Delivering Cornell Grape and Tree Fruit Extension Education Resources on www.fruit.cornell.edu

Carroll, Juliet; Martinson, Timothy; Pritts, Marvin

Delivering Cornell Grape and Tree Fruit Extension Education Resources on www.fruit.cornell.edu

Abstract

The Cornell Fruit Resources website,was thoroughly upgraded and re-organized to place fruit information at the fingertips of growers and Extension educators. A steering committee consisting of Juliet Carroll, Marvin Pritts, Timothy Martinson, Catherine Heidenreich, and Craig Cramer guided the direction of the upgrades and selection of featured content. Coordination of effort was also achieved with the Tree Fruit and Berry Program Work Team (PWT) and the Viticulture and Enology PWT. The three major commodity-specific sections are Tree Fruit, Grapes, and Berries. Content within each commodity section is grouped under three sub-sections: Production, IPM, and Post Harvest. There are six common sections: Food Safety, Value-Added, Enology, Business Management, Marketing, and Labor Management & Worker Safety. “News & Events”, features statewide and regional events and provides newsworthy briefs about new fruit resources. “Newsletters”, provides a listing of all the fruit-farming-related newsletters published by Cornell University and Cornell Cooperative Extension. “More Cornell Websites”, provides easy access to other Cornell University Resources of interest to our fruit growers and extension personnel, such as diagnostic and analytical laboratories. Collaborating with the New York State Horticultural Society, we created and linked to over 200 individual articles from the New York Fruit Quarterly journal, published online since 2000. Special emphasis was spent on sourcing and organizing organic production and organic pest management information for fruit crops. We coordinated efforts with extension viticulture to develop web-based resources for new growers. Interest in growing vineyards and orchards has increased among people who have no prior experience in agriculture. This clientele poses a unique challenge to our regional and county-based fruit extension educators. Presentations about the Cornell Fruit Resources website were given at the Great Lakes Fruit Workers Conference, the Canada, New England & New York Fruit IPM Meeting, and the Cornell Summer Fruit Tour to showcase the expanded website as a source of information for growers, extension educators and crop consultants, and to increase interest in the site and its resources. Widespread promotion of the website is planned for January 2012.

Date Issued

2011

Publisher

New York State IPM Program

Keywords

Agricultural IPM; Communication; Berries; Tree Fruit; Grapes

Types

report