Conference, workshops to cultivate growers' knowledge

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Operators of greenhouses, nurseries and garden centers can learn about new production techniques and get advice on marketing at the 2012 Indiana Flower Growers Association Bedding Plant Conference and a series of free educational workshops across the state.

The statewide IFGA conference will be Feb. 23 at Crossroads Greenhouse in Indianapolis. The Educational Series for Greenhouse and Nursery Growers and Garden Centers, funded by the Indiana Department of Agriculture, will be held at various sites beginning Jan. 18.

The conference will include sessions on temperature and light management, plant growth regulators, pest management, and marketing and economics for growers. It will begin with a tour of the greenhouses. Sessions will feature speakers from Michigan State, Ohio State and Purdue universities, along with owners of successful greenhouses and marketing operations.

Study shines light on ways to cut costs for greenhouse growers

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Greenhouse bedding plant growers can save themselves time, money or possibly both by giving cuttings in propagation more light, according to a Purdue University study.

Flower growers use cuttings from Central America and Africa to start spring bedding plants in greenhouses during winter and early spring. Those cloudy days and cool temperatures make propagation time- and energy-intensive.

Roberto Lopez, an assistant professor of horticulture, and horticulture graduate students Chris Currey and Veronica Hutchinson study ways to minimize inputs and production costs in the floriculture industry while improving product quality. Based on what they were hearing from growers, they realized that light wasn't getting the attention it needed from the industry.

"In their minds, temperature has always been the most important thing. They didn't think about light," Lopez said. "We knew that light was significant, but we realize we didn't know what level to recommend."

Herbicide May Have Unintended Consequences

Purdue Univ. researchers have discovered a fine-tuning mechanism involved in plant root growth that has them questioning whether a popular herbicide may have unintended consequences, causing some plants to need more water or nutrients.

Angus Murphy, a professor of horticulture, and Wendy Peer, an assistant professor of horticulture, study the movement of auxin, a plant hormone essential for plant development. They showed that ABCB4, a protein responsible for moving auxin into cells, also removes the hormone when too much has accumulated.

"We knew that the protein took auxin up, but found that it switched to removing auxin when a threshold is reached," says Murphy, whose findings appeared in the early online version of The Plant Journal. "It starts transporting the hormones out."

That fine-tuning mechanism is integral to proper development of plant root hairs, which extend from the main plant root and are where most water and minerals enter.

Read full article in: The LaboratoryEquipment.com

History of Horticulture - Lecture Series

History of Horticulture
Jules Janick

Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture

Purdue University, USA

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/default.html

Purdue University Lecture Series

History of Horticulture (Agriculture) - Lecture 2

Early Humans and the Prehistoric Record: Human-Plant: Video

History of Horticulture © 2002 Jules Janick, Purdue University

Purdue University Lecture Series

History of Horticulture (Agriculture) - Lecture 1
Dating the Past: Geologic, Archeologic, Biologic, and Human Culture


History of Horticulture © 2002 Jules Janick, Purdue University

P.S.I.

Video from Prudue University - Are my soybeans wearing different genes?