Introduction
The University of Georgia (UGA) Tifton campus is ideally located in the heart of southern Georgia’s vegetable production regions. The Tifton Vegetable Park is the primary research farm at UGA-Tifton, where vegetable team faculty conduct vegetable trials in various disciplines—including horticulture, plant pathology, entomology, plant breeding, precision agriculture, virology, and weed science. This research site is important for conducting high-quality research that cannot be performed in commercial vegetable production fields.
The Tifton Vegetable Park allows researchers to apply experimental chemistries, evaluate precommercial germplasm, control fertilizer and irrigation rates, inoculate diseases, and leave control plots weedy, insect-infested, or full of pathogens.
Infrastructure and equipment at Tifton Vegetable Park allow faculty to conduct high-level experiments in plasticulture (growing in raised beds covered with plastic mulch using drip irrigation/fertigation), bare-ground, or small greenhouse environments.
Funding for Tifton Vegetable Park is critical to continue our valuable research that positively impacts the vegetable industry.
Materials
Funding in 2025 was used to procure various supplies, including crop maintenance chemicals (fertilizer, fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides), plastic mulch, irrigation supplies (poly hose, timers, drip tape, connectors, and flush valves), vegetable seeds, cover crop seeds, sprayer tips, picking bins, seedling trays, wooden stakes, twine, labels, flags, marking tape, and spray paint.
Results
Impactful vegetable research was conducted at TVP under controlled parameters in similar climatic conditions to the surrounding vegetable production regions of southern Georgia to provide high-quality data for making meaningful recommendations.
We welcomed new research from a new vegetable breeder (Amol Nankar), vegetable entomologist (Basu Saumik), and precision agriculture specialist (Luan Oliveira), while continuing established research in horticulture (Ted McAvoy), plant pathology (Bhabesh Dutta and Sudeep Bag), and entomology (Stormy Sparks and Babu Srinivasan).
Conclusion
Monies for recurring supplies and equipment maintenance benefit all research at Tifton Vegetable Park, multiple departments at the University of Georgia and—most importantly—the entire vegetable industry in Georgia.
