Agriculture

Team AggieCulture recently completed an incredible journey to compete in the finals of the Urban Greenhouse Challenge, held by Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

A cartoon character that looks suspiciously like a Department of Plant Sciences professor leads an animated, online tutorial that recently won a 2022 Gold Award from the Association for Communication Excellence.

Forty scientists from 22 African nations started in-person classes with the African Plant Breeding Academy this spring in Nairobi. The six-week program is hosted by the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center. Rita Mumm, director and primary instructor for the academy, is leading the program.

Amelie Gaudin and Jeffrey Mitchell, faculty with the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, are part of a team honored for showing growers how wintertime cover crops can improve the soil while having little or no impact on groundwater use.

The team’s research was part of the University of California’s efforts to help growers thrive while complying with state groundwater regulations. Their work was honored with a Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Team by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Downy mildew makes those dry, tan-colored spots on spinach leaves -- a problem especially in organic cultivation. Growers have safety measures to ensure spinach is attractive, tasty and safe, but pathogens keep coming up with new ways to get around them, said Allen Van Deynze, associate director of the UC Davis Plant Breeding Center, directed by Charlie Brummer.

As common crop diseases such as downy mildew, Fusarium and corky root evolve, Richard Michelmore and members of his lab look for the genetic basis of new variations and for genes in lettuce that can resist them. They hope to breed those qualities into existing cultivars that already stand up to multiple diseases.

For the first time, an ecologist has shown that genetic variety within one species can affect the survival of other creatures in a larger food web. The discovery has profound implications for crop production and environmental restoration, researchers say.

The creativity that sparks when people meet in person filled the halls at UC Davis’ Department of Plant Sciences when an international team of scientists from Rothamsted Research, U.K., visited recently. Farm tours and presentations gave way to high-energy discussions of wheat genetics, soil management, grazing practices, climate change mitigations and opportunities for future collaboration.

People who turned to gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic did so to relieve stress, connect with others and grow their own food in hopes of avoiding the virus, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the University of California, Davis, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) and international partners.

If wheat leaves could shift gears faster between moments of shade and light, plants could make more grain, increasing the capacity of a plot of ground to feed people.

Researchers are seeking the genes that control how quickly wheat leaves gear up when hit by flecks of sunlight. They are fueled by evidence of a stronger link between photosynthesis and crop yield than scientists have thought, said Assistant Professor Tom Buckley of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences.