Team:WashU StLouis/UK

Discussion with an Agronomist

The Cardiff-Wales team brought our project idea to their agronomist mentor, who suggested that while stem rust is not a problem in the UK, it could be a good baseline system for the monitoring of other airborne plant pathogens. The agronomist also mentioned that with the Puccinia strains, it would be prudent to keep the 7-day period between infection to the expression of symptoms in crops. The system could not be applied to the early detection of crop pathogens in Britain, but it could be a useful tool for data collection purposes.

The agronomist also estimated that research stations would be willing to pay up to 10,000 pounds (or 13,000 USD) for one of our devices.