Ag Metrics Group Leadership Team
The leadership team at Ag Metrics puts together academia, practical experience, state-of-the-art equipment, and facilities with scientific knowledge and field experience to bring you clear, well-documented and properly conducted experiments that will solve problems and optimize product development programs. Find out more about our team or better yet, call us or send us an e-mail to get acquainted.
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Read More About Frank
Frank Sances, the company’s founder and CEO, holds a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Biology from California Polytechnic University Pomona and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Entomology and Plant Physiology from the University of California, Riverside (1980). He has published dozens of peer-reviewed and popular scientific articles in the areas of Entomology, Acarology, Plant Physiology, Plant Pathology, and Agronomy. He is a consultant to agribusiness, grower cooperatives, academic institutions, and government. He remains active in several professional societies and has produced dozens of accredited and well attended seminars in Pest Management. He is active in the California Central Coast community and was elected to the local school board in 2000. He is a frequent invitational speaker and a vocal advocate for coastal environmental protection. Beginning with his upbringing in the UK and Spain, and later in California, he has always been interested in studying and preserving living systems. He promotes sustainability; agricultural, environmental, and societal. Frank’s crop experience and publications focus on strawberry agronomic best practices, leafy greens IPM, solanaceous crop production, and forensic agronomy. (Sances et.al. 1978-2020). Frank is widely travelled domestically and internationally, and rotates frequently among the CA, FL, and MI company research centers. |
Pacific Ag Research
Read more About Brad
Brad is a graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where he earned a Master’s Degree in Crop Science. Brad has both American and international agricultural experience. He worked in production agriculture in Central America and has been managing science studies at Pacific Ag Research since 2008. He started as a biologist in California and then relocated to Florida to start the Thonotosassa research station. He has been serving as Western Area Manager since 2017 and has since moved back to California. Brad has had two publications:
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Read more About Vishal
Vishal was born and raised on a farm and that is where his passion began. He decided to get a bachelor’s degree in Botany before getting a Master’s degree in Agrochemicals and Pest Management in India. After that, he pursued his Ph.D. in the same department, but this time specializing in Biological Pest Management in sugarcane and predatory spiders. He joined India’s biggest sugarcane research organization for 9 years before bringing his expertise to Pacific Ag Research. He won a Gold Medal at STAI (Sugarcane Technologists' Association of India) in 2005 and has published 84 national and international papers, journals, and seminars. His scholar link is : https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=m3NbY_cAAAAJ&hl=en Post Doctoral – University of California, MESA, Berkeley Memberships (Professional related to Agriculture):
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Read more About Oscar
Oscar Cuevas began his career in Agriculture in 1990 studying Agriculture and Plant Sciences for an A.S. Degree. He became the Operations Manager for a large Central Valley farming company and in 2000 he left to become a Research Technician for an agricultural products manufacturer. In this role, his focus was on establishing and evaluating field trials on vegetables, fruit, nuts, and most intensively on grapes against Phylloxera and nematodes. He travelled extensively to work with scientists, growers, and regulatory agents in an expansive product development program with promising soil fumigants. In 2003, he joined Pacific Ag Research as a Research Technician specializing in precision applications of foliar and soil applied products on a wide variety of crops. During this tenure at Pacific Ag Research, Oscar also worked in Florida, Arizona, and Michigan collaborating with company scientists as a Field Research Specialist. This involved research with all types of crop improvement products; from fertilizers and bio-stimulants, to foliar applications in row, field, and orchard crops. In 2009, Oscar became the Operations Manager with Pacific Ag Research for 7 company farms in California. In 2016, Oscar was given the Central Valley research station at Five Points, California. This 70-acre facility conducts field trials on warm weather crops such as melons, cotton, almonds, grapes, stone fruits, and most any other central valley crop. Oscar’s group now grows over 25 different crops at the Five Points Ranch and has even grown tobacco and many GMO and other transgenic crops at this site. Oscar supervises a team of advanced biologists and farm managers for on-station trials and works closely with commercial growers from the region to secure sites for off-station trials from Sacramento south to Bakersfield. |
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Read more About Megan
Megan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and a Masters in Biotechnology from Fresno State, and a PhD in Plant Pathology, Physiology and Weed Science from Virginia Tech. In her early career, she worked on environmental stress responses on Bt cotton field research at Dow AgroSciences, as well as field, lab and greenhouse trial work. In graduate school she received an NSF Fellowship for interdisciplinary study and worked to characterize RNA mobility between plants. Currently, she manages data processing for all our sites and summarizes reports across the United States with statistical analysis and professional presentations of results for a wide array of field and lab trials. She is a member of the American Phytopathology Association. |
Florida Ag Research
Read more About CHARLIE
Assistant Station Manager Charlie Boone is the interim Station Manager. Charlie oversees the facility's land and labor resources for our Central Florida farms. As an Environmental Horticulturist, Charlie is particularly well-suited to manage Florida Ag Research's extensive greenhouse, shadehouse, and microplot experimentation programs. Charlie was born into a nursery family business and brings a green thumb to our diverse experimental plantings. |
Read more About Balaji
Balaji Aglave is the Plant Pathology Director at Florida Ag Research. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Sciences and completed his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Agriculture Biotechnology and Plant Pathology from the NRCC, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India (2008). He has published over 100 peer-reviewed and popular scientific articles in the areas of Plant Pathology, Plant Biotechnology, Plant Virology and Nematology. He is author of one of the most popular Plant Pathology books in the world published by CRC press (Taylor and Francis group). The book, Handbook of Plant Disease Identification and Management has been sold in over 50 countries. He also served as an Associate editor, editorial board member and reviewer of dozens of peer reviewed journals. He has been an active member of the American Phytopathological Society and has served on multiple advisory boards and academic committees in different Universities. Dr. Aglave has been honored by several awards among the scientific community. He has received the “Young Scientist Award” and “Honorary fellow” Award from the Microbiologists Society and Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding and the Indian Phytopathology Society. Current research is focused on development of new techniques to conduct laboratory bioassays for nematodes, fungal, and bacterial plant diseases. His laboratory is also involved in developing innovative molecular and qPCR based methods of plant disease studies. The crops under study in his laboratories include strawberry, tomato, citrus, potato, cucurbits, pepper, green and dry beans, ornamental, and Turf. He is well known cricket player in Tampa Bay area and likes to spend time with kids and family. |
Read more About Alicia
Alicia Kelley is an entomologist at Florida Ag Research in Thonotosassa, FL. She started her entomology journey at Purdue University in 2006, assisting with research on leafhopper ecology and honeybee pathogens. After undergraduate studies, she moved to Baltimore, MD, where she conducted efficacy studies on urban pest insects. She first began studying Florida agriculture in 2014 when she came to Lake Alfred, FL for graduate school. During that time, she researched the Asian citrus psyllid and its role as a vector of the bacterium which causes citrus greening disease. She also conducted research in soil science as a part of an interdisciplinary doctorate program, focusing on nutrition and fertility benefits of composts in Florida soils. She also studied Xyleborus bispinatus, the ambrosia beetle vector of the fungal pathogen which causes Laurel wilt disease in avocado. Alicia completed Doctor of Plant Medicine program at the University of Florida in 2020. She also holds a master’s degree in entomology from the University of Florida, and a bachelor’s in entomology from Purdue University. |
Read more About Mark
Mark was raised in international distribution of citrus and cucurbits. He started his career at the University of Florida. From 2010-2012 he did poinsettia and ornamental research at UF and was involved in tropical foliage production in South Florida. In 2014, Mark was hired as Field Biologist at Florida Ag Research and was quickly promoted to Citrus Agronomist in 2015. By 2017, Mark was the Director of Agronomy and became Southeastern Area Manager of Pacific Ag Group. He returned to school, Agroecology University of Florida, where he received his master’s degree in Agronomy in 2020. His specialization includes agronomy, agroecology, sustainable agriculture, citrus physiology, and citrus greening. He holds a Florida Commercial Pesticide license 10, 3, 1D, 1A1, 1A2 and has certifications in Plant Parasitic Nematode Identification – Clemson and R Programming Language. Mark is a member of The American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, Soil Science Society of America and the Florida Fertilizer and Agrochemical Association. Mark has also been published in the following publications: Evaluation of Dominus ® (allylisothiocyanate) for tomato and bell pepper production. https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.17660%2FActaHortic.2020.1270.41 Looking at photosynthetic thermotolerance at a finer scale: a study on Citrus spp https://eco.confex.com/eco/2020/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/85216 The Known unknowns: Identifying effects of canopy and time scale on photosynthesis https://plantbiology2020.ipostersessions.com/?s=1A-09-AB-A7-84-A5-90-B8-C2-ED-8C-3F-2A-D5-44-51 |
Michigan Ag Research
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