Phil Nguyen

Onto week 6... I heard that since NACA is happening, a lot of ag agents will not be in office. Haley and Sarah are out so I will have to handle a lot of things on my own.

Monday

Telemonday today. I went to the weekly intern connection. Today's speaker was Steven Darcy, a Professional in the Soil Conservation District of Prince George's county. He discussed the importance of the soil health especially as it relates to agronomics, nutrient management, and livestock.

Just a slide from from Mr. Darcy's presentation. 

Tuesday

Today I was tasked with handling this active organic carbon testing kit. We basically have to design a kit that would be suitable for any ag agent or farmer to use. I think there are some important things to consider.

For example, this kit is called a POXC, which stands for permanganate oxidizable carbon. This means that the kit uses potassium permanganate. Unfortunately, this compound can be toxic to aquatic life. A disposal process would have to be outlined.

I walked through the test and it really reminded me of taking organic chemistry (a class that separates the men from... masochists with too much time on their hands).

Left: some of the materials in the kit. Center: me. Right: Standard absorbance samples that I will compare the actual sample too.

After finishing the test, I managed to get absorbance data. Since I was just testing soil outside, I didn't calculatthe presence of active carbon yet. I didn't think there would be much though as the sample's absorbance was rather low.

I ended up emailing Professor Coale (the assistant dean) for more advice on this and he directed to me to Professor Wilmoth. I definitely think this kit has a lot of potential, but there has to be a greater focus on providing a cleaner and efficient process for farmers to test their samples.

Wednesday

I stopped by LESREC today to check on the blueberries and blackberries. Unfortunately, weather has been rather wild. So the berries have been exposed to both extreme heat and rain on the same day. Some plants have been worn down greatly.

There is some fruit, but some more time is needed to ripen for blackberries.

Blueberries are an entirely different story. There is barely any fruit at LESREC. I think the part I am worried about is that Last Call is starting to fruit. Since Last Call is the later cultivar, it may mean that other varieties will not produce any more this season.

The office at Wico is pretty empty today. Mostly because people are taking the week off for July Weekend. I ended up adding more blackberry data to a spreadsheet.

Some of the blackberry plants at LESREC. They are doing okay I suppose. They only have some fruit present.

Thursday

On Thursday I stopped by the Wye research center (thanks Chris) to finish get some more samples for the taste panel. Here the samples for blueberries were pretty small. Last call actually had ripe fruit while other samples... not so much.

Blackberries were doing fairly well though. A lot of bugs though. Imagine getting a pebble thrown at your face. That's how big the bugs were. I'd imagine they were getting food and I was interrupting them.

I got about 5 varieties of blackberries and 3 varieties of blueberries.

I did have my friend Riley taste the berries though. I think he said he likes Blue Crop? I think that is one cultivar that a lot of people tend to like too.

The last call blueberry cultivar. This one is an especially healthy plant with deep blue fruit. Pretty similar to the legacy variety.

Friday

Happy July 4th! Today I decided to telework from home.

Some fireworks in front of SU.

Overall, I would say that the nature of agriculture has to change. I don't think that this system where we divorce ourselves from seeing the work is really helpful. I'd imagine that seeing it actually happen in person would allow people to appreciate the work that goes into it more fully. After all, food doesn't just magically appear in grocery stores.

There's a process of transportation logistics, making sure food is in season, observing what consumers want, etc. A lot of things beyond growing should really be taken into account.