Using liquid nitrogen tanks to preserve semen from imperiled subspecies, WSU researchers plan to develop a sperm bank repository for honey bees.

Honey bees face a lot of challenges, according to Steve Sheppard, professor of entomology at WSU. Invasive mites can sap a brood’s strength and vector viruses. Pesticides can build up in the brood comb and gradually weaken the bees. And while the agricultural practice of monoculture provides a lot of food, it offers little of the nutritional variety that bees need. Some of these threats may weaken or kill a hive on their own, but a combination of factors is thought to be the cause of colony collapse disorder, in which the worker bees abruptly disappear, and the entire local population is doomed.

Concerns over honey bee safety in the United States are not new. In 1922, shortly after tracheal mites were identified as the likely cause of bee kills on England’s Isle of Wight, the United States restricted the importation of live honey bees.

“The ban was fairly effective,” said Susan Cobey, a WSU research associate working with Sheppard. “It prevented tracheal mites from reaching our shores until 1984.” Just a few years later a more serious threat, the Varroa mite, with the suitably ominous scientific name Varroa destructor, entered the United States. “The Varroa mite feeds on the developing bees, or brood, and also introduces bacteria and viruses that damage the health of the hive,” Cobey said.

“Varroa mites will normally kill a colony within two years without intervention by a beekeeper,” Sheppard explained. Intervention often comes in the form of chemical miticides, which are tolerated by bees in the short term, but cause harm over the long term as chemical residues accumulate in hives.

Creating Smarter, Stronger Bees

Plant and animal breeders often seek to overcome challenges by finding resistant specimens to selectively breed, incorporating the resistance into the overall population. However, U.S. entomologists must also contend with a limited honey bee gene pool because of the import ban.

“Honey bees, Apis mellifera, have 28 recognized subspecies–in Europe, Africa, and Asia, the general vicinity of where honey bees are thought to have originated,” said Sheppard. Evaluation of this extensive genetic diversity (such as for genes that may help honey bees adapt to differences in the New World) by U.S. bee breeders was effectively halted by this country’s import restrictions.

In an effort to find and utilize the needed genes, the USDA granted WSU a permit in 2008 to import honey bee semen for breeding purposes, subject to strict screening for viruses. To meet the various goals of beekeepers in different climate zones across the United States, Sheppard and his colleagues identified three subspecies for import.

Click to watch and learn more about challenges facing honey bees and WSU efforts to expand the gene pool.

Commercial beekeepers in southern states often want bees that reproduce quickly to provide maximum pollination of early-blooming crops like almonds. WSU plant breeders have been collecting semen from Italian honey bees for this trait. Beekeepers in colder climates want bees that are more reluctant to reproduce at the first warm spell in spring, as a cold snap could kill the vulnerable brood.

To find appropriate genetic stock, Sheppard and colleagues have been collecting semen from Carniolan bees of the eastern Alps and Caucasian bees from the mountains of Georgia (formerly part of the Soviet Union). The semen is imported by special permit and tested for viruses. Queen bees inseminated with approved semen can then be released to queen bee producers.

The question of how to store honey bee genetic material for years, as is already the practice with other animals of agricultural importance, has been solved with the help of Sheppard’s graduate student Brandon Hopkins. While semen extraction and insemination of honey bees is known technology, preservation of the semen has always been a challenge. But Hopkins discovered that liquid nitrogen maintains the semen viability for decades, helping preserve imperiled subspecies in a honey bee genetic repository.

Sheppard and Cobey discuss the challenges facing honey bees and the efforts to expand the U.S. honey bee gene pool in a video at http://youtu.be/Lm2kibnKYnU.

-Bob Hoffmann

Vegetable Grafting to Increase Nicaragua’s Crop Yields

Members of Nicaraguan farmer cooperatives can improve crop yields as a result of grafting techniques taught by Carol Miles (row 2, third from left) and Patti Kreider (row 2, second from right). Photo courtesy of Carol Miles.

Nicaraguan farmers may soon be able to double their produce yields thanks to a series of grafting workshops offered this spring by a WSU vegetable horticulture team. “If they are able to get rootstock, they now have the potential to overcome the primary production-limiting issues, which are disease and heat,” said Associate Professor Carol Miles, who, with Technical Assistant Patti Kreider, recently returned from a two-week trip focused on teaching vegetable grafting techniques to 88 Nicaraguan farmers at seven sites around that Central American country’s capital city.

The series of workshops held April 8-22 focused on women subsistence farmers, including many single mothers who rely on home-grown vegetables to feed their families. The mostly church-sponsored workshops were aimed at helping the women farmers improve production, increase nutrition, and create economic prosperity in their communities. “A conservative estimate would be that they now have the opportunity to increase their vegetable production by 50 percent,” Miles said, referring to the grafting techniques she and Kreider shared with the Nicaraguan farmers. “They’re very tech-savvy, even at the village level where they don’t have access to formal education.”

An Effective Pesticide Alternative

Grafting is the process of joining the scion of a market-desirable variety to the stem of a rootstock variety, which is in the same family as the scion but has disease resistance. Grafting is used to create a healthier, more vigorous, disease-resistant plant that is able to thrive under difficult growing conditions. According to Miles, grafting is more affordable, safe, and sustainable than using agricultural chemicals, especially in a country such as Nicaragua where chemicals are very expensive and often misused because of label misinterpretation.

“In our research program here at WSU Mount Vernon, we have developed simple grafting techniques for tomatoes that have 98 percent success rates and don’t require high technology,” said Miles. “So this information is easily transferable to a country like Nicaragua, where subsistence farmers are the primary agricultural producers.”

Collaborative Education Opportunities

Miles is optimistic about the potential for increasing Nicaraguan subsistence crop yields. She thinks that the culture of farming cooperatives there will likely result in the spread of grafting knowledge beyond those who participated in the workshops. “Cooperative groups are a real part of their social system,” she said. “They share knowledge and information and organize work parties. They are extremely hard working; everyone works from dawn until dusk. And they are very good farmers who readily receive and adopt new information.”

Miles said she was encouraged by the farmers’ generosity and warm welcome in light of the difficulties they face on a daily basis. “Just getting through life for some of these women is hard, but there was no anger or discontent,” she added. “They often have to carry in firewood and water, even in the towns. And although Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America, we found the people there to be wonderfully generous in spirit. Their reaction to our workshops was all positive. It was an amazing place to share our knowledge.”

The Florida International Volunteer Corps under its Nicaragua Professional Exchange Program sponsored the trip. The volunteer corps is funded through a Florida state appropriation to support missions to Central America and the Caribbean. Approximately 100 volunteer missions each year provide training and technical assistance to improve environmental, social, and economic conditions in the region.

For more about international research and agricultural development generated by WSU scientists, see http://ird.wsu.edu.

-Cathy McKenzie

A Lyon of a Cereal

Lyon barley, the latest and greatest variety out of WSU for eastern Washington.
Photo by Kim Binczewski.

After more than 22 years of breeding wheat for WSU, Steve Lyon never expected to make a name for himself in the barley field. But this spring’s release of “Lyon,” a new variety of barley christened by one of his colleagues in Pullman, is making a significant impact in the larger world of small grains research.

“As a graduate student in Stephen Jones’ winter wheat program, I worked with Steve Lyon on a daily basis,” said WSU barley breeder Kevin Murphy, who developed, and hence claimed naming rights, to the new variety. “There is no way I would have survived the harsh rigors of grad school without Steve’s help. He was always very positive, always sure things would work out fine–and he was almost always right. This is the best way I can think of to honor and thank him.”

Lyon found out about his barley namesake from Murphy earlier this spring when Murphy was leading a graduate student agriculture tour of classes at the WSU Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center (NWREC). Lyon has been stationed there for the past three years.
“My first reaction was shock and disbelief,” Lyon said. “I am extremely honored, yet it is very humbling because I feel there are others much more deserving of such a rare distinction.”

Gene Improvements

Lyon barley, formerly known as 05WA-316.K, is notable for its higher yield potential than other varieties grown in eastern Washington, plump kernels, and resistance to stem rust, a disease caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis. The fungus attacks the above-ground parts of the plant, and if this occurs a few weeks before harvest, an apparently healthy crop can be reduced to a black tangle of broken stems and shriveled grains.

Although foundation seed can often take years for researchers to develop, Lyon will be available just one year after its official year of release. “Lyon is a (livestock) feed barley that is very high yielding across many dryland environments in Washington State,” explained Murphy. “It does especially well in areas that receive 16-24 inches of rainfall and are prone to stem rust. This variety is particularly well adapted to the Palouse region.”

The Man Behind the Grain

Senior Scientific Assistant Steve Lyon, shown with wheat plants maturing in a WSU Mount Vernon greenhouse, has been involved in WSU small grains research for more than 22 years. Photo by Kim Binczewski.

The same could be said of Lyon, a former wheat farmer who raised his family in Colfax, just north of Pullman, before heading west to the Skagit Valley. “I’ve worked with Steve since 1995,” noted Stephen Jones, director of the Mount Vernon NWREC and head of its plant breeding department. “He came into my program after time he spent with Ed Donaldson, a former WSU wheat breeder. Steve learned from one of the best–and when you add his farming experience, it made it possible for him to run a field program immediately.

“Steve was instrumental in developing highly successful wheat, such as Bruehl, the most widely grown club wheat in the United States,” Jones continued. “Lyon barley is the epitome of the variety-naming tradition: It is a great honor to have a variety named after you. Steve’s dedication to the grain growers in this state for nearly three decades is well worth this recognition.”
For more information about WSU’s plant breeding program, visit http://plantbreeding.wsu.edu.

-Cathy McKenzie

Michael Lege, doctoral student in Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences.

Enhancing biological nitrogen fixation–a process in which plants take gaseous nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form that plants can utilize for growth–could provide a way to enhance Uganda’s soil fertility without expensive chemical inputs or further environmental degradation, according to WSU Ph.D. student Michael Lege.

Lege won a Borlaug Fellowship as part of his doctoral program in Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences at WSU to promote food security and economic growth in developing countries. Come July, he’ll spend a year in Uganda studying distribution channels of bean seeds and agricultural information about the country’s dietary staple. He’ll be interviewing farmers and taking soils samples from bean fields, following up on research from his Master’s degree.

“Two of the barriers I found were poor access to both seed and information about farming technologies,” Lege said. In this coming project he will explore two basic types of seed distribution systems and identify differences in the movement of seeds and information, as well as the related sustainability effects.

Michael Lege volunteers on an agricultural project in Africa.

Focusing on agriculture to improve conditions in Uganda has become a priority because it accounts for the largest part of the country’s economy. The majority of households are dependent on subsistence farming for food and low to no-input maize farming has depleted soils of phosphorous and nitrogen needed for crop growth, Lege reported.

“As better bean varieties and treatments for nitrogen fixation are developed, we need to understand more than just the seeds and inoculants if we intend to have a sustainable impact,” Lege said. “We need to understand the distribution systems that will actually make the materials and information available to farmers, as well as the social and ecological contexts into which the technology is being disseminated.”

To learn more about WSU’s International Research and Development programs in agriculture, visit http://ird.wsu.edu.

-Rachel Webber

Learn How to Grow Edible Mushrooms

During a recent mushroom cultivation workshop, Jim Freed of WSU’s Forestry program demonstrated ways to innoculate small logs with edible mushroom spawn. Photo by Kate Halstead.

Whether you have a tiny backyard or hundreds of acres, growing gourmet mushrooms can be a satisfying and tasty venture. In the Pacific Northwest, there are about a dozen species, including oyster, shiitake, and maiitake, which can be grown using many of our native tree species. However, ensuring success with this type of backyard farming involves developing a good understanding of the process and knowledge of the techniques involved.

If you live on the west side of Washington or plan to be in Snohomish County on Saturday, June 1, you’re in luck: from 10 am to 2:30 pm at Ed’s Apples in the small town of Sultan, you will have the opportunity to learn about the different types of edible mushrooms that can be grown in this area and how you can start your own “fungi farm.”

To best convey the process of cultivating local mushrooms, the workshop will cover the different species that grow well in the Pacific Northwest climate and forests, along with a discussion of several growing media such as log, stump, and sawdust culture. You can also look forward to demonstrations on how to prepare and inoculate logs, harvest and care procedures to encourage optimum production, and expedited indoor production of oyster mushrooms using low-tech processing and cultivation with pasteurized wheat straw. In addition, you will receive a packet of shiitake plugs along with complete growing instructions.

Instructor Jim Gouin is a staff mycologist and consultant with Fungi Perfecti, an Olympia-based company that specializes in supplying home and commercial mushroom growers with everything needed for success. Jim also has a forestry background and teaches forest fungi cultivation workshops throughout North America.

The cost is $65 per person, which includes the workshop, handouts, a catered box lunch, and 100 shiitake plugs to take home. Space is limited, so your paid registration must be received by May 30 to ensure a spot. You have the option to register online at http://bit.ly/12srGg8 or download and complete the form at http://bit.ly/11Yrntq and mail it with your check. For registration information, contact Karie Christensen at 425-357-6039 or christensen4@wsu.edu. The address is 13420 339th Ave SE, Sultan, Washington.

For more information on the mushroom cultivation course, contact Andrew Corbin at corbina@wsu.edu or 425-357-6012. For more information on WSU Extension and other workshops, see http://ext.wsu.edu.

-Kate Halstead

Newly Updated Plant Disease, Weed, and Insect Management Handbooks Now Available

For the latest research-based guidelines for managing plant diseases, weeds, and insect pests in the Pacific Northwest, look no further than the WSU Extension online store at http://bit.ly/13BL0Hj.

The three spring 2013 revisions of the comprehensive guides, which were developed by the Extension Services of Washington State University, Oregon State University, and the University of Idaho, are available in print for $60 each. Up to 50 specialists contributed to the handbooks, which were peer-reviewed and professionally edited.
The companion websites for all three guides include photos and links to related content. Users can print individual sections on specific plant diseases, weed management for included crops, and insect pests associated with both commercial and home settings.

Spring 2013 Improvements

Insect (MISC0047). This handbook has a renovated companion website featuring responsive design, making it easy to navigate on your smartphone or other mobile device. It also allows users to share content via social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Timely alerts, such as information about new pests or regulations, will be posted as needed throughout the year.

Plant Disease (MISC0048). Thirty new sections were added, including 12 new fungicides, and another 45 sections were rewritten. Check back for more updates in September.

Weed (MISC0049). New content was added for sections on cereal grain crops, forestry, orchards, vineyards, vegetables, pasture, and many more. Check back for updates in September and December.

-Dora Rollins

Citrus greening prevents fruits from ripening and threatens the industry. Photo courtesy the U.S.D.A.

If left unaddressed, the entire U.S. citrus industry could be wiped out. In addition, as Florida Senator Bill Nelson said, “We’ll end up paying $5 for an orange-–and it’ll be one imported from someplace else.”A pandemic is destroying orange groves in Florida. The disease, called citrus greening, is also spreading to citrus groves in Texas and California, threatening an industry valued at more than $3 billion per year.

Citrus greening disease is spread by bacteria that block trees’ nutrient and water chann

els and prevent fruit from ripening. “It’s like choking the tree from the inside out,” said David Gang, a WSU molecular biologist and biochemist who is collaborating with a large, interdisciplinary team to combat the disease.

The Culprit

The bacteria are hosted and spread by an insect related to aphids and whiteflies called the Asian citrus psyllid (pronounced sill-id). The disease is thought to have spread from China in the early 2000s. Citrus greening has already destroyed the citrus industry in Jamaica.

The invasive psyllids pierce the citrus trees with a needle-like mouthpiece, similar to the way a malaria-transmitting mosquito infects its victims. As it feeds on the tree’s water and nutrients, the psyllid injects the disease-causing bacteria, which then spreads through the rest of the plant.

To combat this aggressive disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has funded a multifaceted, multi-institutional, multi-state initiative involving more than 40 researchers. These scientists are looking at the disease’s ecological consequences, the biology of citrus trees, the Asian citrus psyllid, and the mechanism(s) by which the insect transmits the greening disease bacteria.

Pesticides have been of some use in controlling the psyllids, but researchers are concerned the insects will develop resistance. And biocontrols-–siccing good bugs to prey on the bad ones-–have proven ineffective because the psyllids simply outbreed their predators.

That’s where David Gang enters the scene.

Altering the Insect

“Getting good quality data from this kind of approach is actually quite challenging,” Gang said. “But once you learn how to do it, the procedure is relatively routine; because of that, we were invited to be part of this project.”Gang’s lab in the WSU Institute of Biological Chemistry specializes in using new technologies like genomics and proteomics to study plant defense mechanisms, particularly the chemical compounds that help plants survive and combat pathogens and pests. In the USDA-funded project, Gang and his colleagues isolate and sequence the genes being expressed in the psyllids as they feed on citrus plants.

Once Gang and his colleagues obtain gene expression data, they make it available in a database for their collaborators to use. “We hope this data can be used to develop a “nupsyllid” (as in “new-psyllid”) that will be unable to transmit or harbor the citrus greening bacteria,” Gang said.

The researchers are also turning to genetic engineering as a last resort weapon against citrus greening: “We can shut off genes that are involved in transmission of the bacterium,” said Gang. Since citrus plants have no inherent defense and consumers reject genetically engineered food, the research team is focused on modifying the disease-transmitting pest. Gang said that nupsyllids are expected to outcompete and eventually replace the disease-spreading psyllids because citrus greening disease infects and weakens its insect host.

Avoiding Devastating Damage

Ensuring the economic and horticultural health and sustainability of the U.S. citrus industry is the goal of the USDA-funded five-year project. “The investment the USDA is putting into this project is really very small compared to the economic damage already caused by this disease and is trivial compared to the potential damage that could be caused down the road,” Gang said. “It’s one of those things where we don’t really have a choice. If we don’t do something, all of the citrus trees in the United States will likely be dead within 10-20 years.”

That’s why he and his colleagues are seeking a workable genetic solution to the citrus greening challenge, Gang said: “We’re kind of proud of the fact that it’s difficult to do and we’re good at it.”

Learn more about the work in David Gang’s lab at http://lcme.wsu.edu/people.php.

-Chelsea Pickett

Bringing Home Scotland Superfruit Study Findings

Raspberries are one of the “superfruits” being studied this summer by WSU Mount Vernon weed scientist Tim Miller and his colleagues in Scotland. Photo by Tim Miller, WSU.

When WSU weed scientist Tim Miller first teamed up with fruit researchers in the United Kingdom last summer, he was hoping to learn how weeds affect the quality and nutritional value of raspberries. This May 14-23, he is traveling back to the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie, Scotland, for a second year of berry trials to refine his findings leading toward the production of a higher-quality “superfruit” in the Pacific Northwest

Miller developed the series of trial projects in order to find out whether weeds–or the herbicides used to control them–produce berries with less of the vitamin C and other antioxidants and nutrients which make the fruit so healthful and appealing to consumers. His research complements that of UK researchers who have perfected the method for measuring the amounts of various compounds in raspberry and black currant, the two so-called superfruits which contain large amounts of antioxidants.When WSU weed scientist Tim Miller first teamed up with fruit researchers in the United Kingdom last summer, he was hoping to learn how weeds affect the quality and nutritional value of raspberries. This May 14-23, he is traveling back to the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie, Scotland, for a second year of berry trials to refine his findings leading toward the production of a higher-quality “superfruit” in the Pacific Northwest.

Antioxidants are vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that protect and repair cells from damage caused by free radicals that can impair the body’s immune system. Superfuits are believed to help fight off that damage by boosting the immune system, enabling the body to better ward off colds, flu, and other infections.

Collaborative Compatibility

“Since we both grow berries, it was a natural thing for a Pacific Northwest weed scientist and the small fruit breeders in the United Kingdom to team up and see what some of the factors are that affect berry quality,” said Miller. His initial Scottish berry trial results linked the presence of some hard-to-control weeds like broadleaf dock, fireweed, and quackgrass to such negative impacts on berries as lower amounts of sugar and vitamin C, as well as reduced color and sweetness. Miller hopes this year’s trials will provide even more useful information for berry growers and consumers across the globe. For raspberries, one common factor may be how weeds are managed. “Producers in the Pacific Northwest, as in Scotland, use herbicides to manage cane growth and control weeds,” Miller said. Their research may determine–for the first time–whether weed control also influences berry quality, sugar content, color, and antioxidant levels.

“A better understanding of the potential effects of management decisions will give growers one more tool to improve not only the yield of their fruit, but also how good that fruit is for consumers,” Miller said. “Whenever you test living plants in the real world, you can expect some variation in the results from year to year. If berry quality factors respond the same way two years in a row, it’s a good indication that you are looking at a true response rather than simply a short-term reaction to temperature or some other environmental factor.”

Read more about Tim Miller’s work with berries at http://bit.ly/130LZnE.

-Brian Clark and Cathy McKenzie

Developing a Plan to Feed Future Generations

Olympia native and WSU undergraduate Sarah Brewer describes herself as a “plant-aholic” who first got her hands dirty in a backyard greenhouse where she and her stepfather grew 16 varieties of tomatoes.

Sarah Brewer plans on researching cotton seed as a consumable.

Brewer’s high school teacher helped ignite her interest in biology and inspired a curiosity for how plants work at a basic level. He also introduced her to Norman Lewis, WSU Regents Professor, professor of molecular plant sciences and chemistry, and director of the Institute of Biological Chemistry (IBC).

Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, Brewer was selected to be a high school intern in Lewis’ IBC lab the summer between her junior and senior years. She returned to the lab her first day on the WSU campus as a freshman and has been there ever since.

“Plants are important to food, medicine, and fibers, so there are many directions my work could go,” Brewer said. “It’s difficult to know how to make oneself most useful as a plant scientist. I think about societies facing food shortages and other challenges in coming years, plus how climate change is impacting the entire world. I think I’d like to create new cultivars of plants for the future that would be drought-resistant.”

Brewer is also looking into research that could lead to a new protein-rich human and animal consumable: cotton seed. While the seeds are 22% protein, some of the molecules in them are toxic to animals with a single-compartment stomach, such as humans or swine.

Brewer’s experimental strategy is to reveal how cotton plants produce gossypol, which is the problematic toxic compound that also has desirable qualities, including anticancer and plant pathogen defense mechanisms. She hopes to establish the biochemical and molecular reasons for these effects so the positive can be optimized and the negative eliminated. Conducted over the coming year, she will also use the project for her Honors College thesis.

Broad Focus

Now a junior, Brewer has two majors: one in agricultural biotechnology and another in biochemistry in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Ag biotech emphasizes the development and application of new technology to ensure a safe and abundant food and fiber supply. It aligns perfectly with Brewer’s career goals to earn a Ph.D. in plant biology, become a university professor who inspires undergraduates to pursue science careers, and conduct interdisciplinary research in molecular plant sciences.

Brewer recently received national awards from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program to support her quest to make the world a better place. She hopes to qualify next for a Marshall scholarship that would allow her to study in the United Kingdom. Learn more about the Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education program at http://bit.ly/123U5vf.

-Beverly Makhani

Kulvinder Gill is the Vogel Endowed Chair for Wheat Breeding and Genetics at WSU.

WSU will lead a $16.2 million international effort to develop wheat varieties that can tolerate the high temperatures found in most of the world’s growing regions—temperatures that are likely to increase with global warming. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is partnering with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Directorate of Wheat Research (DWR) to support the research, which is part of the US government’s global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future.

Researchers aim to have their first set of “climate-resilient” wheat varieties in five years. The research will focus on the North Indian River Plain, which is home to nearly one billion people that must deal with limited water and rising temperatures, said Kulvinder Gill, project director and the Vogel Endowed Chair for Wheat Breeding and Genetics. “The Climate Resilient Wheat project will benefit all wheat-growing regions of the world,” he said, “as heat during certain stages of the plant’s development has been a pervasive issue.”

The researchers will combine conventional and newly developed breeding tools to identify genes or sets of genes associated with heat tolerance, a rarely studied trait that significantly impacts yields. A wheat plant’s productivity falls off dramatically when temperatures rise above 82 degrees Fahrenheit and the effects are particularly dramatic in the flowering stage when the plant sets the seed that is ultimately harvested and milled for food.

Every rise of just a couple of degrees above 82 in the flowering stage cuts yields by 3 to 4 percent. Some parts of the North Indian River Plain can reach 95 degrees during flowering, said Gill, who worked in the withering heat of his family’s area farm as a child.

The project will continue efforts by Gill and colleagues to help wheat plants deal with environmental stresses. He is currently in the latter stages of a three-year $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the Gates Foundation to develop drought-tolerant “desert wheat.”

Support from USAID will leverage more than $11 million from other partners for research at WSU and project-related activities in India by researchers from both public and private institutions in the United States and India. As many as 35 Ph.D. students and 30 post-doctoral or research fellows will also be involved.

-Eric Sorensen

For more information about the research goals of Gilll and his collaborators, including their quest to understand the wheat genome and how to manipulate it for crop improvement, please visit http://vogelchair.wsu.edu/.

WSU Research Cultivates Seeds of Opportunity for PNW Farmers

Kevin Murphy is leading an effort to develop new varieties of quinoa to meet a growing domestic deman. Photo by Brian Clark, WSU.

The grain-like seed crop quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) is expanding in popularity and very likely will soon be grown more widely in the Pacific Northwest thanks to a $1.6 million USDA grant recently awarded to a team of WSU researchers.

The tiny seeds of Chenopodium quinoa (a relative to beets and Swiss chard) are in high demand as a nutritious, protein-rich, gluten-free alternative to rice and other grains. Dr. Kevin Murphy, lead scientist and plant breeder for the WSU research project, said that current and growing demand in the United States outweighs production from traditional quinoa-producing countries like Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru. “Demand is driving distributors, wholesalers, and retailers to seek out domestic, reliable sources of quinoa, and this spells opportunity for Pacific Northwest farmers,” Murphy said.

Organic farmers and quinoa distributors and retailers alike are expected to benefit from the research. “Consumers want organic and local sources of quinoa,” Murphy said. The project aims to identify the best varieties suited for organic production in the region, develop best management practices for production, and assess market demand and future marketing options for quinoa growers and sellers.

Varieties of quinoa grow in plots at WSU’s organic farm in Pullman. Photo by Brian Clark, WSU.

The research project ties into a larger global focus on the potential of this nutritious crop. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has declared 2013 the International Year of Quinoa. According to International Year of Quinoa website, the goal of the campaign is to “focus world attention on the role that quinoa´s biodiversity and nutritional value plays in providing food security and nutrition and the eradication of poverty.”

Expanding Quinoa’s Rewards

The research project ties into a larger global focus on the potential of this nutritious crop. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has declared 2013 the International Year of Quinoa. According to the website dedicated to spreading the word about quinoa, the goal is to “focus world attention on the role that quinoa´s biodiversity and nutritional value plays in providing food security, nutrition, and the eradication of poverty.”

Quinoa’s potential both to increase options for regional farmers and locavores as well as address global food security lies in its adaptability to marginal growing conditions. “Compared to other crops, quinoa has excellent drought and salinity tolerance,” explained Murphy. “Quinoa can adapt to many environmental and climatic conditions. It thrives in a wide range of soil pH, and tolerates light frost and late rains.” One area that needs improvement is developing varieties with greater heat tolerance. So far, Murphy’s variety trials indicate that varieties bred from Chilean germplasm are best adapted to high maximum temperatures of the region.

WSU will host an International Quinoa Research Symposium August 12-14 as part of the International Year of Quinoa marketing effort. Researchers from around the world will gather in Pullman to learn about current research, including from demonstrations of variety and breeding field trials.

-Sylvia Kantor

For more information about the upcoming International Quinoa Research Symposium hosted by WSU, please visithttp://bit.ly/XRsMCM.

Undergrad Researcher Earns Trip to National Conference

Pablo Corredor taking in the tourist sites in D.C. while attending the ERN Conference.

When he found out his undergraduate research qualified him for the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), WSU food science undergraduate Pablo Corredor submitted a poster in hopes of sharing his research on the Bartlett pear. His hopes were exceeded when the poster was not only chosen to compete at the national conference, but he also earned a travel award to attend the conference from February 29 to March 3 in Washington, DC. Corredor’s poster was chosen to compete at the national conference and he earned a travel award to attend the conference in Washington, D.C.

An unexpected element of the experience was the personal growth and inspiration that came with the trip. “Thanks to this conference, I was able to make national and international connections with other students and professors,” Corredor said. “Personally, the most important part of this conference was the inspiration and motivation I gained to continue working on doing research in STEM.”

Corredor’s research project focused on establishing biotechnological tools and strategies for the long-term improvement of the European (Bartlett) pear. The pear market in the United States is economically stagnant and faces challenges to its long-term growth and stability. Corredor’s work on deployment of micropropagation aims to confront those challenges. Micropropagation involves growing plant cells in a tissue culturing medium to produce large numbers of disease-free plants. He is using this process to develop tools to improve biotechnological techniques.

Corredor’s research was done through WSU’s Department of Horticulture under the direction of Associate Professor and horticulture scientist Amit Dhingra. Dhingra is a genomicist who works to improve Washington fruit crops. Corredor also worked closely with Christopher Handrickson, who is a graduate research assistant in Dhingra’s lab, as well as Nathan Tarlyn, horticultural biotechnology manager. Because he was the only WSU student in attendance at the 2013 ERN conference, Corredor set a goal to bring as many students as possible from WSU to next year’s meeting in Chicago. “I would like to encourage anyone who is doing undergraduate or graduate research to apply to the annual ERN conference. This experience inspired me to continue working hard on my undergraduate research project and bring more people to participate in events like this.”

-Angela Lenssen

Online Training Shows Orchardists How to Propagate Dessert and Cider Apples with Chip Bud Grafting

Learn apple chip bud grafting with WSU online training.

Many orchardists use grafting to optimize their apple quantities and varieties. To help growers of dessert and cider apples successfully propagate trees, WSU has produced an online training that demonstrates the process of chip bud grafting. This propagation method is relatively fast and mechanically easy, but does require proper materials and techniques. Tom Thornton, an orchardist with more than 30 years of experience, helped craft the comprehensive training.

A small segment of the training can be viewed on YouTube at http://bit.ly/12cW92r. The full 20-minute training is available for $35 athttp://bit.ly/16u321V.

Top 5 Reasons to Check Out Home Vegetable Gardening in Washington

1. It was A) written by a vegetable production scientist who trains Master Gardeners and has 20 years of experience growing vegetables in Washington, B) peer reviewed, and C) professionally edited and designed.
2. It provides growing instructions for more than 70 vegetables.
3. It clarifies which vegetables you should prioritize growing if you want to experience significantly superior quality and value compared to the typical grocery store fare.
4. It includes color maps that distinguish Washington growing zones by temperature and date.
5. It’s free!

Grab your copy from the WSU Extension Online Bookstore: http://bit.ly/10kQ0oE.

Sudden Oak Death (SOD) has killed millions of oak trees in California, but since receiving its common name in 1995, SOD has also been found infecting flowers in Washington State nurseries. The latest tally for the cost of the Washington campaign to contain Phytophthora ramorum, the fungus-like organism that causes SOD, is more than $400,000 in destroyed nursery plants over two years. These losses, coupled with additional measures such as quarantine, labor, and disposal, have driven some Washington nurseries out of business.

Oak twig showing “Sudden Oak Death” caused by Phytophthora ramorum. Photo: Joseph O’Brien, USDA Forest Service.

Contaminated nursery stock is only one potential source of this devastating disease. P. ramorum has also infested waterways in a number of states, including the Sammamish River in King County, Washington. Forty-six entities have rights to use this water to irrigate nearly 2,800 acres that span nurseries, parks, farms, and church properties.

Because P. ramorum has not been detected on plants along the Sammamish River, scientists presume that the organism needs to reach a certain concentration in the water to cause disease. Gary Chastagner, a WSU researcher based at the WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center who specializes in disease management of ornamental plants, likens P. ramorum infection to the common cold. “People are constantly exposed to the cold virus, but usually don’t fall ill. However, under the right conditions, when virus levels are high enough, we get laid low.”

Targeting Research at Expanding Problem

As P. ramorum only became established in the United States in the mid-1990s, relatively little is known about how it spreads in waterways. To find out how to stop further invasions, Chastagner has received a $30,000 grant from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that will allow investigation of P. ramorum levels in irrigation water that trigger infection in rhododendron, camellia, and viburnum.

Because of the potential risks, Chastagner and research associate Marianne Elliott will conduct the SOD study at the National Ornamentals Research Site at Dominican University in California (NORS-DUC), the only authorized facility in the United States for this purpose. At NORS-DUC, they will apply overhead irrigation to plants using water infested with varying levels of P. ramorum. Keeping water on the plant surfaces for long periods will produce conditions favorable to the disease and potentially enable the researchers to determine its tipping point.

-Bob Hoffmann

Innovative New Food Science Degree to Meet Growing Industry Demand

Food scientists evaluate the quality of test bread loaves made with a blend of durum and spring wheats. Photo by Scott Bauer, USDA ARS.

This fall WSU and the University of Idaho will launch a new online Master of Science in Agriculture program that integrates food science and management. The new degree is the first in the nation to combine food science with business management courses, giving graduates an edge in the industry and helping to meet growing demand.

Dr. Jeff Culbertson, director of the new online Food Science and Management program, notes that every year there are 30-40% more food science jobs than qualified candidates in the United States. “The industry is growing at a phenomenal rate. In 1990, the average number of products on grocery store shelves was 5,000. Today that number is 25,000. The number of products has just skyrocketed, and behind every product is a group of trained people who developed each one.”

The unique degree offers plenty of core science, but also executive management courses, budget development, human resource management, and other challenges students will likely encounter on the job. “This M.S. in Ag opens the door to enhancing earning potential-–it could triple or even quadruple,” Culbertson said. “Students employed in the food industry with a B.S. in one of the sciences often plateau in their careers fairly quickly, say in 3-5 years. A master’s opens the door to career advancement,” including for those who are not currently employed in the food industry.

Several courses in the groundbreaking Food Science and Management program focus on environmental sustainability and toxicology because the food and beverage industry now recognizes opportunities for turning waste into power sources such as steam, electricity, and heat. For example, Budweiser produces a lot of spent grain which, in the past, they sold as cattle feed. Now they ferment that waste grain to produce fuel that is in turn used to generate energy. One plant in Columbus, Ohio, is already 90 percent self-sufficient, according to Culbertson.

Culbertson and his colleagues have a track record for teaching effective online courses. After 18 years, the “program is bound to be a good experience because we know what we’re doing,” Culbertson said. His colleague, Greg Möller, a UI professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology, teaches several of the online food science and management courses and is nationally recognized for his film-based course in global sustainability, which is part of the new curriculum. Both are award-winning educators.

Learn more about the new program, including how to apply, by visiting http://msag.wsu.edu/food-science/.

-Sylvia Kantor

Race Cockroaches and More at WSU Insect Expo April 20

A child holds a hissing cockroach at a previous WSU Insect Expo.

Local children and their parents can learn how fast a cockroach can run, pet a tarantula, and have more fun with arthropods at the April 20 Insect Expo, sponsored by the WSU Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA). The event, set from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., will take place in Ensminger Pavilion.

Insect-themed craft projects, face painting, and live insect displays are also on the agenda, all geared toward helping Palouse-area families discover more about the world of insects.

“I personally very much enjoy interacting with the children and their parents in the live insect exhibits,” said Rebecca Schmidt, event coordinator and EGSA president. “It’s great to see children abandon some of their preconceptions about insects in order to hold a hissing cockroach or pet a tarantula. It’s especially rewarding to watch the parents overcome their fears in order to set an example for their children.”

The EGSA’s mission is to promote entomology among WSU graduate students and provide public educational outreach to the Palouse. For details, visit the association’s Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/Ze6PLx.

-Nella Letizia

Shulin Chin is working on a way to get more bang for your algae buck.

The potential value of an industry based on extracting fuel from algae could be even greater than expected by adding dietary supplements such as DHA and lutein to its list of products. Shulin Chen, professor in the WSU Department of Biological Systems Engineering, presented this innovative idea in a successful application for a Grand Challenges Explorations grant funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation proposing sources of low-cost micronutrients for infants in developing countries.

Working from the discovery that molecules of algal oil closely resemble oils of energy-dense fossil fuel, Chen is researching ways to create motor vehicle fuel from algae. As with many groundbreaking technologies, economic feasibility can be a barrier to large-scale implementation.

“DHA, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, is often extracted from fish and sold at a considerable cost as a health supplement,” said Chen. But fish don’t produce DHA; they absorb it from algae that they feed on.

DHA is a primary component of the human brain, skin, and eye. A deficiency in DHA can result in low birth weight and is implicated in heart ailments. “Many areas in India have low birth weight,” said Chen. “DHA supplements can help.”

Lutein, another compound found in algae and plants, is concentrated in the macula of the eye, and studies suggest it serves a protective role. BCC Research, a market forecasting organization, predicts the annual growth rate of the lutein market at 3.6 percent through 2018.

Ensuring the Practicality of a Novel Biofuel Resource

And up through the beaker came a bubbling, nutritious crude…

“By extracting DHA and other high-value co-products from algae, biofuel plants can generate more income and become economically competitive,” said Chen. “But first we need to find efficient, environmentally benign extraction techniques.” Currently known extraction processes involve hydrocarbon solvents, which are not favorable for health supplements, and supercritical carbon dioxide, which is prohibitively expensive. “We are looking at some possibilities for low-cost extraction techniques, and are generating preliminary data on the processes,” he said.

Chen’s confidence that reliance on biofuel from algae will eventually be a reality is also supported by promising findings about the aquatic organism’s minimal cultivation requirements. Farmers can convert non-arable land to algae production, so food crops do not need to be displaced fuel. In addition, algae have higher growth rates than plants, offering superior production efficiencies. And the remarkable biomass can grow in water that is not suitable for human consumption.

For more information on Chen’s bioprocessing and bioproducts engineering research, see http://bit.ly/wsuchen.

-Bob Hoffmann

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Continues to Spread

A couple features clearly distinguish Brown Marmorated Stink Bug from other, native species. 1: Last two antennal segments have white bands. 2: Shoulders (edges of thorax) are smooth.

Stowing away in packaging and transported by ships, trucks, RVs, and other vehicles, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug is moving into Washington. The pest, a native of Asia that causes severe crop damage, was first spotted in the U.S. in Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s. The bug has since spread to most of the other 48 states. The pest established itself in the Vancouver, Washington area in 2010–“with pretty good-sized populations,” according to Jay Brunner, a WSU entomologist and director of the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee.

Brunner said that native stink bugs, while occasionally a problem for agriculture, are localized and don’t reproduce in orchards. Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) does reproduce in orchards, so both immature and adult individuals can be present at any time.

BMSB feeds on a wide range of crops, Brunner said. In addition to tree fruit, it’ll feed on grapes, corn, soybeans, and many other agricultural crops and ornamental plants. Tree fruit and other producers in the eastern U.S. experienced severe crop damage from BMSB in 2010, Brunner said.

In response, a nationwide team of scientists and Extension professionals, including from WSU and neighboring states, has been working to combat the pest. “The team is focused on a spectrum of issues,” Brunner said. “Researchers are looking at the insect’s basic biology, as well as developing attractants, monitoring systems, and determining what pesticides work and aren’t so harsh that they eleiminate existing biocontrol systems.”

Biocontrols – or using good bugs to prey upon pest species – is a major component of the suite of pest management tools used in Washington fields and orchards. “Chemicals that we know can control BMSB are broad-spectrum toxicants that severely suppress natural enemies of pests,” Brunner said. Using these chemicals would mean drastic changes to existing–and highly successful–pest management programs.

“We can hope that [Brown Marmorated Stink Bug] doesn’t adapt to the arid climate of eastern Washington,” Brunner said. But two stink bugs were found in the Yakima area in 2012, so it is clearly moving or being brought into the area. “Riparian areas along the Yakima River will most certainly be good habitats for the BMSB,” he added.

Brunner urges people to learn to identify BMSB and to distinguish it from, native stink bugs. “We’ve trained Master Gardener volunteers to identify this insect, so when people find it in homes and gardens, it’ll help us track its movement,” he said.

Learn more about BMSB, including a quick guide to its identification and what is being done to control its spread, at http://www.stopbmsb.org/.

–Brian Clark

Concern for Future Food Informs WSU Grad Student’s Trip to Nation’s Capital

Megan Waldrop in the lab. Photo by Angela Lenssen/Washington State University.

When she saw an email announcing a chance to win a travel grant that would take her to the US Department of Agriculture’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum Student Diversity Program, WSU food science graduate student Megan Waldrop thought, “It’s a long shot… but what the heck.”

To win, she had to write a short essay on what she considered the greatest challenge facing agriculture. Waldrop said she’d just finished a 20-page paper on sustainable agriculture—could she adapt an idea from that paper and whittle it down to a mere 500 words? Focusing on climate change, she wrote a succinct essay, then gathered the other materials required to be considered for the grant, including a letter of recommendation from the dean of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences (CAHNRS).

When the USDA announced the winners, Waldrop said, “I was very surprised–pleasantly surprised–to find out that I had won. I never get these things!”

Waldrop traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the Forum and tour the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service headquarters in Arlington. “The forum seemed like a great chance to learn more about food policy,” she said. “I’m really interested in food security, sustainability, and the connections between health and access to food.”

The forum is two intense days of discussions about those and other issues, including the challenges facing a food system that needs to feed an ever-burgeoning population.

Waldrop has the educational background to both benefit from, and contribute to, the forum. She took her undergraduate degree in economics at U.C. Berkeley. At WSU, she is working on a master’s degree in food science, focusing on sensory aspects of sweeteners.

“We use an ‘electronic tongue’–a tool that has digital taste sensors that lets us profile different tastes presented in a solution.”

Waldrop’s background also includes a stint at the Culinary Institute of America, at both the Hyde Park, New York, and Napa, Calif. campuses, and work in the restaurant industry as a pastry chef. “I love food,” she said; “maybe too much!”

This scholar is also hungry for further education. Waldrop plans to continue at WSU in a doctoral program in economics. “I’m still figuring out my future goals, but I’m looking at the USDA’s Economic Research Service as a possible career avenue.” There, she’d be able to pursue her interest in policy decisions backed with sound, science-based information.

As for the challenge to agriculture, Waldrop said that climate change is “all encompassing. It was hard to pick one topic to focus on in that short essay, but climate seemed like a good focal point for addressing a lot of issues.”

Focus is good. As the dean of CAHNRS wrote in his letter of recommendation for Waldrop, “She’s like a rocket looking for direction. Megan is going to make a significant impact whatever she chooses to do.”

–Brian Clark

Adding fertilizers to marigolds and peppers in the greenhouse.

Phosphorus recycled from human and animal waste for plant fertilizer could ease demand for the dwindling, increasingly expensive rock-mined element. Scientists at WSU have found plants flourish with struvite, a waste ingredient composed of magnesium, nitrogen, and phosphorous. Teamed with Multiform Harvest, a Seattle phosphorous recovery company, the researchers are fine-tuning the application and proportion of essential components in the fertilizer with the goal of marketing a product and ultimately adding security to the world’s food supply.

“You can’t continue mining a finite resource forever,” said Rita Hummel, a scientist at the WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center. “But as long as we can reclaim struvite from animal manure and sewage, we have a sustainable resource. We’re figuring out how to use it effectively and safely.”

Local Benefits

Hummel is using Multiform Harvest struvite from wastewater treatment plants at Yakima, Washington, and Boise, Idaho. She and her fellow researchers hope to include struvite extracted from manure from area dairy farms to develop regional nutrient recycling.

“When you feed a cow, about 20 to 25 percent of the phosphorus the cow eats ends up in the milk carton,” said Joe Harrison, Hummel’s scientist colleague at WSU. “That means about 75 to 80 percent ends up in the manure.”

Tomato (top) and marigold from early experiments with (l-r) no phosphorus, struvite, and triple superphosphate.

Not only could reclaiming struvite from waste localize production and distribution, it could also help mitigate water pollution problems such as overloading phosphorus in agricultural soils. “The research being performed at WSU is central to us generating the hard data we must have to get this recycled phosphorus into the agricultural market, from large fields to specialized greenhouses and nurseries,” said Kevin Fullerton, product developer for Multiform Harvest.

Encouraging Results

In previous greenhouse crop studies, Hummel discovered struvite had a similar effect on plants as the commercial phosphorus source, triple superphosphate. Crops like basil, cucumber, marigold, and tomato barely sprouted without phosphorus, but flourished with struvite from King County municipal wastewater.

With support from a USDA small business innovation research grant, Hummel will experiment with different rates and ways of applying the struvite–adding it to the potting mix, sprinkling it on the surface, and placing it beneath the plant–to determine the rate at which it is released.

“One of the things we need here in western Washington is a slow-release product so it doesn’t leach out the bottom of pots and run down drains and into streams, rivers, and the Puget Sound,” Hummel explained.

Reliable Recycling

Most phosphorus in the United States comes from Florida, but this production could decline sharply in the next 30 years, Fullerton said. Current practices indicate such a loss would lead to dependence on the other known stockpiles in Morocco, China, South Africa, and Jordan.

“If we can take a waste disposal problem and turn it into a fertilizer that actually replaces something we have to mine and are running out of-–that’s sustainability,” Hummel said.

-Rachel Webber

Collaborative Management of Thrips-Caused Crop Losses

Thrips may be tiny, but the insects cause billions of dollars in damage to crops each year, which is why WSU scientists are taking part in a five-year, $3.75 million project to study the pests’ role in virus transmission and ways the resulting losses can be stopped.

Up close and personal: Thrips are typically 1 mm long (about the width of a sharpened pencil lead!) and have fringed wings.

The multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary research team is generating new knowledge on thrips-transmitted tospoviruses–infectious agents that cause a variety of crops to wilt and eventually die. Tospoviruses also lower the quality of fruits and vegetables produced by their infected plants, said Naidu Rayapati, a researcher at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser and a co-principal investigator on the USDA grant.

“We are looking at the epidemiology of diseases caused by tospoviruses, especially the role of vectors (carriers) in the spread of these viruses at the fundamental level,” Rayapati said. “We want to know how these viruses spread and contribute to the evolution of new strains. For example, can a single insect acquire and transmit two viruses to the same plant simultaneously?”

The project will focus on areas in California and the southeastern United States where thrips damage is most severe. The collaboration includes entomologists, plant pathologists, molecular breeders, and extension faculty from UC Davis, Kansas State University, North Carolina State University, Cornell University, the University of Georgia, and the USDA Horticultural Research Laboratory. Rayapati said the team is also interested in understanding how management techniques applied in one region might work in another.

“As a team, we are bringing different expertise to bear on a common problem,” Rayapati said. “We hope to generate appropriate knowledge of thrips and tospoviruses and come up with improved strategies that can really help provide management of thrips-transmitted tospoviruses to multiple crops in different regions.”

Maximized Scope

Rayapati said he is also actively recruiting students, with an emphasis on those from minority communities in the Yakima valley, to begin work on the project for summer and fall 2013. “This project has an extension component in terms of working with the stakeholders to convey science-based information for practical applications, but we are also focusing on training the next generation of scientists,” he said.

Learn more about Naidu Rayapati’s research by visiting http://bit.ly/aR2rfU.

-Rachel Webber

Improving Dairy Cattle Fertility

WSU’s Neibergs, left, and Spencer.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture has invested $3 million to help address cattle infertility, which is one of the biggest barriers to global competitiveness for American dairy farmers. The five-year grant, announced this week, includes scientists from WSU, the University of Idaho, and the University of Florida working on research, outreach, and teaching components.

Tom Spencer, who holds the Baxter Endowed Chair in Beef Cattle Research in the Department of Animal Sciences at WSU, explained that the conception rate in an average herd of dairy cows has dropped from 50 percent in the 1980s to 35 percent today. “In general, there has been a 1 percent per year decline in fertility,” he said. An infertile animal has to be culled from the herd, leaving the producer with the expense of supporting the animal until infertility is confirmed, as well as the cost of replacing the animal.

Early Detection

“Fertility is a complex polygenic trait, so it is harder to select for than other traits,” Spencer said. “If we can identify and isolate the multiple genes responsible for fertility, we may be able to tell earlier what cows are going to be fertile-–maybe as early as at birth.” He and WSU animal scientist Holly Neibergs plan to work with UI Extension Dairy Specialist Joseph Dalton to collect blood samples from Northwest cows for DNA analysis.

The goal of the project is to increase the sustainability, profitability, and international competitiveness of the US dairy industry, Spencer said.

“Our hypothesis is that dairy cow fertility can be increased through genetic selection for maternal fertility in heifers and cows and the use of sires with high daughter pregnancy rates,” he said.

Read the rest of this story by Kathy Barnard on the WSU News website.

Licensee Needed to Commercialize New Apple

WSU has just released ‘WA 38,’ an eye-catching new apple cultivar with with a remarkably firm, crisp, and juicy texture that also stores well. The large, dark red apple has outstanding eating quality, exceptional flavor, ample sweetness, and sufficient tartness to impart distinct character.

“Our feeling is that when it comes to the combination of taste, texture, and beauty, WA 38 has no equal in today’s marketplace,” said WSU apple breeder Kate Evans. A trademark is under development.

The WSU Research Foundation, the licensing arm of WSU and assigned owner of WA 38, desires to find, through an announcement of opportunity, an exclusive licensee to manage commercialization of the apple. This would involve contracting tree propagation to nurseries, sublicensing to growers, managing the trademark, and collecting royalties.

Qualified applicants, which includes individuals, individual companies, groups of companies, cooperatives, groups of individuals, and/or companies banded together under a cooperative arrangement, can download a copy of the announcement from http://treefruit.wsu.edu/research/ and email Tom Kelly at kellytj@wsu.edu with any questions.

-Brian Clark

Linda Thomashow

Research at WSU shows that several naturally-occurring antibiotics can control root disease and promote crop health, setting the stage for more economical and environmentally-sensitive options that farmers can use compared to the standard chemical fare.

“All you have to do is make your microbial community happy,” said Linda Thomashow, a USDA Agricultural Research Service geneticist and adjunct professor in plant pathology at WSU, during a recent presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston. Thomashow said the door is open for scientists, farmers, and industry to develop commercial applications of root bacteria that can protect the rest of the plant.

Typically, science has concentrated on treating the above-ground parts of a plant, Thomashow said. “So much less is understood about the plant mechanics for defenses that are available underground.”

Certain bacteria produce antibiotics that protect crop plants.

However, the tools of molecular biology have helped scientists understand the microbial and molecular workings of bacteria in the rhizosphere, the layer of soil next to roots, including how antibiotics there can suppress plant diseases. Thomashow calls these “a first line of defense.”

One particularly ominous-sounding disease, take-all, causes more than $1 billion per year in losses by rotting roots and depriving plants of water and nutrients. It’s often found in soils that are continuously replanted in wheat, whose money-making potential discourages farmers from planting alternative crops that might break disease cycles.

In some areas of eastern Washington, farms have seen several decades of continuous wheat. Those same soils have in turn seen high densities of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens producing a compound called DAPG that can suppress the take-all fungus. Such beneficial bacteria create “suppressive soils” that help control soilborne pathogens with minimal use of commercial fungicides and other chemicals. It should be possible to get similar results with a commercially-available soil amendment if scientists, industry members, and farmers rise to the challenge and expense of bringing a living thing to market, said Thomashow. “If you balance that against the expense of developing a new chemical, it really doesn’t cost any more, and it’s a sustainable alternative to the use of chemicals.”

Learn more about take-all at http://bit.ly/15qn2CW. Learn more about how plant pathologists are discovering alternatives to chemical pest and disease control by visiting the WSU Department of Plant Pathology website at http://plantpath.wsu.edu/.

–Eric Sorensen

Adding Legume Flour to Wheat Bread Could Expand Markets

Roasting legumes before grinding for flour makes for better dough.

Legume flour can increase the amount of protein, fiber, minerals, the essential amino acid lysine, and disease-fighting phytochemicals in wheat bread. However, fortifying bread with legume flour can make the dough more difficult to process and result in low loaf volume. A recent article in Cereal Chemistry detailing a study led by Byung-Kee Baik, then of the WSU Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, revealed that the best way to counteract these problems is to roast the legumes before grinding into flour. By determining the best way to prepare legume flour for bread, the study could lead to more nutritious baked goods on supermarket shelves.

Baik suggests that flour made from roasted legumes, when incorporated into bread recipes, has more desirable characteristics compared to flour from raw, cooked, or fermented legumes. Roasted legume flour bread had higher loaf volume and a more appealing aroma than bread using cooked legume flour. In addition, bread dough made from roasted vs. raw or fermented legume flour was less sticky, and therefore easier to handle.

Beyond the health-promoting qualities that legumes can add to bread, they also help meet the goals of sustainable agriculture when used as rotation crops because they help to fix nitrogen, improve soil physical structure, and control pests and weeds. Baik’s study could therefore encourage more production of chickpeas, lentils, peas, and soybeans, as well as help growers find new markets for their harvest. To view the article, see http://bit.ly/TKNcwo.

To find out more about research in WSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Science, see http://bit.ly/wsucss.

-Bob Hoffmann

Cherry and stone fruit growers throughout the state have agreed to make a $5 million investment over the next eight years at WSU research and extension centers in Prosser and Wenatchee. This builds on a similar measure voted on by apple and pear growers in 2011 to galvanize cooperation between industry and WSU in response to the university’s historic fundraising effort launched in December 2010.

“The close partnership between Washington’s tree fruit industry and Washington State University continues to be transformational,” said WSU President Elson S. Floyd. “Working together for more than a century, we have helped to make Washington a world leader in tree fruit production. The assessment by cherry and stone fruit growers, in combination with the $27 million investment in WSU made by apple and pear growers in 2011, helps to ensure that our partnership in progress continues for an even brighter future for our state. We are extremely grateful for the industry’s confidence and investment in WSU.”

Washington State Department of Agriculture officials certified the election results Monday, Feb. 4. This substantial financial commitment comes at a time when the state’s $46 billion food and agriculture industry continues to increase its contribution to the state’s economy. Annually, the Washington tree fruit industry accounts for more than $7 billion of economic impact, with more than a third of that derived from exports.

Read the rest of the story by Brian Clark on the WSU ag news site: http://bit.ly/treefruit-wsu.

WSU Potato Sprout Inhibitor Discovery Goes Commercial

Consumers will soon be able to leave potatoes in their pantries a good deal longer thanks to the development of technology discovered by WSU scientists in 2005 that is now approved by the FDA and registered with the EPA to keep tubers from sprouting. Canadian and European registrations have also been filed.

The agricultural products company American Vanguard Corporation licensed the patented application of organic compounds to postharvest potatoes from WSU and conducted seven years of testing via AMVAC Chemical Corporation. The commercial version of the sprout inhibitor is called SmartBlock, which the EPA classifies as a biopesticide.

SmartBlock represents a breakthrough approach in the treatment of postharvest potatoes because it offers safe, comprehensive, long-term storage control that growers and processors can easily apply using existing equipment. AMVAC will begin marketing SmartBlock in the United States immediately.

Rick Knowles, scientist and chair of the Department of Horticulture, and Lisa Knowles, assistant research professor of horticulture, are responsible for the research leading up to SmartBlock. They found that one application of a naturally-occurring food additive to potatoes after harvest inhibited sprouting from two to three months, and two to three applications lasted more than a year. Applications also left little residue.

Economic Impacts

About half of the 9.4 billion pounds of potatoes grown in Washington each year are stored to provide a continuing supply to fresh markets and processing plants. Most varieties begin to sprout about three months after harvest. Because the excess growth hastens deterioration and reduces overall quality, growers and processors in the Pacific Northwest spend an estimated $9 million annually to inhibit sprouting of stored potatoes, said Knowles.

The new technology provides an alternative to other compounds currently used for the same purpose, and is thus expected to facilitate expansion of fresh and processed product exports, particularly to markets with strict chemical residue limits.

WSU economists recently found that the Washington potato industry contributes $4.6 billion and 23,500 jobs to the state. Anson Fatland, director of WSU Intellectual Property, said “We are very pleased to have partnered with AMVAC on the SmartBlock technology. As a result of this very productive and collaborative research relationship, additional intellectual property was developed which resulted in worldwide patent protection.”

According to Dan Bernardo, WSU’s vice president for agriculture and extension and dean of CAHNRS, “This success exemplifies the high quality research being carried out by CAHNRS faculty that has significant impact on Washington potatoes.”

–Brian Clark

Avoid Herbicide Drift

Grape showing continued 2,4-D injury the year AFTER exposure. Vines can show injury for several years due to one exposure. Photo: Jay W. Pscheidt, Oregon State Univeristy, from the PNW Plant Disease Handbook, http://bit.ly/14ODQC9.

Herbicide applicators are responsible for managing and controlling off-target drift. As spring–-and one of the two times of year when drift is most likely to occur-–approaches, WSU Extension educators are offering recommendations about how to avoid what can be critical damage to nearby crops, ornamental plants, humans, fish, wildlife, and water resources. Grapes, blueberries, caneberries, and nursery crops are especially sensitive to several herbicides used in agronomic crops, pasture, rangelands, forests, and rights-of-way.

WSU weed specialists advise that appropriate equipment setup, including the choice of droplet size and nozzle type, is necessary for safe and efficient application of herbicides. Other important considerations are weather conditions, cutoff dates, and formulations.

Read the rest of this story by WSU Extension weed scientist Drew Lyon and ag news writer Brian Clark at http://bit.ly/driftprevention. There you’ll also find a short audio clip available to use as a PSA.

Got Water?

WSU Extension economists understand that water issues can be contentious in arid regions such as central Washington. That’s why our experts wrote Understanding the Relationship between Water Price, Value, and Cost, a factsheet to bring you up to speed on common-–yet frequently misunderstood-–terms used to talk about water management.

Clearly communicating about the economics of water is dependent on adequate explanation and distinction between key words such as price, value, and cost. These terms are typically used to differentiate concepts within public policy forums for water reallocation, but non-economists (including producers as well as consumers) tend to use them interchangeably. Confusion over meanings can generate arguments and create unnecessary misinterpretations. This WSU Extension factsheet explains the differences and connections between price, value, and cost in the context of water, and when each concept is relevant and when it is not. The discussion includes the relevance of water rights.

Download your free copy of FS110E at the WSU Extension Online Bookstore: http://bit.ly/water-econ.

James Cook, former dean of the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences and emeritus professor of plant pathology and crop and soil sciences has launched an informative website called “Plant Health International.” The initial focus of the site is on plant root health and health management in the context of global food security. Cook said his goal is to communicate critical information to farmers, students, policy makers, and the general public–audiences that scientific literature doesn’t typically address.

“Sustainable agriculture is not enough,” Cook said, who won the 2011 Wolf Prize in Agriculture. “The world needs sustainable growth in agriculture to keep up with the growing human population in the face of climate change and declining natural resources. Effective and economical management of unseen and often misdiagnosed root diseases is one of the major scientific and technical pillars to meeting these challenges.”

The Plant Health International website is organized around six broad topics reflecting Cook’s particular interests and experience. Cook’s career was devoted primarily to research on root diseases in cereal-intensive, no-till (direct-seed) cropping systems in the Pacific Northwest.

• Plant Health Management
• Root Diseases
• Biological Control
• Biotechnology
• No-Till Farming
• Communicating Science

Initial posts are based on Cook’s classic studies conducted over 50 years of agricultural science research and leadership. New material and resources will be added over time. Cook also hopes to include guest contributions.

“The role of plant health is foundational to achieving global food security,” Cook said. “This website is a way to reach and respond to those who most need to know more about the fundamentals, theory, practice, and benefits of plant health and plant health management.”

MLK Winner Uses Nature and Nurture to Teach

Sonstelie explains the different parts of a bean that students planted from seed at WSU’s Master Gardener Demonstration Garden in Yakima. Photo courtesy of Doris Sonstelie.

Doris Sonstelie has found a place in the sun for thousands of children to plant seeds, pluck weeds, dispense water and reap rewards. A volunteer member of WSU Extension’s Master Gardener Program in Yakima County, she’s been cultivating green thumbs since 2006.

As lead instructor of the youth gardening program, Sonstelie travels throughout Yakima County to teach children from all income backgrounds and nationalities how food is connected to nature and the seasons by growing vegetables with them. But she does more than teach. Place her on a patch of dirt with a group of kids and watch joy emerge as large as pumpkins.

“She reaches out; she cares. She’s an amazingly compassionate mentor,” said Yakima 4-H program coordinator Jennifer Loyd. “I think the impact she has on kids is long-term, not only with regard to education, but also making them feel good about who they are.”

Loyd’s evidence-based assessment is why WSU selected Sonstelie for the 2013 Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Community Service Award.

Digging Deeper

Watching a speck in the soil grow into an eight-foot-tall sunflower or a thick orange carrot exudes a certain magic that makes children excited to learn, said Sonstelie. “I love getting in the dirt with them and seeing their faces light up,” she said.

Sonstelie works with children enrolled in 23 different programs, including 4-H youth development, Daisy Girl Scouts, and Ready by Five. Horticulture is a “remarkable teaching tool” for subjects ranging from science and math to art and music, according to Sonstelie. She and her students sing about insects and birds, make vegetable puppets, and measure spaces between seeds. They also talk about the natural scientific process of composting and analyze soil under microscopes.

“The kids are always surprised when they see all the fungus, insects, bits of leaves, and twigs,” Sonstelie said.

Sonstelie’s motivation for nurturing young gardeners comes from genuinely caring about them and the plants they grow. “I can see how it builds their self-esteem.” But there’s another, broader benefit in showing children you care: “To grow something in the ground, you have to take care of it along the way. My hope is these kids will learn to love nature enough to take care of it, now and always.”

–Linda Weiford