The American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) hosts an annual conference for horticulture researchers, scientists, industry, academia, government, and students to learn about and showcase new technology and advances in horticultural science. This year it was hosted in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Katie Fulcher, a graduate student pursuing her Masters under the advisement of Dr. Chieri Kubota, attended and presented at this year's ASHS. Good thing for us, she had a spare minute to let us know what she presented on and what she found most interesting...
What was your research presentation about?
The title of the presentation is, "Identification of Critical Floral Bud Developmental Stages in Strawberry to Predict Near-Future Yield in Greenhouse." My work focuses on using flower mapping to pinpoint key developmental stages of strawberry floral buds that most strongly predict yield in the coming weeks. This approach could help growers improve crop scheduling, labor planning, and market supply in controlled environment agriculture systems.
What was the most interesting thing that you learned while attending ASHS?
At ASHS, I was really interested in research showing that replacing top lighting with intracanopy lighting in high-density strawberry propagation systems can dramatically boost daughter plant quality and number, opening the door for more productive strawberry plant propagation in controlled environment systems. Intracanopy lighting isn't typical for strawberry propagation systems but this research showed a significant benefit from incorporating this type of lighting.
