- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program is now accepting grant proposals for its 2024-25 Small Grants Program.
The program funds research projects, education and demonstration programs of research-based technologies and systems, and projects that support the development of sustainable community food systems. Proposals are due Jan. 9, 2024, at noon PST
UC SAREP will fund projects that fall within two priority areas:
Priority Area 1: Support California's farmers, ranchers and land stewards of all scales in piloting and transitioning to:
- environmentally regenerative approaches to producing crops and livestock (including but not limited to soil health, organic and agroecological practices, integrated pest management and crop diversification);
- pathways for realizing economic return from ecologically-sound crop management practices and fair labor practices;
- marketing and distribution strategies that support diversified, decentralized and locally based supply chains;
- strategies that promote producer-to-producer networking and/or producer-to-supply chain networking.
Priority Area 2: Support California's rural, urban and tribal communities in identifying and implementing strategies to:
- expand access to healthy, sustainably produced, culturally appropriate foods;
- ensure worker well-being across the food chain;
- minimize the community and environmental costs of food production and distribution;
- strengthen connections between consumers and producers;
- establish and strengthen producer-to-producer connections and producer-to-supply chain connections.
Eligible applicants include:
- farm or food system businesses operating in California;
- nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations operating in California;
- state and local government agencies, tribal governments;
- California public and private institutions of higher education.
Individual grants will be limited to a maximum of $10,000, with one applied research grant awarded up to $20,000. Proposals are requested for three types of projects:
- Planning grants
- Education and outreach grants
- Applied research grants
For more information and to apply, visit https://sarep.ucdavis.edu/grantsFY24-25.
- Author: Jodi Azulai
Building statistics resources & network at UC ANR
- The theory and application of basic statistical tests, including ANOVA, GLMs, mixed models and regression
- What to do when the normal assumptions for statistical tests have not been met
- Newer methods like mixed models and bootstrapping that take advantage of modern computing power (which may not have been available if you took undergraduate statistics class 25 years ago)
- What you need to know when designing experiments and planning data collection
- How to use the extremely popular and powerful statistical programming language R
Image by 200 Degrees from Pixabay
/span>- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine has launched Mondays with Mark, a monthly video series featuring Dean Mark Stetter discussing animal health.
In each episode, viewers get a taste of the incredible scope of what veterinarians do and see how they are incorporating new methods like predictive modeling and social media monitoring to keep domestic and wild creatures and humans safe – all while educating the next generation of veterinarians and scientists.
In the September episode, Stetter talked with Emmanuel Okello, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in dairy health in the Department of Population Health and Reproduction, about alternatives to antimicrobial drugs for cattle at the California Animal Health & Food Safety facility in Tulare.
He also talked with Maurice Pitesky, UC Cooperative Extension poultry specialist, about using modeling to assess risk of avian influenza from waterfowl to commercial and domestic poultry.
New videos come out on the second Monday of every month.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Community is Our Jam describes a food preservation project led by Amira Resnick, statewide director of community nutrition and health, that addresses the connection between food safety, food insecurity, food waste and health equity. This publication offers an in-depth look into the UC Master Food Preserver program, which aims to curb food waste and promote safe food storage, preparation and preservation methods to enhance food security in our communities.
In the past year, the UC Master Food Preservers made it a priority to reach communities that are often underrepresented in such programs. The MFP Program partnered with UC Master Gardener Program, the Expanded Food & Nutrition Education Program, 4-H and CalFresh Healthy Living, UC. The story narrates their journey and lessons learned in their efforts to promote equity and expand the program's reach.
A pullout version of the Community is Our Jam story includes on page 3 a note of dedication to Dorina Espinoza, UC Cooperative Extension youth, families and communities advisor for Humboldt and Del Norte counties, who recently passed away.
This 83-page yearbook publication – presented in a lively magazine format – shares how these grant projects improve human, environmental, and community health. It contains an overview of the NTAE program, which has supported nearly 75 Cooperative Extension projects and program teams over four years.
Using illustrated feature articles and Q&As, the publication shares innovative Cooperative Extension work across the U.S., from technology to composting to youth development to health and equity. In addition, the publication shares information about the vital work undertaken by the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy's Program Action Teams.
The yearbook was edited by Julie Halverson, Rose Hayden-Smith (emeritus UC Cooperative Extension advisor for digital communications in food systems) and Heather Martin of the Extension Foundation.
- Author: Mathew Burciaga, UC Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources
Schroth was born on June 25, 1933, and grew up in Southern California. While earning his bachelor's degree in botany from Pomona College, he also played football and was twice named to the All-Pacific Coast football team and later inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletics Hall of Fame. Schroth continued his education at UC Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He subsequently joined the College of Agriculture as a professor and plant pathologist with the Agricultural Experiment Station .
During his tenure at UC Berkeley, Schroth made major contributions to research on bacterial diseases, systematics and biocontrol. He published over 300 articles – half in major peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Phytopathology, and the Journal of Bacteriology – and found a way to cure crown gall, the tumor-like growths that certain bacterial pathogens cause on many trees, without harming healthy plant tissue. He also discovered the causes of several unknown diseases that affected papaya, sugar beets and oak trees, and showed that E. coli could multiply rapidly in vegetables including lettuce in moist, warm conditions.
He is best known for defining a type of soil bacteria that colonize root systems and enhance plant growth, spearheading worldwide research into so-called “plant growth promoting rhizobacteria.” Schroth also identified a separate soil-born bacterium capable of producing an antibiotic that plant roots could absorb as a result of that work. Further inquiries into soil bacteria discovered that certain strains of internal bacteria within plants could aggravate or reduce the extent of a disease.
Schroth's research often questioned concepts that were popular and widely accepted among academics. A paper he co-authored with graduate student David C. Sands ended the debate on whether there is a genetic difference between the typical soil bacterium Pseudomonas spp. and plant pathogenic pseudomonads. With the help of a medical microbiologist, Schroth reported that Pseudomonas aeruginosa – a drug-resistant bacterial pathogen associated with serious illnesses – could colonize both flowering plants and humans.
During his career, Schroth served as chair of the Department of Plant Pathology, associate dean of the College of Natural Resources, assistant director of the AES, and assistant to the vice president for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. A lifelong advocate for democratizing scientific knowledge, Schroth took a groundbreaking step in curating a comprehensive repository of images and data of the world's most critical bacterial plant disease, which remains freely accessible to all at plantdiseases.org.
To many of his students, Schroth is remembered as a dedicated educator and mentor. He established the "Graduate Excellence Award Fund" to support graduate students, the "Endowment for Early Career Professionals," and a student travel fund in the American Phytopathological Society. He and his wife Nancy also established the "Schroth Faces of the Future Symposium," highlighting research from the best and brightest early career professionals in plant pathology.
“Milt Schroth was a true leader in the field of plant bacteriology,” said Steven Lindow, a professor emeritus in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology. “He made many seminal contributions in plant disease diagnosis and control through his work, which often challenged the common dogma in the field.”
In addition to his impactful research in the field of plant pathology, Schroth made significant contributions to the college,” said David Ackerly, dean of Rausser College of Natural Resources. “We are thankful for his years of service through leadership in the college and in the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.”
Schroth was named a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society in 1975 and received the Berkeley Citation in 1996 for his service and contributions to the University.
He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Nancy; two sons, Eric and Steven; daughter Holly; and five grandchildren.