Getting to the root of a story

Nematodes are usually bad news for gardens. But not always - as I just learned doing this piece on how they are tiny superheroes in one aspect of agriculture. These wriggly microscopic worms can actually be used as a tool in fighting larger corn rootworms, which are currently a major scourge of the Corn Belt here in the U.S.

The challenge for this video is that I shot it - both the interview and the b-roll - before seeing the written story it would accompany, so I did my best to try to imagine all the visuals I might need to illustrate the science. This was backwards from the usual approach, so I was pretty pleased in the way it ended up coming together.

The Western Corn Rootworm has found ways to resist insecticides, crop rotation, and even develop resistance to genetic modifications in corn that had proven effective against them for almost a decade.

I also worked with senior art director Jeff Chase again to illustrate what happens in this epic battle beneath the soil’s surface. The result is this short explainer video that we added as a card to the main story.

How do nematodes come to the aid of corn plants that are under attack by Western Corn Rootworms? University of Delaware researcher Ivan Hiltpold explains!

Read more about this research in this UDaily article >>