Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Chair: Eric Gallandt Minutes taken by Bill Curran 1) Introductions After some technical difficulties with the Teleconference system, most everyone introduced themselves and the meeting started about 2:30 pm. 2) Elect Secretary for 2012 (to become Chairperson in 2013) Curran volunteered for Secretary and took the minutes. 3) Report from Administrative Advisor (Servello) Fred Servello came on board last year. He has some resources/a person to help us if we need it. Fred mentioned that historically this regional project has struggled a bit, but it also has been productive. Low attendance at the annual meeting has a been a problem. Also, only one year of the last five years report was turned in (NE1026) and we still really need last years report. Our fiscal year is the federal fiscal year (Oct  Sep). The fifth (termination) report is the most important, but we should have one report per year. Minutes can serves as the annual report for NE1026. In addition, we also need a substantial annual meeting if possible, more than just a 3-hour meeting. Servello thinks we need a day or more for the meeting. Mohler thinks we need 4-5 hours at least. In addition, we are not really supposed to have the meeting in conjunction with WSSA or the regional meeting. Curran mentioned the difficulty in active participation in this project without any additional funding. This is an unfortunate reality of this type of MultiState project. 4) Future Annual Meeting dates and venues (summer field days at participating Universities; alternate among the regional meetings; desirable "vacation spots" that would encourage participation in the work meetings; other ideas?) A future date location was discussed. It was decided that it is too difficult to meet as a standalone meeting since we have participants covering such a wide geography. It was agreed that we will meet in conjunction with the WSSA annual meeting in Baltimore in 2013. The WSSA is Feb 4  7 (Mon-Thurs)  initial proposed date would be Sunday Feb. 3 in Baltimore or depending on WSSA start time. It was then realized the that Super Bowl was also on Feb 3 and so we tabled this discussion until we confirm WSSA meeting dates and maybe we can meet on Monday or before the Super Bowl on Sunday if necessary. 5) Presentation of Preliminary or Relevant Results and Discussion of 2012 Field Experiments Objective 1. Cultivation Efficacy - Gallandt discussed some of the details of his work the last summer or two. Much of his work has been looking at efficacy variability with different tools, working rate, of the different tools, etc. Most of these are hand or push tools for smaller vegetable operations. Eric used a theta probe that he thought was pretty good for measuring soil moisture. Eric observed a lot of differences in efficacy due to moisture variation. Gallandt suggests having a core set of data (minimal) and then a more complete set for those that desire to participate more. PA, DE, and USDA-Beltsville are working with high residue cultivators, but have not yet worked out the details on a common experiment. USDA-Beltsville has been working with Rodale for the last two years. Mohler suggests measuring dry clod size after cultivation  helped show that organically managed soil had a finer structure than conventionally mgt. soil. He suggests looking at chain length to estimate soil roughness. Gallandt will send out a template that has the core measurements. Mohler would like to create soils with different tilth  e.g. plow wet vs. dry. We would look at cultivation efficacy and hopefully show how tilth and quality influence performance. Bjorkman  commented that the most important question is what are conditions when this tool works well or not, and how does the operator influence this and how do you tell a grower what the appropriate tool is for them to use? Gallandt discussed meta data collection. How big should our sample size be? How many quadrats and how big? Intra vs. inter-row collection? Or should we increase our sample size to ensure that we have a minimum number of individuals in our sample size. Eric used Ida gold mustard as a weed surrogate. What could we use as a surrogate weed for no-till? We discussed the resolution power in the weedy control and it was decided that we need to have some minimum number (~50/m2) in the quadrat or have a surrogate. It was suggested that we use both Japanese millet and Ida gold as surrogates to represent a monocot and a dicot. Some decisions  Use chain method for surface roughness, theta probe for soil moisture, bead and string for residue cover at a minimum. Gallandt asked how you can measure the effect of the tool on later weed emergence. It was suggested that discrete tool measurements in isolation from the main experiment might work best. Manipulate the field to create different situations? Mohler has done this to some degree with irrigation. Objective 2. Weed Seed Maturation Erin Taylor  the AFRI proposal was not successful. MSU will continue to do the project. They have done this for 3 years. Taylor went through the objectives of proposal. Basically it involves four different groups of weeds (flower stalk, capsule or berry, asters, and grasses). Termination included cutting, chopping, or glyphosate. Pick at least 3 species and 3 different control timings  flowering, 50% maturity, etc. Mohler commented that more species is the important thing rather than more sites with the same species - 2 to 3 sites per species would be more than enough. Paper recently came out on waterhemp timing of termination and seed production. MSU did 5 species, 3 kill methods and 4 termination times = took two weeks of student labor this winter to process seeds. Could this proposal succeed as a SARE proposal? Other issues; storage of terminated plants bagged vs. basket? Used no- see-um type mesh bags that they sewed themselves. Dont want to favor pathogen activity. MSU included velvetleaf, lambsquarters, Canada thistle and giant foxtail. Eric has some pre-made Japanese tea importer nylon bags that he uses for seed bank work. Mohler said he has better ones and will send around the contact info. Useful  common data sheet  Erin Taylor will come up with a bare minimum list and send it around. Objective 3. Amendment Effects on Weed Seed Longevity (Mohler). Mohler set up this experiment last fall at Cornell with support from the Bellinder, Hahn, DiTommaso and Taylor labs. They collected seed, air dried, threshed, cleaned and counted. Two hundred seeds/bag for BLs and 250 for foxtail. Placed seeds in mesh bags. Went into ground six inches deep in rye, hairy vetch, and no-cover crop treatments. Will mix in cover crops in the spring with seeds placed in the ground last fall, plant to sorghum-sudangrass next summer, and then fall cover crops again in late summer. Spring 2012, spring 2013, and spring 2014 will be harvest dates for seed bags. MSU doing a similar study. Taylor stated that Erin Haramoto who works with Brainard used washers with the bags and will use a metal detector to id and retrieve. MSU is doing this experiment in both field crops and vegetable crops headed by the Brainard and Renner labs. Mirsky has source of stainless steel staples and will send source information around. Chase will not be doing this year, Smith, MSU, and others not clear. If you decide to put in an experiment,email Mohler. Idea from Curran, maybe we should have a methods discussion? Lots of opportunity to share experience in conducting different kinds of research. This was obvious from our discussion today. We ended with a discussion about how we can do the tele-conference better next year. We will investigate the use of Adobe Connect, VTC, etc. for the 2013 meeting.

See objectives 1-3 in the minutes

None to report.