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Section Symposium

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Formal and Informal Teaching

Empowering Tomorrow’s Food Systems with Controlled Environment Agriculture

Natural enemies bringing us together: How empowering stakeholders led to interesting and impactful research projects

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
11:35 AM – 11:50 AM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 126 C, PCC
Oral Presentation
As researchers we often pursue the answers to scientific questions that advance increase the knowledge within our specific fields of interest. However, those of us at Land Grant Institutions with significant Extension appointments have a responsibility to support our stakeholders by providing them with relevant and actionable information, among other deliverables. Further, those of us with commodity- based appointments have a responsibility to support the specific industries to which we are assigned. I will discuss in my presentation how my interactions with growers led me to ask (and answer) interesting scientific questions that are also relevant and empowering to the industry. Specifically, I will discuss how my research program shifted to study the behavior and biology of biocontrol agents (Stratiolaelaps scimitus predatory mites and Steinernema carpocapsae entomopathogenic nematodes) to control mushroom phorid flies (Megaselia halterata) on controlled environment mushroom farms. I will cover how grower involvement has aided in developing interesting and transdisciplinary research questions, how my lab answered the research questions, how mushroom growers used the results generated by my lab, and what impact the results of our experiments had on the mushroom industry.