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Lake Erie Regional Grape program welcomes Portland resident to the team

Submitted Photo: Vincent Kane with the NEWA station at the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Laboratory in Portland.

PORTLAND — Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chautauqua County’s Lake Erie Regional Grape Program has announced that Vincent Kane has recently been hired to fill the position of NEWA Service Technician with the NYS IPM Program. In this position, Kane will be responsible to monitor, troubleshoot, repair and ensure accurate data is being reported and collected from the weather stations in the Lake Erie Region.

Kane comes from Portland, where he was raised on a grape farm. He completed his Bachelor of Science in information systems from SUNY Fredonia. Combining his technical skills with the years of grape work experience and the knowledge of grapes taught by his family, he looks forward to having a role in helping the grape industry. As one of his priorities, Kane hopes his focus will be to help farmers utilize the immense resource of NEWA.

The Network for Environment and Weather Applications, or NEWA delivers weather data from weather stations primarily located on farms through the Internet and automatically calculates and displays weather data summaries, crop production tools and IPM forecasts for disease and insect pests. NEWA tools promote precision IPM (Integrated Pest Management) and crop production practices. Farmers, commodity groups, the NYS IPM Program and Cornell and Penn State Universities, own the weather stations used by NEWA in the Lake Erie region. Weather data is radio transmitted from the weather station in the field to a receiver connected to the internet and then is uploaded into NEWA.

There are currently 11 NEWA stations in use in the Lake Erie region running from Ransomville in Niagara County to Harborcreek in Erie County, Pennsylvania. To learn more about NEWA and the weather and pest information it provides, visit http://newa.cornell.edu.

The Lake Erie Regional Grape Program is a cooperative effort between Cornell and Penn State Universities; the participating Cornell Cooperative Extension Associations of Chautauqua, Erie, Niagara and Cattaraugus counties in New York and Erie County in Pennsylvania; and participating industry partners National Grape Cooperative (Welch’s), Constellation Brands and Walkers Fruit Basket. The LERGP extension team provides research-based educational programming for commercial grape growers throughout the year at venues across the Lake Erie grape belt. For more information on LERGP, call 792-2800 or visit the website at http://lergp.cce.cornell.edu/.

The Lake Erie Regional Grape Program is one of many programs offered by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chautauqua County (CCE-Chautauqua). CCE-Chautauqua is a community based educational organization, affiliated with Cornell University, Chautauqua County Government, the NYS SUNY system and the federal government through the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. For more information, call 664-9502 or visit www.cce.cornell.edu/chautauqua.

Cornell University Cooperative Extension provides equal program and employment opportunities.

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