agencies will pay attention to these results and utilize them to strengthen inspection activities at airports in order to protect the world from the devastating impacts of alien species on natural ecosystems as well as on human health.”

The field day has been around….well, pretty much forever. At a typical field day, farmers or other interested people have a chance to visit a farm and learn hands-on from extension agents what the latest scientific research has to say about a particular topic, such as how to prevent diseases in peanuts or grow new varieties of sweet corn.

“It capitalizes on the notion that what they see and touch and do in real life is a lot more likely to stick with them than reading about it or hearing somebody lecture about it,” said Bob Hochmuth, a multicounty extension agent with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

But along with benefits, there are drawbacks. A field day might not be particularly convenient to a farmer who needed it, geographically or because it took time away from actual farming operations.

So University of Florida extension officials have created and revamped their virtual field days Web site http://vfd.ifas.ufl.edu, and the new version was unveiled late last month. That site’s unveiling dovetails with the recent national launch of another new electronic hub for information aimed at anyone who wants to know about organic agriculture.

For the new field day site, Hochmuth, an expert in hydroponics based at the North Florida Research and Education Center in Live Oak, said he and other extension agents boiled down what had been 30- to 40-minute field day presentations into easier to watch 5- to 8-minute versions.

The original site was organized by geographic region; the new version is organized by topic.

UF extension agents with expertise in a particular subject are often swamped with questions from people from all over the state — and beyond.

“A lot of the times these are very basic, repetitive questions. So for me now, if someone calls from Miami or Tampa, I can send them to the virtual field day site and they can take a look at it and get the basics,” said Hochmuth. “So the time efficiency for me has been phenomenal.”

IFAS officials hope to continue to expand the site with new, timely topics every year, said Joan Dusky, associate dean for extension. But that doesn’t mean an end to hands-on field days, she said, because both help to reach people with timely information.

Al Magrum of Lambertville, Mich., used Hochmuth’s online instruction several months ago to guide him as he started a hydroponic growing operation in his home. Using three 10-gallon aquariums, an aerator and lights, he said via e-mail that he now has basil, chives, oregano, thyme, rosemary, green onions and parsley started.

He said he used the video as a guide and later e-mailed follow-up questions to Hochmuth.

“I will be using his setup this spring. It’s very easy and cheap to build and he explained how to do everything,” Magrum wrote. “It’s been two weeks, but everything’s taking off great.”

If Magrum ever wants to try his hand at organic gardening, a vast amount of information can be found on the topic at http://www.extension.org. Launched at organic farming and production conferences last month and this month, it includes frequently asked questions, experts who can respond to individual questions within a 24-hour period, video clips and more than 150 articles about organic agriculture. It also includes organic agriculture videos from IFAS’ virtual field days site. The effort is part of eXtension, a national initiative of the U.S. Cooperative Extension System.

Laurel wilt disease, caused by a fungus transmitted by the invasive redbay ambrosia beetle, kills avocado and several native trees including redbay, said Jonathan Crane, a professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and co-author of a paper estimating the disease’s financial impact. The paper is expected to be published later this year.

“The scenario is not looking good, if we are right,” said Crane, at UF’s Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead.

The state’s avocado crop earns about $30 million wholesale each year, said Edward “Gilly” Evans, an agricultural economist at the Homestead center and another co-author. Commercial avocados grow on 7,500 acres, almost exclusively in Miami-Dade County, and account for more than 60 percent of Florida’s tropical fruit production.

Avocado is also an important fruit tree for Florida homeowners — about 60,000 residents have at least one in their yards, he said.

If the disease cuts Florida’s commercial avocado crop in half — something experts say could happen — it could cost the state $27 million in total economic impact and enough lost worker hours to equal 275 full-time jobs, Evans said.

So UF researchers are scrambling to develop damage estimates and management strategies.

They’ve evaluated about 30 percent of the 28 avocado varieties grown in Florida; all have been susceptible to the disease, though not all have died, said Jorge Peña, an entomology professor at the Homestead center.

There is no standard method for controlling the fungus or the beetle, but researchers are testing pesticides and repellents, Peña said.

Some redbay trees may be resistant to the disease, said forest pathologist Jason Smith, an assistant professor with UF’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation in Gainesville. Researchers will investigate factors associated with resistance, in the hope that tolerant varieties can be identified and developed.

The disease was unknown to science until 2004. The beetle, first found in the United States in 2002, is native to Asia and may have arrived in wood products, packing materials or pallets.

Laurel wilt is in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, where it’s reached as far south as Okeechobee County and as far west as Columbia County.

“The disease is moving fairly rapidly, so it’s clear it will arrive (in Miami-Dade County) sooner or later,” said Randy Ploetz, a plant pathologist at the Homestead center.

In Florida, laurel wilt apparently spreads at least two ways, Crane said.

One is via the beetle’s natural reproduction and migration, which expands its range 20 or 30 miles per year. Also, redbay is used as firewood and for outdoor grilling. Because the disease has leapfrogged around the state, researchers believe beetle-infested wood has been sold, he said.

Crane urges Floridians to report laurel wilt symptoms on avocado or redbay trees to the state Division of Plant Industry at 1-888-397-1517. Symptoms include wilted stems and leaves, black streaking in the wood, and strings of compacted sawdust protruding from tree trunks.

DPI and U.S. Department of Agriculture experts are monitoring several counties for redbay ambrosia beetles with traps and inspections, said DPI spokeswoman Denise Feiber.

There’s more at stake for Florida than the avocado industry. Laurel wilt has killed 99 percent of infected redbay trees in many areas, said Smith. Also at risk: sassafras, camphor, silkbay, swampbay, pondspice and an endangered species, pondberry.

Smith developed a test that identifies diseased trees in less than an hour, even if the fungus is present in small amounts. The test will be available to diagnostic labs around the Southeast.

For more information, see “Redbay Ambrosia Beetle-Laurel Wilt Pathogen: A Potential Major Problem for the Florida Avocado Industry,” http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/HS379.

There are some 4,000 master gardeners in Florida, in 58 of the state’s 67 counties.

The program began in 1972 in the state of Washington, when a county extension agent felt guilty about not being able to answer every call that came in. So he decided to train a cadre of volunteers to help.

Florida started its program in 1979, and it’s been chugging along strong ever since. According to the most recent calculations, the program’s volunteers have donated 5.4 million hours, worth some $83 million to taxpayers.

Here’s how it works: Interested participants go through at least 50 hours of training sponsored by the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and local county extension offices that includes a smattering of everything from gardening to nematology to soil testing.

After the training, new master gardeners must serve at least 75 volunteer hours within the first year of certification and 35 hours in subsequent years. To renew their certification after the first year, they must undergo 10 hours of annual training.

Master gardener duties include everything from manning the desk in the county extension office to fielding questions from callers or walk-in clients.

“I think master gardeners have one of the toughest jobs in extension,” said Tom Wichman, the program’s state coordinator. “The questions that come in are very diverse.”

John Robinson, a master gardener in Escambia County since 1992, can tell you all about that.

He’s logged more than 20,000 volunteer hours, and says the questions can be doozies.

Clients have brought in giant spiders and pygmy rattlesnakes, he said, sometimes live; sometimes not. There are always questions to be answered about tomatoes. And turfgrass causes consternation for many who’ve moved to Florida for the first time and are trying to start or maintain their first St. Augustinegrass lawn. “They see their neighbor do something, and they wonder if they should do it, too,” he said.

Other master gardener duties might include tending a demonstration garden, teaching residents how to prune trees or grapevines or how to start a garden.

Norma Samuel, a horticulture extension agent in Marion County, supervises a team of roughly 130 master gardeners.

Her volunteers each serve on a committee with different responsibilities, such as running a speakers’ bureau and maintaining a demonstration vegetable garden. One volunteer came up with an idea and secured funding for a mobile plant clinic that volunteers take to county events and use to distribute educational information on a host of gardening-related topics.

“Oh, they’re a tremendous resource to us,” she said. “They pretty much do anything an (extension) agent would do.”

The next Master Gardener program training begins in many counties in February and Wichman says you don’t need to have a green thumb to be a great master gardener. Much of the training focuses on teaching volunteers how to find the information they need.

“There’s no prerequisite as far as having to have plant knowledge,” he says. “Just the willingness to learn and to share what you learn with others.”

Would-be master gardeners should contact their local coordinator at www.gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/mastergardener/contact_us.shtml.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are now common replacements for incandescent bulbs in applications ranging from coffeemakers to holiday string lights. They stay cool to the touch, don’t burn out as easily and use up to 90 percent less energy.

However, LEDs can also be designed to emit very specific frequencies of light, and researchers are using those exacting frequencies to promote plant growth.

“Everyone knows about greenhouses or home growers that use these special fluorescent white lights or filtered light to help plants grow,” said Kevin Folta, a horticulture researcher at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Light is the language plants listen to when deciding how to grow, and broad spectrum light is a noisy combination of different languages. We’re learning how to speak these various ways to make the plant do what we want it to do, when we want them to do it. ”

In a paper published in a special December issue of the journal HortScience, Folta and undergraduate researcher Kayla Shea Childers report on progress made using combinations of LEDs to direct plant growth.

All plants have a unique combination of photoreceptors, pigments used to specific frequencies of light. These pigments trigger different behaviors in the plant, such as leaf growth, flowering, rooting or even speeding up and slowing down stem and shoot growth.

As a demonstration of the technology, they report using specific light frequencies to restrict flowering in the early life of strawberry plants — causing the plants to divert their resources to growing more runners and leaves.

If such techniques were employed by growers, the result could be stronger plants that produce more fruit. Farmers may even want to employ colored mulches and reflective panels to supplement the effect.

“We still have a lot to learn before we can start using these techniques on a large scale, but it is certainly looking more and more attractive of a possibility,” Folta said. “Overall consumer demand for LEDs is beginning to make the technology really inexpensive, so it’s not inconceivable to picture acres of crops spurred on by LEDs.”

Similar studies are taking place around the planet on crops such as rice, peas, tomatoes and maize. However, one of the most prominent uses of the technology could someday be off-planet.

Future astronauts could use the same technology used to light Christmas trees to grow their own trees and plants in space.

“As we start to explore space for longer periods of time, we’re not going to be able to just take food with us, we’ll have to grow it,” Folta said. “Humans can do well with anything that lets us see, but crops have evolved to specifically need the kind of light that they get on Earth, and not — oh, say — Mars. We’ll have to give it to them to ensure that desirable plant products are there when we need them.”

“Times are changing,” said Albert De Vries, an associate professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and an author of the report. “The farmer’s putting an extra dollar in his pocket but spending it down the road.”

On average, surveyed farmers received $20.49 for every 100 pounds of milk sold, up from $17.09 in 2006. The figures appeared in the annual Florida Dairy Farm Situation and Outlook, which compiles data from surveys and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That’s an increase of about 20 percent, much more than the 8 percent increase dairy economists had predicted.

Wholesale milk prices were up not only in Florida but also nationally and internationally, driven by a weakened U.S. dollar and increased global demand for dairy products.

“More and more we’re part of the global marketplace for milk,” De Vries said. “Pricewise it was a very good year.”

Profitwise, De Vries said, it was better than usual, with farmers making an estimated $3 per 100 pounds of milk sold. That’s up from an average of 73 cents profit per 100 pounds in 2000-2005.

The profit margin would have been substantially higher but feed costs were up 160 to 200 percent from 2006 levels, he said. They were driven mainly by rising prices for corn, a major component of dairy cattle feed and a commodity in demand for ethanol production.

In 2007, those increases added as much as $3 to the cost of producing 100 pounds of milk, the report said. Feed prices are also expected to be up this year, partly because Midwest flooding will reduce domestic corn supplies, and partly due to rising energy costs.

Florida wholesale milk prices are expected to remain high in 2008, possibly averaging $21.25 per 100 pounds, according to an estimate quoted in the report. Nonetheless, profits may decline from 2007 levels, due to rising feed and fuel costs.

“It’ll be a challenging year again for producers,” De Vries said.

Market forces have affected Florida’s dairy industry in other ways. In 2007, the state had 142 dairy farms, down from 150 in 2006, and had 124,000 dairy cows, down from 130,000. The state’s total milk production declined from 2.27 billion pounds in 2006 to 2.11 billion pounds.

Nationally, milk production has increased every year since 2004. In Florida, the lack of growth is blamed on slim profit margins, escalating land values and the cost of environmental regulations, the report said.

For consumers, higher milk prices may be here to stay, De Vries said. Strong increases in energy costs and the global demand for food have sharply increased food prices in the United States.

“This is a wake-up call that we can’t take food production for granted and improved efficiency is still on the agenda,” he said.

The report was written by De Vries, UF dairy extension agent Russ Giesy and his son Jay Giesy, a dairy specialist with Cargill Animal Nutrition. Read the report at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AN200.

But University of Florida scientists have found the opposite is true. In a study with wide implications for a longstanding debate over whether agricultural chemicals pose a threat to amphibians, UF zoologists have found that toads in suburban areas are less likely to suffer from reproductive system abnormalities than toads near farms – where some had both testes and ovaries.

“As you increase agriculture,” said Lou Guillette, a distinguished professor of zoology, “you have an increasing number of abnormalities.”

Guillette is one of several UF authors of a paper on the research appearing in the online version of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The lead author is Krista McCoy, who did the work as part of her UF School of Natural Resources and the Environment dissertation.

Several past studies have suggested a link between herbicides commonly used in farming and sexual abnormalities in tadpoles and frogs. Such deformities may be responsible for declines in frogs documented in areas affected by agricultural contaminants, such as Sierra Nevada, Calif., McCoy said. Amphibians are declining worldwide and agricultural chemicals are considered to be one likely cause, she said. Others include pathogenic infections and habitat loss.

Past research has compared frogs collected from natural areas with those collected from agricultural areas. Other efforts have pointed to specific chemicals, including the herbicide Atrazine, as causing abnormalities. The UF study is the first peer-reviewed study to compare abnormalities in wild toads – toads are a variety of frogs — from heavily farmed areas with frogs from both partially farmed and completely suburban areas. In so doing, it highlights the difference between the impact of agriculture versus development.

“Our study is the first to explicitly ask, of these two areas of human disturbance, do we see a greater proportion of abnormal animals in one versus another?” Guillette said.

Because the results implicate agriculture, future research can narrow the focus to agricultural chemicals, McCoy said.

“Because we know what chemicals are used at these agricultural sites, we can begin to pin down the chemical cause of these abnormalities by conducting controlled experiments with each chemical alone and in combination,” she said.

The researchers gathered giant toads, known scientifically as Bufo marinus, from five sites stretching from Lake Worth to Belle Glade and down to Homestead in South Florida. Bufo marinus is a very large, exotic, invasive, species known to be deadly to small animals. Guillette said the researchers studied the toad in part because they are easy to catch and their large size ensures enough blood for analysis. Also, he said, “they are common in other agricultural areas around the world,” which means they are a good generalist species.

One of the sites consisted almost entirely of land devoted to sugar cane or vegetable farms. The amount of farmland declined in three other sites, with the last being entirely suburban. Researchers calculated the amount of farmland in each site using Google Earth images.

Each site was 2.1 square miles, with the toads collected at the center. That’s because the toad’s home range is known to be about 1.2 miles, and the researchers sought only those toads living entirely within each site. The researchers collected at least 20 toads from each site in 2005 and 2006.

Examination of the euthanized toads revealed a pattern: The more agricultural the land where they lived, the more sexual organ abnormalities or so-called “intersex” toads — toads who have both female and male internal reproductive organs, not a normal condition for this and most species of amphibians.

While normal male toads’ forelimbs are thicker and stronger than those of their female counterparts, more of the intersex frogs only found in agricultural areas had thin, weak forearms. Also, intersexes had fewer “nuptial pads,” areas of scrappy skin on their feet used to grip females during copulation.

Where a sex was clear, the male toads appeared by far the most affected. Normal males are brown, while females are mottled with brown stripes. However, males from agricultural areas were mottled, looking like females.

Internally, the more agricultural the sites, the more feminized the males’ reproductive organs. Many had both ovaries and testes. Not only that, both the impacted males and the intersex frogs had less of the male hormone testosterone than normal males, suggesting diminished reproductive capabilities, Guillette said.

Guillette and McCoy said the study’s results may have important implications not only for other wild species, but also for people.

“What we are finding in Bufo marinus might also occur in other animals, including other amphibian species and humans,” McCoy said. “In fact, reproductive abnormalities are increasing in humans and these increases could partially be due to exposure to pesticides.”

The paper’s other authors are Colette St. Mary, a UF associate professor of zoology; Heather Hamlin, a postdoctoral associate; and Lauriel Bortnick and Chelsey Campbell, who both worked on the study as UF undergraduates.

Dubbed one of 2008’s culinary buzzwords by National Public Radio, microgreens — vegetables harvested soon after sprouting — are expected to be one of this summer’s hottest food trends, as well as a boon to small specialty farms that provide them to restaurants and farmers’ markets.

Experts at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are helping farmers take advantage of the phenomenon.

“This interest in microgreens is a tremendous opportunity for a lot of the small farmers in Florida,” said Robert Hochmuth, an extension agent at IFAS’ North Florida Research and Education Center in Suwannee Valley who led the microgreen session at Tuesday’s field day. “But it’s not the same as growing regular crops. There’s a learning curve involved.”

Microgreens aren’t the same as “sprouts” or regular young vegetables. Only certain vegetables can be grown as microgreens, such as arugula, radishes and kale.

They are grown under carefully controlled greenhouse conditions on specially textured fabric mats or other growing medium. Irrigation has to be meticulously measured, and harvesting perfectly timed.

The result is a tender, colorful vegetable packed with flavor as well as nutrients. In the restaurant world, those qualities make them ideal ingredients for “designer salads” that give diners a unique culinary experience –especially during the summer months when salads typically become more popular.

“It’s so easy for salad to be boring,” said Anthony Sicignano, the executive chef of The Breakers Palm Beach. “There are the typical vegetable ingredients that form the base. People try to dress those up with toppings like cheese or meats or dressings — things that often aren’t what a person looks for in a salad.

“If you can add vegetables that add zest of flavor and texture, though, you can create a salad that tastes different and wonderful, but without violating the salad’s basic identity,” he added.

While it’s possible to grow microgreens in small, personal batches, like many home chefs do with herbs, restaurant chefs like Sicignano depend on small farmers for large quantities and variety.

“It can be a tricky business,” said Denise Francis, who runs the Twinn Bridges Farm in Macclenny, Fla., with her husband, Scott. The couple have been working with IFAS’ Hochmuth for the last three years to develop a microgreen growing program.

“The timing is everything,” she said. “Parsley is usually perfect at 25 days, while radishes usually only take five. Meanwhile, you have to plan everything out so that the chefs get the mixes of microgreens that they like.”

After much refinement, however, she said her business of supplying microgreens to the Jacksonville area is booming.

“This is a perfect example of how small farms can offer a real benefit to the local community with quality, locally grown food,” Hochmuth said. “Not only is it healthier for us and the environment, but it also makes our taste buds happy at the same time.“

Web site: UF/IFAS Small Farms, http://smallfarms.ifas.ufl.edu

For the past decade Hygrophila polysperma — a southern Asian plant known as “hygrophila” for short — has been taking over the ecological niche left when hydrilla was eradicated from waterways, said Jim Cuda, a UF associate professor of entomology. It’s now a significant problem in South and Central Florida.

Like hydrilla, hygrophila (“high-GRAW-fill-uh”) was sold as an aquarium plant, got into Florida waters decades ago and survived. But the similarities end there.

Hydrilla is strictly a water weed, and can be controlled with herbicides, hungry grass carp or mechanical harvesting. Hygrophila can grow fully submerged or up on river banks. Herbicides aren’t very effective, grass carp don’t like it, and mechanical harvesting breaks its stems into tiny pieces capable of spawning new plants.

Given that scenario, Cuda and colleagues with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are looking for natural enemies that attack the plant on its home turf in India.

‘There aren’t any good, cost-effective management options for hygrophila,” Cuda said. “That’s why there’s interest in biological control.”

Last fall, Cuda and entomology graduate student Abhishek Mukherjee made a collecting trip to several Indian states, described in an article published in the spring issue of Aquatics, journal of the Florida Aquatic Plant Management Society.

The researchers found evidence of at least one insect Mukherjee hopes to capture on a return trip this summer. They also collected samples of wild hygrophila that are being genetically analyzed to determine if they’re identical to plants found in Florida.

If so, that would mean insects and diseases found in the same parts of India would be likely to attack the Florida hygrophila. If not, the researchers may keep trying to pinpoint the original home of Florida hygrophila and seek enemies there.

The UF team — which includes Cuda, Mukherjee and Bill Overholt, also a UF associate professor of entomology — recently discovered that the larvae of a native moth species will feed on hygrophila.

The moth has no value as a biological control agent because it isn’t host-specific — the larvae attack more than 60 plants — and is unlikely to put a dent in hygrophila populations. But it can be a great research tool, enabling researchers to find out if hygrophila can survive defoliation, Cuda said.

Hygrophila closely resembles native alligatorweed, he said. Residents who think they’ve found a patch should not try to destroy it, but instead contact their county extension office, which can be found at www.solutionsforyourlife.com.

In the United States, hygrophila is currently growing wild only in Florida and Texas. It’s been officially confirmed in 10 Florida counties, though Cuda suspects it’s present in at least 20. Previous research indicates the weed can survive cold climates, and could potentially spread as far as hydrilla did — from Delaware to Florida, all along the Gulf Coast, and north to Washington state.

In Texas, hygrophila has already become established in two lakes and a river system, said Marcos De Jesus, a state fisheries biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. But right now, the population is small and other invasive aquatic weeds take priority.

“The money goes into chemical control or mechanical removal of these other species and hygrophila hasn’t spread enough to warrant a lot of attention,” he said.