RSS Feed

Taking the place of a 40-year veteran of the Louisiana sugar cane industry is no small task, so when LSU AgCenter plant pathologist Andre Gama replaced longtime researcher Jeff Hoy, he knew he had big shoes to fill. Due to his extensive travels, Gama’s own shoes were well worn, so he was up for the challenge.
Growing up in Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil, Gama knew from a young age that he was interested in studying biology but wasn’t sure what to focus on. In his home country, students are expected to decide a university major when they turn 18, so he needed to figure it out fast.
During his undergraduate studies at the University of São Paulo Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, Gama researched the effects of brown and orange rusts of sugar cane on photosynthesis. A postdoctoral assistant he was working for recommended him to Richard Raid, a pathologist at the University of Florida, where he finished his degree researching pineapple rot of sugar cane in 2014.
After his studies in the Sunshine State, Gama applied for his master’s degree in his previous lab in Brazil and was given the choice to work on grapevines or citrus.
He said the citrus project reeled him in because it involved developing an automated, online, decision-support system to aid growers in deciding the best time for fungicide applications based on weather forecasts and disease models.
Using mathematical models that correlate disease risk with weather variables like temperature and leaf wetness periods to guide sprays, Gama and his team were able to reduce fungicide applications by up to 75% per season with the same efficacy, thus reducing environmental impacts from fuels, fungicides and water usage and providing financial benefits for growers with a positive effect on yield.
“That project was enormously successful, and the growers are using the automated system to this day,” he said.
Gama then returned to Florida for his doctorate when the state was facing postbloom fruit drop in citrus.
He said the University of Florida had a similar system for strawberries as Brazil had for citrus, so his professor collaborated with counterparts in Brazil to implement and design an automated system for orange production in Florida similar to the one that was so effective in Gama’s home country.
After graduating, he went through a five-month postdoctoral stint working on Pestalotia fruit rot and leaf spot of strawberries before moving into the private sector working on Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, a devastating disease that caused a steep decline in orange juice production in Florida. After a year and a half, he realized his true passion was teaching and putting his own research ideas to the test, so he made himself a promise.
“I told myself if a good academic job came up, I would apply for it,” he said. “And that’s when I saw the AgCenter position, giving me the opportunity to work with sugarcane again, which I hadn’t done since my undergrad days. I especially liked the job description, which was applied disease management, working directly with growers.”
Gama now gets to teach epidemiology, describing how diseases grow in the field, become more severe and how to test ways to mediate that effect. He also provides free diagnostic services for sugarcane growers in Louisiana, sponsored by the American Sugar Cane League. To optimize the diagnosis for local growers, he and his team are working on improving methods for detecting sugarcane pathogens, including the causal agents of ratoon stunting disease and sugar cane leaf scald.
“We’re excited because we’ve found ways to extract pathogen DNA from sugarcane samples way quicker than we could before without increasing costs while increasing the sensitivity of the assays,” he said.
“This comes from what I learned in Florida and implemented in the strawberry disease diagnostic lab.”
When asked how working in Louisiana and at the AgCenter differs from his previous academic stops, he referenced the food and the people.
“The food is amazing!” he exclaimed. “And the growers are very curious and involved. The difference here is you have a sugarcane industry that is more composed of families rather than big corporations, which I really enjoy because I feel that we as researchers can make a bigger difference.”
Gama also singled out his predecessor Hoy, who he said was instrumental in teaching growers over the decades about the importance of using clean seed cane. He also praised AgCenter sugarcane breeders, who have led the way in breeding disease-resistant sugarcane varieties.
“The day before I started, Jeff had his retirement party and was nice enough to invite me,” he said. “Now I know why folks spoke so highly of him. I learned the tremendous impact he had on the industry and how great of a person he is.”
Over time, Gama hopes to make his own impact on the Louisiana sugarcane industry and wants producers to know he is always ready to help.
“I always like knowing what I’m doing is helping someone,” he said. “In all our research, the final goal is to help the growers.”

Frank Tuller was one of my best friends during high school back in the early ’70s. He and I were known to skip school from time to time to go fishing “up north” as they say in Michigan where we grew up.
Frank was a year older than me and someone who lost his father at a young age. As a result, Frank never played sports, but instead worked after school building kitchen counters. When he was off work, we’d get together and go water skiing, fishing, and, in the fall, hunting.
For a guy in high school, Frank made pretty good money and had a stash he tucked away in various places in his bedroom.
One October afternoon, Frank and I decided to make a squirrel hunt in a woodlot near our subdivision in the country. I had been seeing some big fox squirrels there and thought I’d share the spot with my buddy.
The leaves were in peak fall colors and though we were experiencing a second summer, sitting in the shadows of the woods close to sunset, the air felt cool.
We didn’t see anything that afternoon until we decided to leave. Suddenly, a squirrel leaped from the forest floor and scampered up the trunk of a large maple.
Frank, with lightning reflexes, shouldered his shotgun and fired off a shot. What happened next was nothing short of a tickertape parade as confetti came floating down to the ground everywhere.
“No-no-no,” Frank cried out, as I watched dumbfounded by what I was seeing.
“What Frank?” I replied while picking up a piece of the confetti.
It was pieces of money, or what used to be money and that’s when I began laughing. No, it wasn’t funny, but for some reason I started cracking up. One of the places Frank stashed his money was in the barrel of his 12-gauge shotgun.
“Shut up or I’m going to kick your @#&!” Frank said, “now help me find the pieces!”
We combed every square inch of that patch of woods and picked up every piece of those bills we could find.
Living in a small town where everyone knows each other has its advantages. When we got to Frank’s house, he grabbed the phone book and looked up the local banker’s phone number and called him.
“Sure Frank, come on by and let’s see what you got,” he said to Frank on the phone.
The banker looked over the shredded money, while Frank and I looked on and said, “Frank, if you can tape the pieces of these bills together where we can see the serial numbers, we can make good on them.”
Frank stayed up all night putting what must have been like working a thousand-piece puzzle, because a few days later the banker had exchanged his taped-up money for some new bills.
The Louisiana 2024-25 squirrel season opens Saturday. It’s a pretty big event across the state, where more than 50,000 hunters will take to the woods to hunt bushy tails.
Statistics show that Louisiana’s small game hunters harvest upwards of 700,000 squirrels annually. Essentially, there is no shortage of squirrels in the state and there is no shortage of public land with excellent habitat to hunt them.
Fox and gray squirrels are the two predominant species of squirrels found throughout the state. A third is the Bachman’s fox squirrel that’s found in Southeast Louisiana; however, its numbers have been in decline for several decades due to habitat loss.
In St. Mary Parish, gray squirrels are king, but there are plenty of fox squirrels as well. In the coastal marsh, grays can be found along canal and bayou banks with dense understory cover, where there are nearby myrtle trees and various water and red oaks.
Fox squirrels can be found on oak ridges and woodlots with more open understory surrounded by sugar cane fields, where there is a higher elevation than the coastline.
Squirrels are perfect game animals for introducing young people to hunting. It’s an opportunity to put into practice lessons learned from hunter’s safety class and to get acquainted with real situations in the field that only come from experience.
Every squirrel season, I can’t help but remember that day in the woods over a half century ago, when Frank blasted $20 bills into the trees. I always get a good chuckle from that memory. That said, when I open the breech of my over and under shotgun, I always look down the barrel to make sure there isn’t some stash of money I tucked away and forgot about.
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.

Resilience Lab planning will begin this month, according to St. Mary Excel.
Local stakeholders (a diversified group of community leaders) will be joined by persons from Tulane’s Bywater Institute, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LSU, Nicholls State University, LUMCON, the Corps of Engineers, BTNEP, and more to address anticipated storm, water, and economic events of the local and regional area.
Resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare, and respond to significant multi-hazard threats, such as the recently experienced storm event, Hurricane Francine.
Political decisions which greatly affect our area, such as diverting 30% of the Mississippi River through the Atchafalaya River, make Resilience Lab planning more urgent. Rising tides, hurricane hits, riverine flooding, and increasing insurance rates reveal the area’s vulnerabilities. Our most recent hurricane, Francine, was a small hurricane by hurricane standards.
"This Water-Institute-led process, supported by coastal scientists and policy makers, will strengthen our community’s anticipation/preparation/response for coastal Atchafalaya residents and businesses," St. Mary Excel said.
Since 2019, St. Mary Excel has acted on recommendations from a community-funded Urban Land Institute economic development report entitled: "Building the Foundation for a New Economy Along the Atchafalaya River."
ULI brought in an outside team of experts to review data and interview residents for building a new economy along the Atchafalaya River. Since 2019, SME has met with government and philanthropic organizations to discuss and advance recommendations made by the outside team. One such recommendation for creating a diversified new economy was a resilience lab.
St. Mary Excel requested St. Mary Parish federal funds to advance the lab development. In 2021 a parish council public hearing was held allowing the parish to spend federal dollars. The St. Mary Parish Council voted for the parish to partner with the Water Institute (of the Gulf) to plan Morgan City’s resilience lab. See: https://www.stmarynow.com/news-local-business/public-comment-sought-pari...
Finally, in August 2024, the parish signed a contract with The Water Institute, an independent, non-profit organization that solves the complex problems of anticipated storm and water events in the coastal Morgan City area. Working together to identify problems and come up with solutions can be a blueprint of resilience for the entire state and country. In a resilient community, threats pose minimal damage to resident social well-being, the economy, the infrastructure, and flooding risks.
Get ready to be involved in storm proofing our community infrastructure! Refer to St. Mary Excel’s YouTube page and stmaryexcel.com for past meetings and future updates on resilience planning.
www.youtube.com/@st.maryexcel9075

The following are the radio dispatch logs from the Morgan City Police Department. To report unlawful or suspicious activity, call the Police Department at 985-380-4605.
Tuesday, Oct. 1
7:49 a.m. 1600 block of Chestnut; Welfare check.
8:43 a.m. 600 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard; Alarm.
9:41 a.m. 5000 block of Railroad Avenue; Medical.
9:46 a.m. 7200 block of La. 182; Suspicious person/vehicle.
9:49 a.m. 1100 block of Eighth Street; Suspicious person/vehicle.
10:11 a.m. 900 block of Spruce Street; Medical.
10:22 a.m. 700 block of Justa Street; Medical.
10:40 a.m. 6400 block of La. 182; Medical.
10:48 a.m. 7800 block of La. 182; Alarm.
10:51 a.m. 800 block of Front Street; Animal complaint.
11:18 a.m. 1200 block of Clothilde Street; Be on the lookout.
2:40 p.m. 1200 block of Brashear Avenue; Alarm.
2:41 p.m. 100 block of Poncio Street; Medical.
2:47 p.m. 700 block of Myrtle Street; Arrest.
4:17 p.m. 400 block of Fourth Street; Complaint.
4:29 p.m. 600 block of Grove Street; Complaint.
4:36 p.m. 1100 block of Brashear Avenue; Complaint.
4:48 p.m. 7800 block of La. 182; Complaint.
7:20 p.m. 500 block of Justa Street; Trespassing.
7:47 p.m. 1300 block of Railroad Avenue; Suspicious subject.
7:56 p.m. Federal Avenue/Oil Tank Alley; Assistance.
8:15 p.m. 1200 block of Brashear Avenue; Suspicious subject.
8:30 p.m. Morgan City area; Building checks.
8:34 p.m. 7000 block of La. 182; Suspicious subject.
8:46 p.m. 800 block of Fourth Street; Simple assault.
9:09 p.m. 7700 block of La. 182; Suspicious subject.
10:15 p.m. Brashear Avenue/Fourth Street; Suspicious subject.
10:39 p.m. 700 block of Onstead Street; Assistance.
11:09 p.m. Freret/Sixth streets; Suspicious subject.
11:37 p.m. Short Street area; Patrol request.
11:59 p.m. 2000 block of Keith Street; Trespassing.
Wednesday, Oct. 2
12:37 a.m. La. 182/Myrtle Street; Suspicious subject.
12:55 a.m. 300 block of Glenwood Street; Suspicious subject.
1:39 a.m. 1000 block of Eighth Street; Suspicious subject.
7:48 a.m. 100 block of Eleventh Street; Suspicious vehicle.
7:53 a.m. 2400 block of Tiger Drive; Juvenile problems.
8:48 a.m. 1100 block of Marguerite Street; Suspicious person.
9:29 a.m. 7800 block of La. 182; Complaint.
9:58 a.m. 400 block of Federal Avenue; Animal complaint.
10:38 a.m. 400 block of Federal Avenue; Complaint.
11:06 a.m. Victor II Boulevard; Assistance.
11:19 a.m. 1900 block of Victor II Boulevard; Stalled vehicle.
11:39 a.m. 600 block of Egle Street; Complaint.
12:12 p.m. 7200 block of La. 182; Medical.
12:23 p.m. 700 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard; Medical.
12:36 p.m. Second Street; Assistance.
12:58 p.m. Justa Street; Suspicious vehicle.
1:13 p.m. 700 block of Myrtle Street; Lost and found.
1:15 p.m. 1100 block of Marguerite Street; Assistance.
1:17 p.m. 1110 block of Brashear Avenue; Vehicle accident.
1:35 p.m. 100 block of Louisa Street; Animal complaint.
2:25 p.m. 600 block of General McArthur Street; Stalled vehicle.
4:34 p.m. 700 block of Myrtle Street; Runaway juvenile.
4:56 p.m. 6300 block of La. 182; Vehicle accident.
5:09 p.m. 1000 block of Second Street; Animal complaint.
5:22 p.m. Greenwood Street; Vehicle accident.
5:22 p.m. 1100 block of Marguerite Street; Vehicle accident.
6:22 p.m. 900 block of Seventh Street; Arrest.
7:02 p.m. 700 block of Justa Street; Crash.
7:15 p.m. 1900 block of Victor II Boulevard; Medical.
7:16 p.m. 1000 block of Eighth Street; Complaint.
8:08 p.m. 3000 block of Lesley Drive; Loud music.
9:33 p.m. Seventh/Marguerite streets; Arrest.
11:55 p.m. Sixth/General Hodges streets; Arrest
Thursday, Oct. 3
12:49 a.m. 1000 block of Marguerite Street; Alarm.