By Amy Mayer
By design, organic agriculture limits the products that can be applied to crops to kill pests and weeds, so farmers often look for other strategies to reduce risk.
Short, fabric-covered tunnels could be the solution for certain organic crops. Researchers at Iowa State University have developed mid-sized mesh-covered tunnels, dubbed “mesotunnels,” that let sunlight and rain in, but keep many bugs out.
“The basic idea is to try to keep pest insects out,” says Iowa State University professor of plant pathology and microbiology Mark Gleason. “And not only them, but the pathogens, the bacteria in particular, that they carry that can cause disease on these cucurbit crops.”
Cucurbit crops include squash, cucumbers, melons and gourds. Gleason and colleagues recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to expand their trials to commercial-scale fields.
The mesotunnels are shorter than high tunnels, which can be 16 to 20 feet tall and become a nearly permanent fixture on a farm, and taller than low tunnels, which are just 18 inches high and only used during the early part of the season before the plants flower.
Mesotunnels are about 3.5 feet high and are made from bent electrical conduits covered with a nylon mesh fabric similar to a window screen.
“It’s a sweet spot because it’s providing enough space inside that tunnel, number 1, for the plants to grow and, number 2, for bees inside the tunnel to be able to pollinate,” Gleason says.
But he says the tunnels are pricey and require a farmer to order bees and put them inside the tunnels. Typically these crops would be pollinated by naturally occurring bees.
The next stage of the research will look at whether mesotunnels can be cost-effective and what farmers think of the system.
The $2 million grant comes through the federal farm bill, which increased research spending on organics in 2018.
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