Fall Classes Available at the CREC

LAKE ALFRED, Florida – The University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, (UF/IFAS) Citrus Research and Education Center (CREC) is offering fall 2008 courses in Citrus Pathology and Sensors and Data Acquisition in Biological Sciences. Classes run from Aug. 25, 2008 to Dec. 10, 2008.

Citrus Pathology (PLP 5115C) is a three credit graduate level course lead by Dr. Ron Brlansky, Professor of Plant Pathology. The course will be held at the UF/IFAS CREC Lake Alfred Campus on Mondays from 4 to 7 p.m. and via video conference (IP 128.227.177.98) to Gainesville. Citrus Pathology is a comprehensive course covering the major citrus diseases. It is taught by a team of citrus plant pathologists and other researchers involved in disease control from UF/IFAS CREC, Lake Alfred. Topics covered include the basic characteristics of virus and viroids, fungal pathogens, and bacterial pathogens, fungal diseases of fruit and foliage, diseases caused by systemic prokaryotes (citrus variegated chlorosis and citrus greening), diseases caused by viruses and viroids, bacterial diseases (citrus canker and citrus bacterial spot), root health and root diseases, diseases of unknown cause and postharvest diseases. Other topics include citrus nursery practices, regulatory practices, classical breeding and contemporary genetics for disease resistance, and genetic engineering of plants for resistances.

Sensors and Data Acquisition in Biological Sciences (FOS 6936) is a one credit graduate level course taught by Dr. Jose Reyes, Assistant Professor of Food Process Engineering. The course will be held at the UF/IFAS CREC Lake Alfred campus in the teaching lab on Wednesdays from 4 to 5 p.m. and via video conference (IP 128.227.177.98) to Gainesville. The objectives of this course are to better understand the principles of operation of common and not-so-common sensors, to improve research efficiency by learning the principles and tools used for data acquisition needed for computer-interfacing several laboratory instruments, and to learn different kinds of instruments and procedures used in different biological science disciplines.

Students registering for this course will have to prepare one or two (depending on the number of students) 50 minute seminars where they will describe the principle of operation of one or two instruments/methods they need to use for their research. Students will need to include the cutting edge technology as well as commercially available devices. They will need to explain how data is acquired, processed, and used for their research projects. There will be two midterm exams and a final exam. During the first four sessions, Dr. Reyes will teach the fundamentals of data acquisition and the basics of LabVIEW programming.