PDIDL-Don't get caught with your plants down!

A Project by Jen Olson

Any and all donations are appreciated!

We use donations to purchase supplies and equipment for the lab. The most common items we need to purchase are "consumables". These are pipette tips, tubes, Petri dishes, reagents (chemicals), paper towels, absorbent laboratory pads and disposable gloves. We also have a lot of equipment such as centrifuges, pipettes, thermal cyclers, plate washer, vortexes, and more. Much of our equipment is aging and we do not have much money to purchase replacements.

Donation funds are used to purchase products that we share with county extension educators. For instance, we have provided each educator with a magnifying handlens, cell phone clip magnifier and digital microscope. This allows them to get a closer look at small arthropods or symptoms of disease (such as rust pustules on leaves). They can also take images with these devices so they can send them to PDIDL staff for examination.

Some funds are used to support travel to field days or other training events. Occasionally, we use these funds to purchase branded items such as bags to advertise our services and shirts for our staff.

We appreciate our donors! With your support, we can continue to provide our basic laboratory tests at no cost to Oklahoma growers (up to 10 per year). This allows us to better monitor for emerging pests and plant pathogens since we are much more likely to receive samples if there are no testing fees.

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$10

Loupe magnifier

We train county extension educators and master gardeners to use loupe magnifiers (also called a hand lens) to check for pest and disease problems. When you look through these devices, you can see small arthropods (aphids, mites) or fungal structures (rust pustules, fungal fruiting bodies). On Amazon, they are about $10 each, but we buy them in bulk so we get them for about $5 each. Some of our demo magnifiers are broken, so this would allow us to replace them. Also, we give them to extension educators for free when they attend our training events so we can make sure each agent has what they need to identify pests and plant diseases in the field. A $10 donation would cover the cost of two magnifiers.

$25

Digital microscope

We use these in training with county educators and are trying to provide one for each county extension office. They plug into either a cell phone or computer and allow educators to take images of very small things (ant faces, hairs on insects, etc.) They cost about $25 each.

$50

Pipette tips

Each case of pipette tips is about $50. We use pipettes for all types of laboratory tests (nucleic acid extraction, PCR, serology, preparing media) and they are single use only.

$100

PCR 0.2ml tubes

We use these tubes for one type of RNA extraction, for cDNA synthesis and for running PCR reactions. They are single use only, so we go through them quickly. Each case costs just under $100.

$250

Travel to provide training

The staff in our lab provide over 50 presentations a year and many of them are in-person, where we travel the training site. We usually rent a car from motor pool and pay a mileage rate. We go all the way to Guymon or Idabel sometimes so this donation would help get us there.

$1,000

Setting up a new PCR test

We are often asked to test for new pests and plant pathogens using PCR. Each time we do this, the start up cost is at least $1000. This is because we have to purchase a lot of reagents that are unique to the test (such as primers, probes and artificial positive controls). Then, we have to run through a lot of "practice" samples until we optimize and validate the test for use in our lab.

$1,500

Ornamentals workshop-Raleigh

In October 2026, there is a workshop in Raleigh, NC on ornamental pests and diseases. This is where diagnosticians learn about new pests and pathogens that may be headed our way. The cost will be about $1500 per person. We are hoping that we can send at least one diagnostician, but preferably all three.

$2,500

National meeting

Our diagnosticians would like to attend annual meetings of the Entomological Society of America and American Phytopathological Society. At these conferences, we learn about new and invasive pests and diseases, new methods for identifying these organisms and management strategies. Each national meeting costs about $2500 (or more) to attend.

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