A North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University researcher has won a quarter-million-dollar USDA grant to study lettuce.
There has been been lots of research done on how lettuce handles heat and water stresses, but little on its ability to survive cold. A&T research assistant professor Harmandeep Sharma hopes to fill that void.
She’ll grow several varieties of looseleaf lettuce in a controlled-climate chamber, exposing them to progressively colder temperatures. Then, using hyperspectral imaging, she’ll attempt to identify varieties able to withstand freezing temperatures that can damage or kill crops.
Sharma says the findings could help small-scale North Carolina farmers grow this weather-sensitive crop as conditions become unpredictable.
"This research is designed to take some of that uncertainty off farmers’ shoulders," she says. "Because we will be studying around like 100 varieties of loose-leaf lettuce in this study to figure out which ones naturally handle cold temperatures better than the others."
Sharma hopes to identify 10 cold-resistant lettuce varieties. She says the research could be a template for studying other leafy greens.