Yolo County vintner receives international scholarship
ina statement after the scholarship award was announced. Headded, “I believe this topic is import- antbecause family farmsplayacritical role inour local, national andglobal agricultur- al community. I hopemy researchandex- perienceswill inspireothers to re-evaluate their business models and improve their odds for succession and survival”. Nuffield International scholars spend a year studying best agricultural practices to gain new ideas, insights and resources to carry back home. The culminating re- quirement of a Nuffield scholarship is a
10,000-word report on the scholar’s areas of research, according to the organiza- tion’s website. The reports are to be made publicly available for those interested in agricul- ture, and Nuffield scholars also givemul- tiple presentations on their study topic, findings and experiences. In addi t ion to running Merwin Vineyards,Merwin isco-founderandpart- ner of Silt Wine Company, a winery and tasting room in Clarksburg. He serves as president of theClarksburgWineGrowers andVintners Association.
A Yolo County vintner has been select- ed as California’s first-ever scholar in the Nuffield International Farming Scholars program, which offers scholarships de- signed to help shape the future of agricul- ture locally and globally. Thomas Merwin, general manager and vice president of Merwin Vineyards, a mul t i -generat ion fami ly farm in Clarksburg, won the scholarship to un- dertake studies in Spain and France on corporate, family and cooperative farms andwineries. His scholarship will also cover work in Latin America to research small cooper- ‘E-nose’ can sniff out a tomato pest The U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural ResearchService anduniver- sityscientistshavedevelopedan“electron- icnose” that they say can sniff outwhitefly infestations in tomato plants. According to a USDA press release, the so-calledE-nosecandetect volatileorgan- ic compounds that tomato plants release when attacked bywhiteflies. Whiteflies are top insect pests of U.S. fresh-market tomatoes, which were val- ued at $721 million in 2020. Adult white- flies and their immature nymphs probe the undersides of tomato plant leaves for sap, causing them to turn yellow, curl or dropoff. Whitefly feedingcanalsoresult in uneven ripeningof fruit and transmit viral diseases that further weaken the plants. USDA partnered with researchers at Ohio StateUniversity and theUniversity of Tennessee,Knoxville, todevelopthedevice and test it ingreenhouses. Scientists say they’rehoping theE-nose canbea tool for growers, allowing themto fine-tune their use of whitefly-killing in- secticides and biocontrol agents such as parasiticwasps. Researchers say the shoebox-sized de- vicemimics the ability of mammal brains to recognize certain odors, including “smell fingerprints” that tomato plants producewhen attacked bywhiteflies. “The future E-nose system can be de- signed as a hand-held device for growers to take samples from individual plants,” Heping Zhu, an agricultural engineer with the USDA Application Technology Research Unit, said in a statement. “It can also be designed as a computer-con- trolled cloud networking system, which consists ofmultiple smart sensors placed at different locations in the greenhouse, so the computer can automatically col- lect samples andmonitor infestations 24 hours a day.” Besides whiteflies, the E-nose also suc- cessfullydetectedtomato-infestingaphids andinsectpestsofothergreenhousecrops, researchers say. Details of the team’s findings were published in the October 2021 issue of Chemosensors.
atives and large corporate farms alike. He will additionally studyagritourismandag- ricultural finance in theUnitedKingdom. “I want to focus on how family farms canpivot or refocus for long-termsurvival, lookingat strategies andexamples suchas collaborating with institutional investors, vertical integration, specialization and joint venture partnerships,” Merwin said
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January 26, 2022 Ag Alert 9
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