Retired Hunterdon County agricultural agent Win Cowgill and fellow NC-140 Regional Rootstock Research Project members were the recipients of the American Pomological Society’s (ASP) 2017 P.H. Shepard Award for the best paper published in the Journal of the American Pomological Society, awarded at the APS business meeting held at American Society for Horticulture Science annual conference in September 2017.
The Shepard Award was instituted to recognize outstanding research and to promote the publication of good research in the official publication of the American Pomological Society. Currently the Shepard Award is presented for the best research paper published each year in Journal of the American Pomological Society.
The paper, “Time Required for Classifying Rootstock Vigor in Multi-location Rootstock Trials” was based on apple research Cowgill conducted at Rutgers Snyder Research Farm as part of the multi-state project NC-140. The NC-140 Regional Research Project is designed to address a number of high-priority areas within the North Central Region as well as other parts of North America. This project seeks to enhance economically and environmentally sustainable practices in temperate fruit production by focusing on rootstocks.
This was the third Shepard Award Cowgill received for NC-140 research publications in APS.
