- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Fifty-five years ago, Thomas J. Lipton Inc. funded a tea study at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, which is piquing the interest of scientists today. For 18 years, researchers pampered and coaxed 41 tea clones to determine whether tea plantations could be a lucrative alternative for San Joaquin Valley farmers.
Scientists of the time predicted a potential $25,000 economic value of future California tea plantings. Today, tea is a $3.8 billion business in the U.S. and UC Davis recently launched a Global Tea Initiative. Kearney submitted its yellowed research reports, correspondence and newspaper...
- Author: Rose Hayden-Smith
- Author: Teresa O'Connor
Sorghum might just be one of the most interesting foods you aren't yet eating. This ancient cereal crop is the fifth most important cereal crop in the world, according to the Whole Grains Council. It's a popular food crop in Africa and parts of Asia, yet in the United States, sorghum has been more commonly used for feeding livestock. But that situation may be poised to change, as more chefs and farmers reconsider this ancient food, which is gluten-free, high-fiber and rich in nutrients.
Drought tolerant crop
To learn more about sorghum, we started with one of the nation's leading experts on the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, Africa, in the early 1980s, Jeff Dahlberg was intrigued by sorghum, a staple food being cultivated by the country’s vast population of poor subsistence farmers.
“I was impressed with the fact that sorghum was so drought tolerant,” Dahlberg said. “They used no irrigation at all.”
More than 30 years later, Dahlberg, the director of the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, is still impressed with sorghum and believes it has potential to be a significant crop in California, where water is a serious concern.
Sorghum isn’t a new crop to the...