News

Doctoral student Marie Klein won the competition for best elevator talk describing her research at the recent annual meeting of the Center for Bioenergy Innovation, held in June in Asheville, N.C.

Scientists in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences have landed $2.1 million in federal grants to develop varieties of green beans, chile peppers and alfalfa that can offer farmers greater quality, lower production costs and better yield amid the growing heat and drought already happening with climate change.

The grants from the United States Department of Agriculture come through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.

Red, ripe cherries hide in small clusters amid long leaves in the UC Davis teaching orchard. They’re sweet, juicy, beautiful. In area grocery stores, such delights cost up to $8 a pound, but these would have gone to the birds. They must be harvested by hand, and at the price of labor, they’re too expensive to pick, said orchard manager Victor Serratos of the Department of Plant Sciences.

Venkatesan Sundaresan, a plant reproduction biologist who specializes in rice, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Sundaresan has a dual appointment as a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences.

Plant biologist Eduardo Blumwald was named a 2023 Innovator of the Year for his team's discovery of a way to greatly reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer needed to grow cereal crops such as rice. He was among several people recognized by UC Davis this week for developing innovative solutions that improve the lives of others and address important global needs.

This spring, Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Horticulture and for Markets, Risk and Resilience had the pleasure of co-hosting U.S. State Department Special Envoy for Global Food Security, Cary Fowler, for a two-day visit at the University of California, Davis.

Craft bakers love adding a little triticale to breads for its subtle blend of nutty and earthy flavors and its moist, slightly chewy texture. Farmers love the grain mainly for forage: It produces bigger yields with less water and fertilizer compared to wheat. Now, Joshua Hegarty and colleagues across the country will work on combining those qualities to create new varieties of triticale that are good for bread-baking at commercial scale, and still offer good value for growers.

How can nations avert planetary catastrophe? Gail Taylor, chair of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, has been asked to help write a United Nations report offering practical ways to put Earth on a path to sustainability by 2050.

The U.N. Environmental Program has brought together hundreds of scientists from around the world to examine current national policies and offer action plans for tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, energy, pollution, waste and land degradation. The report, Global Environment Outlook, will be released in 2026.

Amanda Crump and Marina Vergara, of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, have won a federal grant to use the cacao value chain as a point of both learning and international engagement for students here and at La Salle University in Bogotá, Colombia.

In 2017, Catelyn Bridges was 23, from Omaha, Neb., and starting graduate school at Texas A&M University. It was the first time in her life she saw someone like herself in a faculty position: a Black woman in the sciences.

“She really gave me the insight into what a faculty member could be on a research-teaching appointment,” Bridges recalled. “You can have a family and also do what you love and teach and mentor. That was the first insight I had that I wanted to be a professor.”

The Communists seized the family farm 70 miles outside Bucharest, Romania, and left Anca Barcu’s grandmother with her house and a half-acre of land. Then, they trucked off the family’s two white oxen – their tractor and transport. Barcu’s parents worked in the capital, but couldn’t afford to keep her with them, so from the age of 10 months, she grew up with her widowed grandmother in the country. At 3, the little girl pestered to have her own tiny flower garden until, finally, the family gave in.

The UC Davis African Plant Breeding Academy has been awarded $2 million to train scores of African scientists to advance crop breeding, increase production and improve nutrition for regional crops across the continent.

Sometimes, science has to happen when the opportunity presents itself. It can't wait for the scientist to develop a rigorous theoretical framework or apply for funding. And sometimes, that opportunity leads to unexpected and rich collaboration across disciplines.

Two Department of Plant Sciences faculty members, Valerie Eviner and Mary Cadenasso, contributed to this study in a suprising way that speaks to the collaboration possible at UC Davis. Read their story here.

Eduardo Blumwald sees them every year: the freshmen in his courses who wrestle with basic scientific concepts. The father of three knew he could help ‒ by providing relatively simple information about advanced research to high school teachers.