The 61st Annual Southern Nursery Association Research Conference was held in Athens, GA on August 30 and 31. The highlight of the first day was the annual student competition, with separate competitions for BS, MS, and PhD students. The Horticultural Physiology Lab was well represented in the competition, with David Gianino in the MS division, while Shuyang Zhen and Geoffrey Weaver were part of the PhD competition. The lab crew gave outstanding talks and clearly impressed the judges. David Gianino won the MS competition with his presentation titled ‘Adaptive LED Lighting Can Benefit Greenhouse Production’. He discussed the benefits of the adaptive LED lights developed by him and Dr. Marc van Iersel. Shuyang Zhen won the PhD competition for her presentation on ‘Modeling Daily Water Use of Bedding Plants Based on Environmental Factors and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index’, discussing the use of remote sensing to estimate canopy size. that information can then be used for predicting crop water needs. Geoffrey Weaver placed second with his talk on ‘Screening Photosynthetic Performance of Bedding Plants Using Chlorophyll Fluorescence’. his worked is focused on determining how efficiently different crops can use light (and how that depends on light intensity). What a fantastic showing by these great students!
