School of Environment and Natural Resources Associate Professor Robyn S. Wilson’s new three-year $498,658 U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) funded grant, Quantifying and predicting the effects of ecological weed management strategies on organic agroecosystems to inform farmer decision making, will produce a decision support framework for organic farmers that employs science-informed and values based criteria to accurately predict the impact of ecological weed management strategies on soil health, resource competition, management costs and farmer quality of life.
The funded project builds on previous research conducted by Wilson and co-investigator Douglas Doohan, professor, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at The Ohio State University. Their previous research indicates adoption of ecological weed management strategies are limited by a farmer’s ability to make the complex value-based tradeoffs required when predicting how complex suites of management strategies will perform over time. Steven Culman, assistant professor and soil fertility specialist and Kristi Lekies, associate professor, both of the School of Environment and Natural Resources, also serve as co-investigators on the multi-year project that includes the development of training and education tools.
Photo credit: The Ohio State University CFAES
October 22, 2015.