A lesson certain to bear fruit: Mullica students see what goes into berries

From the Press of Atlantic City, May 19, 2010-Lee Procida, Staff Writer

A parade of poncho-draped Mullica Township fifth-graders walked into the Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research on Tuesday to learn more about the fruits for which their region is famous.

As part of a series of grant-funded events the school has set up this year to educate children about their Pinelands heritage, the students listened to scientists from Rutgers University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture talk about their efforts to build better berries.

In one of the facility's many greenhouses along Lake Oswego Road, Mark Ehlenfeldt, a USDA research plant geneticist, explained how he aims to create bigger, stronger and more prolific plants for farmers to use.

He showed the children different varieties of berries and asked them questions, and did his best to answer theirs.

"How come they call blueberries blueberries when they're really purple?" 11-year-old Venessa Bartolomeo asked.

This is the sixth year the school district has brought students to the research center, teacher and organizer Barbara Rheault said. But this is the first year that it and other events will be funded by a $10,000 NJ Education Association Frederick L. Hipp grant.

"We wanted to get the kids back to their Pinelands roots," Rheault said.

In addition to this field trip, artisans from Tuckerton Seaport talked to students about their traditional craftsmanship, such as boat-building, decoy-carving and basket-weaving.

In June, the students will be taking a trip to the Forest Resource Education Center in Jackson Township, Ocean County, and they will also be building birdhouses and packaging their own blueberries in the future.

At the research center, they took a tour of the facility and heard from a variety of scientists who talked about cross-breeding different varieties of berries to produce ideal strains and others who research the bacteria, fungi and insects that affect the fruits.

After strolling through the cranberry and blueberry greenhouses, one group stopped in the entomology lab where gypsy moth caterpillars squirmed in jars and beetles flew around a clear plastic box.

"How many here like bugs?" asked Dean Polk, the coordinator of integrated pest management at the center, enticing a few hands to go up.

Polk described how he aims to fight insects with insects rather than pesticides, studying how one species could attack another species while not harming the fruit.

The students listened for as long as they could before they found the wide array of colorful, exotic species Polk had impaled with pins.

"What kind of bug is that?" asked Nick Gazzara, pointing at a cricket amongst a variety of butterflies, beetles and ants.

The main attraction was an inches-long Madagascar hissing cockroach that Polk keeps around, often bringing it out just for groups such as this.

As it crawled around his fingers, Polk asked if anyone wanted to hold it, and 11-year-old Erin Douglas bravely stuck out her hand.

As the amber and black-colored roach crawled onto Douglas' hand, she let out an excited squeal, and suddenly a few other students stuck out their palms as they saw the alien creature was harmless.

The students spent the rest of the morning at the center and then headed back to the elementary school, where they would learn about the local tradition of quilting from a Tuckerton Seaport craftswoman that afternoon.

They would take a yellow school bus through the dense woods of the Pinelands, peering out the windows at the unique environment they call home.

"We have to always remember that it's something pretty special that not everyone has access to," Associate Professor Peter Oudemans had told the students that morning. "So you guys are pretty lucky."