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UGA professor and peanut breeder William “Bill” D. Branch has developed more than 30 novel, licensed peanut varieties. (CAES) CAES News
Branch Honored
William “Bill” D. Branch, a professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, has been elected as Fellow for the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Branch is the 17th UGA faculty member to receive this honor, which recognizes inventors whose innovations have had a significant impact on society, economic development and quality of life.
Nayantara Hareesh poses for a quick photo with Peanut Butter. CAES News
Animal Magnetism
In Associate Professor Kari Turner’s “Companion Animal Care” class, Penelope stands in front of the lecture hall, her large, brown eyes taking in her audience. Penelope, a piebald pit bull terrier mix, and her caretaker, Katlyn Davis, a fourth-year animal biosciences major, are there to tell their rescue story. Three years ago, the months-old pup was found abandoned, malnourished and covered in mange under an abandoned house.
sugar beet cyst nematodes CAES News
Cyst Nematodes
People love the taste of sugar beets’ primary byproduct: white sugar. Soilborne cyst nematodes — parasitic, microscopic worms — enjoy the root vegetable, too, but as their sole food source. It’s an obstinate, expensive problem for farmers that researchers at the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences are working to solve.
rabbiteye blueberry CAES News
Organic Shelf Life
Organic fruits and vegetables often face a higher risk of spoiling and harboring foodborne pathogens than their conventional farming counterparts. Because organic growers and packers must adhere to higher production standards and restrictions on chemical additives, University of Georgia experts are exploring alternative methods for protecting organic products and consumers through a new $3.5 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Peanut Innovation Lab Director Dave Hoisington works with Rachelle Djiboune at CERAAS, where Djiboune is characterizing groundnut seed as high-oleic or not. The handheld NIR device validated by Hoisington has made her work many times faster. CAES News
High oleic testing
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could look inside a peanut kernel and see the nutritional content hiding there? It’s possible. A device calibrated and deployed by the Peanut Innovation Lab is allowing partners to test peanut seed where they are – avoiding time-consuming and expensive off-site lab tests – to see which plants have the desired oil content. The technology is saving money and speeding up the process to develop new high-oleic lines where people need them the most.
Modou Mbaye, a physicist with ISRA in Senegal sets up a drone to fly over a groundnut field. Mbaye plans to use AI to develop predictive models for crop performance based on historic data collected with drones. CAES News
Drones for plant breeding
Plant breeders can’t speed up how fast a plant grows, which limits how quickly they can develop new varieties. But knowing sooner how a plant is responding to its environment can speed up the process of selecting plants with certain traits and make that work more reliable. In earlier research, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut used hand-held sensors to evaluate peanut plants in the field, and developed vegetation indices (VIs) that could predict disease resistance, water stress tolerance, and yield better than traditional methods of evaluating plants. Now, researchers are working with drones in four African countries, using similar technology to make selections with less time and manpower, and more accuracy, and can be used in connection with digitized methods of analysis and selection decision tools.
The Jersey Management by Students program at CAES equips animal and dairy science majors with high-value skills in livestock breeding. CAES News
Herd Mentality
Slipping on a shoulder-length plastic glove, fourth-year animal and dairy science student Sophie Du Pont prepared to perform a pregnancy ultrasound on a 16-month-old Jersey heifer named Woof at the University of Georgia Teaching Dairy in Winterville, Georgia. Having carefully watched Associate Professor Jillian Bohlen perform the procedure on several Holstein heifers minutes before, Du Pont maneuvered the ultrasound transducer to coax a clear digital image onto the computer screen connected to the scanning device.
Romanian scholars (from left) Horia Ciocan, Drago? S?c?leanu, Paula Moraru ?tefan B?trîna and Igori Balta visited the Wahsega 4-H Center in Dahlonega, Georgia, to learn about youth development programming offered by UGA Extension. CAES News
2024 RAF Cohort
Building on the strong foundation established with the first cohort of Romanian-American Foundation Fulbright Scholars at the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, a second slate of scholars recently completed a four-month fellowship with UGA Cooperative Extension to gather insight and inspiration for establishing extension services in the eastern European nation.
After a hearty climb, Connect Abroad Italy students pose in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (Photo by Angel Bhardwaj) CAES News
Study Abroad
The University of Georgia remains among the top 10 U.S. universities for study abroad participation, according to the 2024 Open Doors Report released by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the U.S. Department of State. UGA boasts the highest study abroad participation to enrollment ratio of the top 7 ranked doctoral institutions, earning the No. 7 spot in overall participation and No. 3 in short-term study abroad programs.