Jackie Burns, dean of research at UF/IFAS, called this year’s selection “highly competitive,” with 26 early career scientists presenting excellent proposals. After a review by a panel of UF/IFAS scientists, Burns announced the awards.
Seventeen awards in total were given to fund a wide range of topics, including ways to detect E.coli in meat to why students don’t eat their school-provided lunches.
The specialty agriculture-related projects to receive awards include:
- Nathan Boyd; Horticultural Sciences at the Gulf Cost Research and Education Center (GCREC) in Balm; “Development of Precision Application Technology for Weed Management in Vegetables;” $33,476.
- Zhengfei Guan; Food and Resource Economics at the GCREC; “Development of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) for Florida Strawberry Production;” $49,602.
- Guodong Liu; Horticultural Sciences; “Rapid Identification of Phosphorous-Efficient Genotypes from Tomato Germplasm Banks;” $48,167.
- Patricio Munoz; Agronomy; “Discovering the Molecular Mechanism of 2,4-D Herbicide Resistance;” $49,380.
- Gulcan Onel; Food and Resource Economics; “Creating Sustainable Workforce for Small Fruits and Vegetables Industry in Florida: The Impact of Federal Immigration Programs and Solutions to Labor Shortages;” $49,979.
- Paul Sarnoski; Food science and Human nutrition; “Developing Better Processed Tomato Products;” $49,103.
Each faculty member will give a poster presentation at the 2016 UF/IFAS Research Awards Ceremony, during which they will present their preliminary research results.