Department news

The UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program is releasing five new strawberry varieties that resist the soilborne disease Fusarium wilt, while also offering high yields and improved fruit quality.

UC Eclipse, UC Golden Gate, UC Keystone, UC Monarch and UC Surfline will be available for sale to California nurseries from Foundation Plant Services later this month.

Taylor Swift: A cultural icon, controversial TicketMaster name, and now a remote phenotype monitoring machine. 

And a phenotype, for most of us who wouldn't know, is the science-y word for the physical traits that any living thing would have, such as green leaves or a fabulous voice - the physical expressions of the thing's genes mixed with its environmental influences.

Alison Berry helped coin the term “climate-ready trees” years ago. Now, the work of the professor emerita in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences has inspired a campus-wide experiment to test species that will continue to offer delicious shade as the climate grows hotter.

Ana Zepeda has received a $7,300-grant to help women in southern Mexico plant a community garden, intended to provide better nutrition for their children and keep them in school.

Zepeda developed the project as part of her doctoral dissertation in the lab of Amanda Crump, and she’ll start the work later this year. The grant, from the UC Davis Advancing Sustainable Development Goals program, furthers the university’s commitment to support development at home and around the world.

Plant breeders can help America re-orient our dominant system of single-crop agriculture toward a multi-crop landscape that is less costly to farmers, better for the environment, helps slow climate change and still yields a profit. But, those efforts are just one part of a complex system that also will require the buy-in of farmers themselves, supported by political will, new agricultural policies and the cooperation of scientists, seed companies, machinery and fertilizer manufacturers, insurance providers, banks and environmental groups.

The Taylor Lab will receive continued funding as part of a ground-breaking project to wean the United States’ aviation industry off petroleum-based fuel and help put the brakes on climate change. The U.S. Department of Energy announced the UC Davis project as part of a $590 million package over the next five years. The Taylor Lab’s goal: grow poplar trees that can be turned into sustainable, cost-effective jet fuel.

Folks in Davis know Brad Hanson as the Weed Doctor, always available during the annual UC Davis Picnic Day festivities to answer questions about what’s that growing in the yard. He's equally knowledgeable about solving farmers’ issues, and that commitment was recognized recently when he was named a fellow of the Western Society of Weed Science. The distinction is the society’s highest honor and recognizes people who have made significant contributions to the society and to the discipline of weed science.

Louise Ferguson organized a two-day visit to Washington, D.C., for fellows in the Leadership Academy of the American Society of Horticultural Science.

Mitchell Feldmann has been hired as an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and continues with the internationally prestigious UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program. His assistant professor position began this month.

China’s small-scale rice farmers hold the key to both feeding their nation and reducing nitrogen pollution by 2030, benefiting soil, water and air quality and slowing climate change. A research team, including Cameron Pittelkow of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, has published a strategy for how to do that, in the March 2 edition of Nature.