Don’t feel funny if a bit over a decade ago, you didn’t know of an insect called the spotted lanternfly. Native to India, China, and Vietnam, this invasive pest was first found in North America ten years ago in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 2014. The first New York State sighting was in 2017. In the years since, this invasive pest has moved northward and is now in the Hudson Valley in high numbers. When you stop at a farmer’s market and buy fruit and vegetables or enjoy a glass of Hudson Valley wine, the spotted lanternfly is likely not on your mind. But Hudson Valley growers and scientists in the state understand well the danger of this invasive plant hopper that can damage a variety of plants and trees, including stone fruits, hops, hardwood trees, and particularly grapes.
In a plain vanilla-looking, one-story building on Route 9W in Highland, scientists are studying the spotted lanternfly in a lab, examining the species under controlled conditions, and seeking to develop more strategies to control the insect.It’s just a portion of the multifaceted research that scientists do at this facility, on invasive species, bacterial diseases, and climate and weather impacts. They evaluate fruit and vegetable varieties, fine-tune crop management practices, and help farmers with new tools, sustainable practices, and emerging technologies.
Heartbeat of the region’s farming
The Cornell Hudson Valley Research Laboratory (HVRL), comprised of this building and an adjacent experimental orchard, is a scientific research hub that is a public-private partnership of Cornell scientists with Hudson Valley growers.The laboratory has been operating somewhat under the public radar for many decades, but a major state investment is bringing it more into the spotlight and bolstering its endeavors for today and the future. HVRL is receiving a major boost of $1 million in funding from New York State for renovations and modernization, an investment that Senator Michelle Hinchey secured.
The investment is expected to be a game-changer that will “transform this facility into a state-of-the-art lab that will support vital, cutting-edge research to help New York farmers throughout their growing seasons and keep New York at the forefront of sustainable innovation,” said Hinchey, who chairs the State Senate Agriculture Committee.
Sarah Dressel-Nikles, the fourth-generation farmer whose family owns and operates Dressel Farms and who is president of the HVRL board, agrees that the funding is integral to sustaining Hudson Valley farming. “The value of the science that happens in the lab to commercial agriculture is priceless. HVRL is the heartbeat of the region’s farming, and this investment will ensure that it can help carry Hudson Valley agriculture into the future.”
The funds will support major renovations to aphysical infrastructure that is very much in need of updating and enhancements. These funds will also augment the lab’s capabilities to do advanced research with science-based solutions that directly benefit growers in the Hudson Valley — one of the country’s important agricultural areas — and New York State.
Collaborative partnership
The lab is a collaborative partnership between Geneva-based Cornell AgriTech, a preeminent center for food and agricultural research within Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and local fruit and vegetable farmer members of the nonprofit Farmers’ Alliance for Research and Management.The growers own the laboratory building while Cornell owns the 22-acre orchard that is situated up a hill behind the facility.
The Hudson Valley region is renowned for its high-quality fruit production, which yields specialty crops and many related products that add value. This Hudson Valley bounty is sold locally through direct farmer markets and distributed globally. Yet growers overall comprise a relatively small portion of the population – around 2% — whose production feeds the rest. They work year-to-year with countless challenges and little room to make mistakes.For the most part, consumers are not aware of the year-in and year-out trials and demands farmers deal with.
The research lab’s goal is to help keep Hudson Valley farming vibrant through applied research. Still, many peopledo not know about the scientific research that has been taking place at HVRL for a long time, as Dressel-Nikles noted.A primary focus is the commercial fruit industry and includes entomology (the study of insects), and pathology (the study of disease and injury).
When you consider the lab here, do not picture scientists in isolation. HVRL works closely with farmers in this region, and it leverages the deep expertise of the Cornell Cooperative Extension and the collaboration with Cornell programs like New York State Integrated Pest Management.
It’s a university-farm relationship that goes back more than a century, to 1923. That is when the Geneva-based Agricultural Experiment Station established the Hudson Valley field station, under legislation that Governor Alfred E. Smith signed. It operated in various locations in Ulster and Dutchess counties over the next four decades. A fire decimated the Poughkeepsie lab in 1962. Local growers raised the funds, bought land, and constructed the laboratory that opened in Highland in 1963. (Similarly, area growers came through several years back when Cornell’s funding was tight. The growers collected and gave $30,000 to keep the lab operating.)
Complex challenges
The lab’s particular location also positions it in ways that can benefit not only growers here but in to the north and west throughout New York State, as, for example, problem pests have shown up here first. As farmers do elsewhere, Hudson Valley growers face many, varied, and complex challenges such as price competition and rising costs; crop disease; threats from invasive pests; and climate change that is triggering more frequent, not-always-predictable, and severe weather events.
Furthermore, the Hudson Valley’s growing season is often more akin to Pennsylvania and New Jersey than the rest of upstate New York. This region is a frontline when it comes to the arrival of invasive pests from New York City and parts south. This is critical to the HVRL’s work: Scientists here are seeking to identify emerging issues with invasive pests like the spotted lanternfly, to prevent them from causing large-scale disruptions and damage to the rest of New York State.
Modernization project
To say the laboratory infrastructure needs work is an understatement. The Hudson Valley research laboratory has not had any major upgrades to it in a half-century. Looking at its various lab spaces can feel like stepping back into a science movie set from the 1970s. Jared Buono, director of HVRL, points out hoods, cabinets, and other features that will be replaced, and lots of other changes to come over the three years the project is expected to take.
The renovation will bring the lab not only into the 21st century but set up the infrastructure to be sustainable and resilient for coming decades, what Hinchey calls “future-proofing” it. It’s an investment that Hinchey and the lab’s leaders say will help ensure that the laboratory remains an essential resource for Hudson Valley and state growers. The modernization project will encompass asbestos removal, high-efficiency HVAC systems, ADA compliance, new fume hoods with automatic air quality functions, a new roof, flooring replacement, and more. The lab will also have a ground mount solar system to power the facility and demonstrate agrivoltaics, which is the use of land for both agriculture and solar photovoltaic energy generation.
During her visit last month when she announced the $1 million funding, Senator Hinchey met with HVRL board members and staff, farmers, and Cornell University leaders in the agriculture sector. As she toured the facility, Hinchey learned of HVRL’s cutting-edge research on climate-induced diseases, pest management, and agrivoltaics.
Take, for example, research to find new, sustainable science-based solutions to a problem like fire blight, a very destructive bacteriato apples and pears that gets into flowers, and can kill blossoms, fruit, and trees, exacting enormous damage to an orchard. Fire blight has worsened in the past decade andcontrolling it has prompted intensive spraying applications. Last year, Cornell scientists announced promising results using ultraviolet light to kill the bacteria. However, more research is needed, and is going on at HVRL.
“Having a state-of-the-art facility will allow us to more innovatively and effectively deliver science-based solutions to Hudson Valley farmers”, said Buono, who has been director of HVRL for two years and prior to that was lead executive director of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County for five years.
Targeting the lab’s efforts means a consistent communication between the researchers and the growers. “We are always asking, ‘What are your most pressing challenges? What are your biggest problems right now’?” he explained. The tailored solutions HVRL does with farmers are many, from helping farms adopt sustainable practices to horticultural staff conducting multi-year trials to evaluable methods of controlling sunburn on Honeycrisp and Gala apples.The community link of lab and growers is strong: During 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic, HVRL donated 47,000 pounds of apples and pears to local food pantries.
The lab is especially a setting where scientists can research and experiment with new approaches to controlling the insect pests, such as the brown marmorated stink bugs. This destructive pest invades apples, sweet corn, and stone fruits such as peaches, cherries, and plums. Growers rely on chemical spraying to fend off the damage stink bugs cause including discolored splotches, irregular depressions, andcorky flesh beneath the skin.
HVRL has been researching the efficacy of a biological control agent against the stink bugs – tiny samurai wasps, native to Asia but now found in the United States. The nonstinging samurai wasps are being studied as a viable control agent because they lay their eggs inside the brown marmorated stink bugs’ eggs. In 2017, Cornell researchers first trapped the wild samurai wasps and then began to rear new colonies, according to the Cornell Chronicle. At the lab, HVRL produces the stink bugs in a controlled setting and rears the samurai wasps. The research team has been distributing the wasps as a biocontrol agent at a number ofagricultural sites in the Hudson Valley and in other locations around the state. By following up and surveyingthe number of sites where the wasps parasitized the stink bug eggs, the scientists will determine the effectiveness of this biocontrol agent.
Experimental orchard
In a walk of the experimental orchard, Buono showed an area where HVRL is doing agrivoltaics research, exploring the use of solar panels over apple trees to combine agriculture with clean energy production. Europeans have more widely adopted agrivoltaics for over a decade, but it is just at a beginning stage in the U.S. Recent research in Europe has shown, for instance, how adjusting the tilt of solar panels has reduced heat stress in a vineyard, according to Cornell CALS.
Buono is extremely enthusiastic about the questions and potential answers from this small agrivoltaics plot. The lab will experiment with crop growth and management techniquesusing and adjusting the solar panels over a high-density orchard (e.g., employing varying levels of shade). The solar panels will be studied for potential benefits, for example, to protect trees in the event of early-season frost. By manipulating and closing the panels during the day to trap heat underneath, this could mean additional degrees of heat that would protect the trees at night.
To Dressel-Nikles, the funding that Hinchey secured means a “rebirth for the lab,” a means by which HVRL will remain vital and help foster what she terms the “three legs of sustainability” for Hudson Valley agriculture: economic, environmental, and social. It will mean utilizing the lab to meet the needs of the farmers and create a laboratory that “can keep the talent we have.” She cited the applied science that HVRL is doing on DNA mapping, plant pathology, agrivoltaics, and invasive insect species as invaluable to growers, particularly as “farming is always evolving.”
It’s about ensuring that a century-old agricultural laboratory gears up for what the 21st century is bringing. As Chris Smart, the Goichman Family Director of Cornell AgriTech and associate dean of CALS said, “This funding from Senator Hinchey will help bring AgriTech’s vision to reality in one of New York State’s most important agricultural regions and will allow our experts there to deliver more robust agricultural solutions for some of the biggest challenges on the road ahead.”
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