Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
UConn survey finds plant enthusiasts want training to spot new diseases and invasive pests
UConn researchers surveyed 233 plant enthusiasts and found they want expert training to identify emerging plant diseases and invasive species. Because respondents came through garden clubs and extension newsletters, the survey shows willing helpers exist but cannot size demand across the country.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Beyond training, respondents said they wanted to contribute directly to research on emerging pests and plant diseases.
- Some extension offices already do this work locally, such as UConn's Home Garden Education Office, which answers public questions about pests like the spotted lanternfly.
- A USDA program that once supported this kind of pest and disease education ended years ago, according to UConn's account of the study.
- The survey covered areas outside the Northeast, and results from a second, more detailed survey of the Northeast will appear in a separate paper.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Because the pool came from people already close to extension programs, a funder cannot use it to estimate how many volunteers a new program would enroll in a state with no outreach today.
- decision Extension programs applying for federal money now have documented public interest in pest-identification courses to cite, though it comes from a small, self-selected pool.
- exposure Pests and diseases cross state lines, and without national coordination, early detection depends on whether each state's extension office runs outreach on its own.
Nick Goltz, director of UConn's Plant Diagnostic Laboratory, and Amelia Martin, a 2023 graduate of the university's College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, chose their audience on purpose [15]. "We wanted to connect with folks who were already familiar with our work, to find out how they engaged with us in the first place," Goltz said [10]. "We were also hoping to capture as many folks as we could with an interest in plants but who maybe hadn't worked with their university." [11]
That design fits the question they set out to answer. "We were trying to identify those gaps a little bit better in terms of what the limitations are for people accessing our services and maybe collaborating with data reporting for us, so we know the movement of plant diseases across the country and across our region," Goltz said [2]. It is a weaker way to measure demand. Newsletter readers and garden-club members are the people most likely to ask for pest-identification training [3]. The university's summary of the paper does not report what share of respondents asked for it [5].
So the survey shows that willing volunteers exist among people who are already interested. It does not show that volunteers outnumber what extension programs could absorb from the general public. The case for a shortage on the institutional side rests on Goltz's description of how training reaches people now. "There's not a formalized system for this training," he said. "The impetus is on the individual specialist, or group, or organization to go out into the community to spread that information." [6]
In my view that supply-side half of the argument is the better supported one. It describes a structure that can be checked directly. The demand half comes from respondents recruited among the already engaged [3].
Goltz says the payoff is earlier detection. "By having more engaged communities, we can increase the quality and quantity of samples we can test in our labs," he said [13]. "It can help folks be on top of outbreaks." [16]
The thing this doesn't tell you is whether that happens. The study asked people what they wanted [5]. Showing that trained volunteers send better samples, or let labs act earlier in a season, would take a different experiment: train one group and compare its reports with a region where nobody got the training.
What to watch
- Whether the full paper breaks out respondents who had never worked with a university, which would show whether the interest reaches beyond people already in extension's circle.
- Any pilot that trains volunteers and then counts lab samples or dates first detections against a region without trained reporters.