Zhejiang University and surrounding Hangzhou

Friends, family, and colleagues,

Yesterday, we drove down to Hangzhou, and we met faculty at Zhejiang University.  The region is home to about 100,000 hectares of watermelon production with about 10% being an open system. No surprise, these open systems have the most amount of disease.

We met with Dr. Song, who is a plant pathologist at Zhejiang University. The university consists of several campuses, with the largest and newest one being in the Zijin'gang campus, which we visited. The department has 37 faculty, all of which were on this campus. Most of the faculty are young professors, which is similar to the department at UF. The department is in a massive building which houses several departments. 

Dr. Song is a vegetable pathologist who focuses on gummy stem blight, Fusarium wilt, and powdery mildew. Additionally, he has research in tomatoes, rice, and some Arabidopsis work. We also met briefly with the department chair of the program, who was very welcoming. We sat and had tea with him for a while and discussed possible collaborations. Unfortunately, he had to run to another meeting right after the talk. Department chairs are busy over here just as they are in the US.

This is the building where the department of plant pathology was located. It consists of 15 floors, 3 of which are occupied by the plant pathology department.

And I though Library West was nice. 

We had a large lunch in a private room at the hotel on campus. Dr. Song insisted I try some rice wine, which is famous in the region. It had a nice burnt auburn tint to it and tasted almost like a brandy. We had food until we were sick. After lunch, we toured his lab space, which was impressive. His main lab was 100 square meters, which is 2.5 times larger than our molecular lab at the University of Florida. He has seven students in total, which is considered small by Chinese standards. In addition to the laboratory, his lab team had a growth chamber room which consisted of three chamber built into the wall and was used for looking at rice varieties in different stress situations. He also had another growth chamber room with housed all his tomatoes and watermelon seedlings. We met a few of his students, and discussed some of the various projects. Dr. Song was very welcoming and recommended I apply for a fellowship for young scientists at his institution once I graduate (the pay is about 200,000 RMB per year, which about the same as a post-doc in the US would get, but the cost of living is much less in China compared the US). He also invited me back to drink with him, which I didn't know how to respond. All in all, he is a very nice professor and is certainly passionate about his work.

This was the hotel where we had lunch with Dr. Song. Needless to say, it was equally as nice on the inside.

We then took a forty minute drive to the countryside to visit a grower. The farm manager invited us down and we had tea, watermelon, and muskmelon. The muskmelon was some of the sweetest melon I have ever had. I’m a bit disappointed, since this will probably ruin my impression on melons in the US entirely. The system they are using for growing melons is something that you would see at Disney’s “behind the seeds tour" with all those quirky “futuristic” growing systems. The area was under protected high tunnels connected to one another via gutters. However, once inside, there was another hoop structure covered in a net. At each side of the hoop, watermelon was planted (grafted of course) and climbed up the net. The melons would then hang down from the vines on the inside. I have never seen watermelons grown like this before. I've seen cucumbers trellised, but I would expect watermelons to be too heavy. To address this problem, they tie the melons once they are larger than a grapefruit to provide additional support. With this system, they also are able to harvest more melons in a longer season. Each plant will yield 6 melons per plant, which they keep growing for about 6 months. In the US, we aim for a 90-105 day crop with three melons per plant. We weren't able to figure out what they are doing to get those sort of yields, since the spacing is much tighter since they grow up and not out. This facility did use fungicides, though he mentioned that is was an older chemistry. It turned out to be a fungicide that has been around for 30+ years in the US, so the chances of finding fungicide resistance are good. 

There are many advantages of using this system. The first is that the fruit aren't sitting in the dirt. The second is that it saves your back; picking at eye or waist level is much easier than bending all the way over. For this system, the rotate between strawberry or Brassicas in the winter followed by watermelon or muskmelon in the spring.

This is one of the most unique growing systems I've ever seen

The inner structure itself was about 8 feet in height. They intercrop with Brassicas to make use of the open space inside. 

Dr. Paret was all excited that we found Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. melonis in another greeenhouse.

After we left the facility, we had a “light” dinner (only seven dishes instead of the usual 250+) and we retired for the night. We made plans to take the lab out to an “American” restaurant the last night Dr. Paret is here. I’m curious to see how this turns out since none of them have been to the US. 

Tomorrow, we are going to Dongtai, which is the southern-most area of Jiangsu. We are meeting with some provincial level officials about watermelon production in the area. They’re the equivalent of the state level regulatory agency (think DPI in Florida). 

I'll stop traveling soon and start to get some work done, I promise.

Mason