People

Peter Oudemans is Director at the P. E. Marucci Blueberry and Cranberry Research and Extension Center. He leads the small fruit pathology program, which focuses on the development of methodologies to reduce the impact of plant disease and improve fruit quality.

Gina Sideli leads the blueberry and cranberry breeding program at the Rutgers P.E. Marucci Center. A major emphasis of Sideli’s breeding program is developing and implementing phenomic tools for high-throughput phenotyping and utilizing genomic technologies to both accelerate selection decisions in long-lived perennials.

Cesar Rodriguez-Saona leads the entomology program at the Rutgers P.E. Marucci Center. The program focuses on the development and implementation of cost-effective reduced-risk insect pest management practices for blueberries and cranberries through the integration of chemical, behavioral, and biological methods in insect control […]

Thierry Besancon is an Extension Specialist in Weed Science for Specialty Crops. Before obtaining his PhD at North Carolina State University, Dr. Besancon worked for ten years in Europe on pests and diseases management in stone fruit production, development of IPM threshold models, and the prediction of fruit shelf-life in cold room based on the assessment of various pre-harvest factors.

Jennifer’s focus for the cranberry breeding program is on developing varieties with improved resistance to fruit rot, an increasingly serious disease in cranberries. With the blueberry breeding program, the emphasis is on developing varieties with machine harvestable fruit, and varieties that expand the blueberry season, while maintaining delicious flavor and high yield.