In pastures and orchards, labs and classrooms, learners in CAHNRS are spending their spring helping create a better future for Washington agriculture.
As proud stewards of Washington State University’s land-grant mission, our college is constantly working, and often evolving, to meet the needs of agricultural producers, farm families, and the next generation of the state’s workforce. The monthly On Solid Ground newsletter is your window on those efforts, and as always, we have a lot to show you.
Featured stories this month share work by Endowed Chair Hanu Pappu into the identity of viruses that harm regional and U.S. dahlia crops. We meet four seniors from the Department of Animal Sciences, who spent their spring break assisting with spring calving at WSU’s winter pasture near the Snake River.
There’s also an update on construction of the new grower-supported Plant Growth Facility at the Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center at Wenatchee. You can watch the building take shape in real time by checking out the camera feed at the WSU Construction Cameras webpage.
Our land-grant mission means providing access and opportunity to all and bringing knowledge to the people that use it. To that end, members of the Honey Bee and Pollinators Program introduce a new video series bringing novice beekeepers up to speed, in both Spanish and English.
Each month, this newsletter presents a calendar of upcoming events that help inform our readers. In this issue, we preview a first-of-its-kind event in CAHNRS: the inaugural Cashup Davis Family Endowed Dean’s Distinguished Lecture, with special guest Temple Grandin. We’re honored to host this pioneering researcher and advocate for humane livestock handling and neurodiversity as part of a new lecture series initiated by CAHNRS leadership. This is an incredible opportunity to hear from a renowned scientist and visit the Pullman campus.
For a deeper look at what’s happening in CAHNRS, I encourage you to subscribe to my bi-monthly dean’s blog, “From the Ground Up.”
Go Cougs!
— Raj Khosla, Cashup Davis Family Endowed Dean of CAHNRS