Agriculture

Cotton lint stickiness is a significant problem, worldwide. It is also an issue here in California, and a major focus of attention for cotton growers and ginners in the state. Sticky cotton loads can physically slow down the processing speeds of gins, even to the point of shut down.

Professor Rick Karban of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, author of the landmark book, Plant Sensing and Communication (University of Chicago Press), says that plants can eavesdrop, sense danger in the environment, and can distinguish friend from foe.

A Fulbright to France... Congratulations to UC Davis entomology professor Diane Ullman who has just a received Fulbright to France to research plant virus-insect interactions. She will be studying plant viruses and the insects that transmit them.

Scientist MaryAnn Wohlers Montague, a longtime UC Davis Department of Entomology staff research assistant who retired from UC Davis in 2001 after more than 33 years of service, died Thursday, July 5 in an automobile accident in Dixon. She was 77. Mrs.

If you're a plant and an insect is attacking you, you can communicate your stress to nearby plants as a way to alert them about potential danger--very similar to how animals communicate or respond to predators.

Nineteen teams of college students from top universities in the U.S., Canada and China will compete to build robots to mechanize farm work at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting in Detroit.

The University of California Desert Research and Extension Center (UC DREC) Farm Smart program recently hosted the 2nd annual USDA Food & AgScience Summer Program in June 2018.

Last month, I wrote about preparing our ranches for fire (Fire Season is Here: Is Your Ranch Ready?). Since that time, we've seen large fires in ranching country (including the County Fire in Yolo and Napa Counties, the Pawnee Fire in Lake County, and the Klamathon Fire in Siskiyou County).

Farmer Vang Thao has been managing a successful farm south of Fresno for nearly 30 years, producing a spectacular array of vegetables heirloom tomatoes, purple bell peppers, water spinach, bitter melon, Thai eggplant and dozens of others.

UC Davis entomology professor Diane Ullman is off to France in November but it's not a dream vacation. It's a dream opportunity: a Fulbright-funded scholarship to research plant virus-insect interactions. She will be studying plant viruses and the insects that transmit them.