- Author: Brenda Dawson
Why do you love fruits and vegetables? Is it their bright colors? Their many shapes and varieties, the way they can makeover your plate with the seasons? The opportunity to taste local terroir in a very fresh bite of fruit or forkful of salad?
Is it more about the juiciness, crunchiness or succulence?
Or do you think more about nutrition? About vitamins, micronutrients and fiber, after decades of being encouraged to eat “5 A Day” to be healthy? Is it about that feeling of righteous virtue when you fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables — and know you're earning a gold star for
- Author: Brenda Dawson
Connecting 9,000 rural households in Guatemala with improved water management and climate-smart agriculture strategies is the goal of a new project led by a team at UC Davis, to ultimately increase food security and reduce poverty in Guatemala's Western Highlands.
Called MásRiego (“more irrigation”), the project aims to increase farmers' incomes and their use of climate-smart strategies, including drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting, reduced tillage, mulch use and diverse crop rotation. To enable farmers to adopt these new practices, the team will not only provide trainings but also build partnerships to increase farmers' access to needed micro-credit financing and irrigation...
- Author: Brenda Dawson
I'll admit that one of my favorite things to do on a hot day is to walk into an air-conditioned room. That burst of cool air in those first moments can be so refreshing.
It turns out I'm not alone — fruits and vegetables like to be cool on hot days too.
“Temperature management, or cold chain, is the single most important factor in maintaining postharvest quality in fruits and vegetables,” said Elizabeth Mitcham, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.
Controlling temperature helps regulate the aging process of a fruit, along with its water loss and microorganism growth. Storing fruits and vegetables at...
- Author: Brenda Dawson
You’ve probably heard it millions of times in your lifetime, but it bears repeating: Not everyone has enough, good food to eat.
To that end, the Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program at UC Davis builds global partnerships for fruit and vegetable research to improve livelihoods in developing countries.
Starting in September, those partnerships will include 14 graduate students from UC Davis, Cornell University, North Carolina State University and University of Hawaii at Manoa who will travel to work with smallholder farmers in developing countries.
Through Horticulture CRSP’s Trellis...
- Author: Brenda Dawson
What will be the new food frontier? An article in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Next Stop for Food Fanatics: Africa” predicts adventurous American palates may soon be craving sub-Saharan cuisines.
Besides making me hungry, reading this article made me think of some of the African vegetables that I’ve recently started to learn about. Yes, just as there are "Asian vegetables," there is also a wide category of "African leafy vegetables."
Have you heard of these?
- Nakati (Solanum...