UC SAREP welcomes new staff member Jenny Broome, who will be dividing her time between coordinating the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems (BIFS) program, and developing and extending sustainable pest management practices and systems. In her capacity as BIFS coordinator, Broome will be collaborating with individuals and organizations in California's agricultural industry interested in developing and demonstrating more biologically based farming systems. As a plant pathologist, Broome hopes to integrate the use of weather data as well as cultural and biological control methods for disease management into some of the biologically integrated farming systems taking shape in California.

Broome comes to SAREP from the California Environmental Protection Agency's Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), where she was a research scientist in the Environmental Monitoring and Pest Management Branch. She developed and extended models that aid in pest management decision making, and analyzed DPR's pesticide use database for trends and patterns in pesticide use in California agriculture. While at DPR, Broome developed a $600,000 per year competitive grants program to encourage the use and demonstration of environmentally sound pest management systems.

She will continue to direct the development of the disease model database of the PestCast project, a statewide weather monitoring network for use in plant disease model validation and implementation. PestCast is coordinated by the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Project and is funded by the Environmental Technology Initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well as DPR, UC and the agricultural industry in California.

Broome received her doctoral and master of science degrees in plant pathology from the University of California, Davis, and her bachelor of science degree in biological sciences from Swarthmore College.