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Evan Krause

Evan Krause
Project Title: 
Characterization of microclimate conditions and effects upon apple scab (Venturia inaequalis) modeling at Cold Springs Orchard (CSO)
Program Year: 
2021
Major: 
Environmental Sciences
Supervisor: 
Daniel Cooley

I enjoyed my opportunity to see and participate in the work going on at Cold Springs Orchard (CSO). Over the summer I participated in multiple smaller projects in addition to my data analysis work for the CAFÉ poster. I began the summer by assisting Paul O’Connor and researchers Abhisesh Silwal and Mohamad Quadri from Carnegie Mellon University with their experiments related to autonomous robotics and computer-vision technologies. This involved tagging, photographing, and counting apple fruitlets over the first few weeks.

The second part of my work at CSO was working with and analyzing data from the weather station network set up around the orchard. This involved taking the air temperature, relative humidity, and leaf wetness sensor data from the nine stations around the orchard over the past two years. The data from each site was compared to the disease models used to estimate potential apple scab infection periods and disease susceptibility. I then compared the results of potential infection periods and their associated durations between sites.

research poster on Characterization of microclimate conditions and effects upon apple scab (Venturia inaequalis) modeling at Cold Springs Orchard (CSO) by Evan Krause