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Horticulture Farm

A Blue-Sky Research Lab
As visitors approach the horticulture research farm from Route 45 in Spruce Creek Valley, they see a visual hodgepodge. Every plot is crammed with crops ranging from tomatoes to tubers, and there are 12 acres of fruit trees and small fruit plants. Manager Bob Oberheim, an agronomist by training, juggles land requests, crop plots, and unique research projects while finding time to complete his duties as Ag Progress Days manager (See APD) and as a member of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Commission. “A good manager has to be able to handle diverse responsibilities,” Oberheim says.

Vegetable specialists Mike Orzolek, left, and Bill Lamont check the progress of potato plants in one of Penn State’s high tunnels, a structure that uses plasticulture—methods such as mulches, row covers, and the high tunnel itself—to manipulate temperature, allowing farmers to grow many crops year-round.

The horticulture farm employs three full-time technicians, who handle most of the planting and agricultural work. Some of the crops produced on the farm are sold on the open market, with profits used to offset the farm’s operating budget. Crops not grown in enough quantity to sell wholesale are donated to local charities, such as Meals on Wheels and youth and church groups.

“Much of the plant and genetics research is done in greenhouses and growth chambers these days,” Oberheim says. “But eventually all these high-tech methods must be evaluated on the farm.”

One of the newest technologies being evaluated is a set of 24 plastic-covered structures called “high tunnels.” Over the next five years, vegetable specialists Mike Orzolek and Bill Lamont will conduct growth trials in the largest high tunnel research program in the United States.

To build a high tunnel, plastic sheeting is stretched over a tubular frame the size of a one-car garage. Separate sheets form the roof and two sidewalls so that farmers can raise the wall to ventilate the structure and manipulate air and soil temperatures using the sun’s energy. A one-piece front section has a doorway, but it is designed so that two people can use support poles to prop it up so that a tractor or cultivating equipment can be used inside. As temperatures drop in the fall, farmers can use other plastic technologies to manipulate temperatures inside the structures, such as low tunnels (small plastic-covered frames shaped like Quonset huts), floating row covers made from plastic polymers, and thermal covers, which use reflective surfaces to trap heat around the plants.

“These things should really be called ‘economic development units,’” says Orzolek. “You can grow a wide range of crops, up to 12 months a year.”

Commercial-size versions of high tunnels also protect plants from insects, diseases, wind, and animal damage, virtually eliminating field loss, which can run as high as 25 percent for some crops. Construction costs range from $1,800 to $3,000, compared to $15,000 to $20,000 for a production greenhouse. High tunnels have been used in Europe and Japan for decades, but they are just beginning to be adopted in the United States. Within the next three years, Orzolek and Lamont hope to complete a high-tunnel operating manual for producers.

Roots on Videotape: Growing Better Fruit Trees
Tree fruit production is a small part of the horticulture farm, but its stand of apple and peach trees is large enough for plant scientist David Eissenstat to get at the root of how fruit trees absorb nutrients. Each year, trees produce fine, hair-like roots to take up water and nutrients from the soil. There is a specific window of time when these roots can absorb fertilizer or pesticides.

Postdoctoral researcher Astrid Volder, left, uses “root boxes” with clear acetate sides to observe how apple trees form the fine roots used to take up nutrients. At right, plant physiologist David Eissenstat inserts a cylindrical video camera into clear tubes embedded into the root system of a Rock Springs apple orchard. The camera records root growth from formation to death.

Toward the end of the growing season, or when the tree is under stress, a tree will shed its fine roots. Eissenstat and postdoctoral researcher Astrid Volder are using several methods to trace apple and peach tree root growth to give growers more accurate information for nutrient applications.

One method uses a $20,000 custom-made cylindrical video camera. The researchers slide the camera into clear plastic tubes embedded four feet into the fruit trees’ root zone. While taping, they measure root growth using scribed windows on the exterior of the tubes. Each videotape is entered into a database that follows every root’s life history through the growing season, from formation to root death. Eissenstat outfitted more than 64 trees at Rock Springs with root tubes, and more than 200 others at sites around the state.

Another method uses “root boxes” with clear acetate sides to observe root activity. Volder dug out soil at the base of 30 apple trees to install the boxes. Through an observation window divided into three sections, Volder injects high nutrients, no nutrients, and low nutrients, respectively. As she measures the uptake of nutrients into the roots, she documents at what age and stage of root growth the roots are most efficient. Coupled with the video data on root growth, researchers can use root box observations to establish the optimal application timeline for fertilizer and pesticide applications. “Timing is everything in fruit management,” Eissenstat says.