Agriculture

As some readers may know, I put out a quarterly newsletter (The New Foothill Rancher in Placer and Nevada Counties; The New Ranch Update in Sutter and Yuba Counties).

Technology holds tremendous promise for the California agricultural industry, however there are challenges that must be better understood and managed, wrote Damon Kitney in an article distributed to participants in an Oct. 2 technology conference in San Francisco.

UC ANR vice provost Mark Lagrimini visited the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, the Lindcove REC and the West Side REC in October as he continues to become familiarized with the diversity of resources in the Division.

People raising cattle, sheep, goats, poultry, swine, horses, llamas, alpacas, aquaculture species or other production-oriented animals in California who have experienced at least one wildfire on their property within the last 10 years are being asked to participate in a Fire Impact and Risk Evaluati...

"How do animals filter sensory information from their environment and integrate it with their past experience and their internal states to produce an appropriate behavioral response?" asks Fred Wolf, assistant professor at UC Merced.

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Quick! Can you think of published research that involves Skittles, magnolia leaves and mosquito eggs?

Note: This article first appeared in the October 2018 issue of The New Foothill Rancher and The New Ranch Update newsletters.

Last year, I was looking for opportunities to do something unique and satisfying, yet flexible for my work schedule as a Master Gardener. Dustin Blakey, our trusty Farm Advisor, found me the perfect solution, doing a research study on the cultivation of Devil's Claw, Proboscidea parvifolia.

Congratulations to community ecologist Rachel Vannette, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology: she was just selected as one of the 11 campus recipients of a Hellman Fellowship grant.