TSU Extension agents keep counties covered during pandemic

TSU Extension Agents keep counties covered during COVID pandemic

By Jason de Koff

Over the last several months, Tennessee State University Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension agents and area specialists have risen to the challenge created by COVID-19.

While we have all had to make adjustments in our daily work and home lives, these individuals were able to continue to make impacts across the state. Find out what they have been up to and be sure to reach out to them if there is something that interests you:

In the Central Region, Area Nursery Specialist Amy Dismukes (adismuk1@ tnstate.edu), engaged in numerous nursery visits with an estimated economic impact of $520,000. She also continued distributing her “TSU Nursery News to Use” monthly newsletter (https://bit.ly/36sAqMh) to around 500 stakeholders.

In Coffee County, Agent Anna Duncan (adunca10@tnstate.edu), implemented a program called, “Small Gardens in Small Spaces”, and 92 percent of the program participants indicated that the program would assist them in generating new ideas. She also engaged 600 youth and Master Gardeners in online gardening programs.

In Franklin County, Agent John Ferrell (jferrell@tnstate.edu), noted an increase in phone calls and site visits and had social media posts that reached over 2,400 contacts. The local Farmers Market created a drive-thru option that resulted in more than $30,000 in sales.

In Claiborne County, Agent Jennifer Gilbert (jgilber8@Tnstate.edu), handed out 400 face masks to the local community and posted more information on Facebook leading to 20,000 indirect contacts.

In Morgan County, Director Jenni Goodrich (jgoodri2@Tnstate.edu), teamed up with their county health department to assist them with their COVID-19 educational outreach which included topics like how to combat stress and COVID-19 prevention.

In Rhea County, Agent Thomas Greenlee (jgreenl1@tnstate.edu), provided gardening information to about 250 homeowners each week and developed numerous Facebook Live videos.

In Wilson County, Agent Lucas Holman (lholman4@tnstate.edu), developed 17 Facebook Live and YouTube gardening videos that reached thousands of stakeholders.

In Lauderdale County, Agent Rachel Howell (rparker12@tnstate.edu), assisted her local office in giving out 200 gardening kits to residents which contained the supplies and information for growing a container plant.

In Montgomery County, Agent Karla Kean (kkean1@tnstate.edu), identified 40 percent more site visits and implemented a number of online workshops such as “Slow Your Roll: Adopting Sustainable practices,” and “Home and Garden Lunch and Learn”.

In Dyer County, Agent Mary Beth Neal (mneal9@tnstate.edu) reached more than 8,500 producers through news articles, 279 via email, and 50 via text messaging. She also assisted 25 livestock producers with questions on the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

In Knox County, Rylan Thompson (cthomp55@tnstate.edu) assisted in the development of a program that allowed Master Gardeners earn their volunteer hours by signing up to answer home horticulture phone calls and emails from home.

In Shelby County, Jo Anne Waterman (jwaterm1@tnstate.edu) created virtual farm tours of four small farms. She also partnered with mobile food pantry drives and provided information to 200 families on how they could grow their own fruits and vegetables.

Editor’s Note: All counties are in Tennessee.

Class ActsFrom internships to scholarships and awards in between, our students demonstrate that excellence is a habit.

Nakana’ela Morton

Nakana’ela Morton takes a moment to snap a selfie at Harpeth River State Park. Morton, who is a senior earning a degree in agricultural sciences, was awarded second place at the Tennessee Academy of Sciences in 2019 for his research on pigments in algae growing in lowlight. Morton was on a geological adventure at Harpeth River as part of Earth Horizons. The program is offered by Vanderbilt University and TSU, and is funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information visit earthhorizons.org. Photo courtesy of

Nakana Morton

Jonathan Alford

Jonathan Alford collects water samples out in the wetlands at TSU’s research farm. Alford, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is an agricultural sciences major and a USDA 1890 Scholar.

Alford has also served as research assistant in the Dean’s Scholar Program and served for two summers as a research assistant in TSU’s Summer Apprenticeship Program.

The USDA 1890 National Scholars Program provides full tuition, employment, employee benefits, fees, books and room and board for up to four years to students who attend a HBCU. For more information, visit https://www.usda.gov/ partnerships/1890NationalScholars for more information. Photo by Tom Byl

MiKaela Wiley

Mikaela Wiley (above), former president of the Student Association of Nutrition and Dietetics, provided nutrition information to patients at local clinics in rural Jamaica. Wiley spent nine days in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, as part of the service-learning capstone portion of the course Participatory Research Intervention/ Integration for Service to Mankind (PRISM).

Wiley graduated in Spring of 2020 with a bachelors degree in Family and Consumer Sciences concentrating on Food and Nutritional Sciences. Photo courtesy of MiKaela Wiley

Class Acts

Maggie Syversen

Maggie Syversen (above) conducts field work at the Agricultural Research and Education Center. Syversen is taking soil respiration measurements with a PP Systems analyzer for the Climate Change lab at TSU.

Syversen, who was also a Dean’s Scholar, graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences and a focus on environmental

sciences. Photo courtesy of Maggie Syversen.

Aniya Bryant

Aniya Bryant (left) earned her bachelor of science degree in Agricultural Science with a concentration in Environmental Science and is now a chemistry teacher at Intrepid College Prep.

While at TSU, Bryant served as community chairwoman of Tiger Women in Agriculture, secretary and vice president of the TSU chapter of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences (MANRRS), and earned a seat on the Dean’s List. Photo courtesy of Aniya

Bryant.

Class Acts

Jordan Jennings

Jordan Jennings, who earned his master’s degree in Food and Animal Sciences , received the Young Investigator Award while attending the International Veterinary Symposium in Seattle, Washington in August of 2019.

Jennings is now a research scientist in the department of pathology, microbiology, and immunology with a focus on HIV-1 infection at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

While in the Department of Agricultural Sciences at TSU, Jennings served as a graduate research assistant studying the regulation of interferon proteins during viral infection.

Photo courtesy of Jordan Jennings.

Braxton Simpson

Social media influencer and top student Braxton Simpson has a long list of accomplishments she has gathered during her education at TSU.

She is a Dean’s Scholar, an active participant in the Agriculture Future of America Leaders Conference, a J.P. Morgan Scholar, and a recipient of the Monsanto Scholarship. She has served as a student trustee on TSU’s Board of Trustees and serves as president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

She currently works as the Digital Communications Manager at Impact Youth

Outreach. Photo courtesy of Braxton Simpson

Class Acts

Shakarah Nelson

Shakarah Nelson (left), a Dean’s Scholar, earned a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Sciences with a focus on Environmental Science. In 2020, Nelson’s work at TSU was featured in Nashville Public Television’s virtual event “The Age of Nature.”

Nelson was an active participant in the Earth Horizons Program, a partnership between Tennessee State University and Vanderbilt University that encourages the recruitment, training and retention of minority geoscience

students. Photo by Joan Kite

Christopher Anuo

TSU alumni Christopher Anuo (right) stands in front of his award-winning research presentation on soil chemistry.

Anuo, a native of Nigeria, obtained a master’s degree in Environmental Soil Chemistry at TSU and is now serving as a research assistant in the doctoral program of Environmental Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-

Lincoln. Photo courtesy of Christopher Anuo.

Professor Jason de Koff works with a Tennessee farmer who is learning how to use a drone as a modern helper on her farm. Photo courtesy of Jason de

Koff

TSU Drone Program covers more ground amid pandemic

By Jason de Koff

The Tennessee State University Drone Program originated from a USDA-NIFA grant awarded to Dr. Jason de Koff in 2018. One of the objectives of TSU’s drone program focuses on teaching farmers about how they can use drones in agriculture. Drones can save time by not having to drive or walk a field to scout crops and can help identify issues faster by being able to cover more ground. Some have even used drones to show insurance adjusters where fields have been damaged by inclement weather. In 2020, Dr. de Koff had the opportunity to provide hands-on training to farmers in seven counties in Tennessee before the pandemic began. At these workshops, farmers learned about things such as different uses for drones in agriculture, different drone options and costs, and federal regulations.

They also had the opportunity to testdrive a Phantom 4 drone.

“I think farmers really get a sense of the things they can do once they get their hands on one and see how easy they are to use,” de Koff said. “Some of the farmers were unsure about them at first because they were concerned they might crash them.”

Evaluations of the workshops found that the majority of respondents felt that drones were not as difficult to fly as they originally thought and they had an increased interest in purchasing a drone within the next two years as a result of the program.

Dr. de Koff, along with his graduate student Priya Saini, have also been involved in writing articles and fact sheets that pertain to using drones in agriculture. One article was a beginner’s guide to drones that was published by Future Farming (https://

www.futurefarming.com/Machinery/ Articles/2020/4/Beginners-guide-toagricultural-drones-569413E/) and another was about using drones with cattle and was published by Dairy Global (https:// www.dairyglobal.net/Smart-farming/ Articles/2020/7/Drones-and-the-dairycows-Managing-livestock-618713E/). Dr. de Koff was also interviewed by the Farm Journal for an article about how to maximize drone return-on-investment on the farm (https://www.agweb.com/article/ qa-maximize-drone-roi-your-farm).

For most drones used in agriculture, a pilot would need to be FAA certified. The TSU Drone Program provides this certification training through an on-theground class and, in light of the recent pandemic, as an online course.

Dr. de Koff implemented this training in 2020 with extension and research staff at the University of Kentucky, the University of Georgia, and the American Society of Agronomy.

He also trained high school teachers in Tennessee using his curriculum to allow them to implement a new course on using drones in agriculture developed by the Tennessee Department of Education. Evaluations of his trainings found that 94 percent of the university respondents were more likely to get their certification and 93 percent of the teacher respondents felt more confident about teaching students.

Tennessee farmers had the opportunity to test-drive a Phantom 4 drone in the initial TSU Drone Programs that were offered in seven counties. Photo courtesy of Jason de Koff

ANTIBODIES, Continued from page 23

that will help protect these smaller businesses as planting season arrives.

Zhou and her team of scientists are working with Bates Nursery and Garden Center in Nashville, Pleasant View Nursery and Florists and Bobby’s Plants and Produce in Pleasant View, Tennessee, and Mary’s Gardens in Clarksville, Tennessee, to establish a discreet method to measure customer’s body temperatures. Since one of the early signs of the virus reveals itself as a fever in the body, Dr. Zhou proposed that thermal imaging systems used in nurseries and garden centers to detect COVID-19 need to be re-calibrated to contend with influences from the outdoor environment such as wind, cold, or excessive heat.

TSU scientists proposed to create a thermal imaging station that could detect if a customer had a fever upon entering the outdoor business. If a customer had a fever, that person would be discreetly re-directed to a different zone in the store to shop for their needs. Store associates would be on hand to help those customers find what they needed.

In the process, Dr. Zhou’s team will help educate owners about federally mandated safe business practices during a pandemic including social distancing rules and the wearing of masks and gloves. Nurseries and garden centers could redesign and reorganize the presentation of their goods so that customers could freely walk between trees and plants and maintain social distancing from other customers.

“Products from this project will increase the resilience of small business. The mitigation strategies developed in this project can be integrated into various agricultural production and marketing systems,” Dr. Zhou wrote.

Dr. Zhou’s team has been taking blood samples from nursery employees to determine if they have been exposed to COVID-19. The blood tests look for antibodies from the virus in the blood.

Those employees who have had the virus and have developed antibodies can work in teams to help customers who did not pass the initial temperature check when they walked in. This would allow business owners to use herd immunity to its advantage.

The information gathered from the research will be transformed into educational kits delivered to other businesses in Tennessee and throughout the United States.

This research is especially crucial since COVID-19 vaccines have become available. By spring, shoppers will consist of the vaccinated, the unvaccinated, and those who have survived COVID-19.