An associate professor of horticulture, Frett developed the database, with help from research associate Betsy Mackenzie, because he wanted to provide students and the general public with information about plants growing in the UD's Botanical Gardens. He also wanted to give students greater access to the photographic slides of plants he regularly shows during his classes. Horticulture instructors typically maintain vast libraries of slides and other images, Frett explains. Unfortunately, he adds, students often have only one opportunity to view each slide in the classroom. For a lot of students, if they can just store an image of a plant in their memory, that's worth 15 minutes of rote memorization.
Images stored in a database give students a quick way to review essential information about plants.
Frett and Mackenzie are still adding images to the database by converting slides into digital data that can be stored on a compact disc and then fed into a computer. Ultimately, Frett's database may include enough images and facts to describe up to 1,700 plants. Frett also is working with Dewey Caron, professor of entomology and applied ecology, to incorporate information on insects into the database. Another computerized database helps University students learn to diagnose plant diseases by studying images and electron micrographs accompanied by text. Images of powdery mildew, for example, show how this plant disease appears on such common hosts as roses, vegetables and turf grass.