Agricultural and Forestry Science

A Purdue University researcher is working to restore the American chestnut, an important wildlife tree and timber resource that dominated the landscape from Maine to Mississippi before it was driven to near-extinction by a fungal disease introduced about 100 years ago.

Doug Jacobs, assistant professor of forestry in the Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center at Purdue and director of the Indiana chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, studies how well American chestnut trees

Erosion of genetic diversity of crop plants has for several decades been making it necessary to develop initiatives for protecting these plant resources. One strategy is in-situ conservation of crop plants. The model currently advanced involves maintaining the varieties to be conserved isolated in reserves, protected from entry of other varieties from elsewhere and cultivated according to ancestral farming practices. Researchers from the IRD and the CIMMYT of Mexico (1) used work previously conducted

The world’s largest insect emergence of “Brood X” cicadas in May will result in some damage to fruit trees and prized yard trees and shrubs, but the large insects will not cause crippling harm to common farm crops, an Indiana University scientist says.

“There will be some crop damage, especially to orchards, but we don’t expect a disaster,” said IU Bloomington biologist Keith Clay, who recently received a three-year, $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to study Brood X. “Th

The Asian soybean aphid — native to China, Korea and Japan — has invaded the United States. It was identified as a distinctly new crop pest on the North American continent in 2000, after appearing simultaneously in 11 states.

Having no natural enemies here to control it, the aphid expanded its range by more than 300 kilometers a year for the next two years, showing up in soybean fields from the Dakotas to Virginia and causing crop losses of more than $2.2 billion.

How did it get

More than 250 million under-fives in the world are at risk from vitamin A deficiency. Such deficiency, currently the primary cause of avoidable blindness, provides the conditions for diseases to take hold, leading to high death rates among these young children. Several strategic options exist for combating these deficiencies: medicinal supplements, vitamin A enrichment of foods at industrial or community scale, or diet diversification founded on the use of locally available resources. The latter appr

Agricultural research by Boston College’s Harrison

Kevin G. Harrison, an assistant professor in Boston College’s Geology and Geophysics Department, has published new research on a farming technique that can both increase crop yields and reduce the release of carbons that develop into greenhouse gases. In the book Changing Land Use and Terrestrial Carbon Storage, Harrison and his co-authors, Michelle Segal (BC master’s degree in 2003) and Matthew Hoskins (BC bachelor’s degree in 2000)