Raleigh – (July 19th, 2010) Suzanne O’Connell, a graduate student in the Department of Horticultural Science, has been awarded a United States student Fulbright Fellowship from the U.S. Department of State to study abroad in Honduras for eight to 10 months. She will be conducting research on the use of cover cropping in the tropics in conjunction with the private agricultural school Zamorano University and the nonprofit organization CIDICCO (Centre Internacional de Informacion sobre Cultivos de Cobertura, or The International Cover Crop Clearinghouse).
This opportunity will compliment O’Connell’s dissertation research on short-term nitrogen mineralization dynamics from warm-season cover crops utilized in organic vegetable systems in North Carolina. She will be leaving in January 2011 and hopes to return with a working knowledge of tropical cover crops, vegetable production and Spanish!