News

World-renowned celebrity chef of more than 40 years, host of the public television show “Yan Can Cook” and UC Davis alumnus, Martin Yan ’73, M.S. ’77, and his wife, Susan ’75, recently made a gift to the UC Davis Library Archives and Special Collections to create the Chef Martin Yan Legacy Archive.

We’ve all heard the phrase “You are what you eat,” but can this actually be measured?

Researchers at University of California, Davis, have obtained a $5 million grant to study diet and identify food biomarkers to see how what we eat affects overall health or risk of disease.

Alternatives to meat have recently become a hot area in food research, with major fast-food brands marketing burgers made from plant proteins that attempt to reproduce the texture and flavor of ground beef patties. But beyond these “impossible” products is another prospect: actual flesh grown under lab conditions instead of being harvested from an animal or fish.

What does a “resilient” forest look like in California’s Sierra Nevada? A lot fewer trees than we’re used to, according to a study of frequent-fire forests from the University of California, Davis.

More than a century ago, Sierra Nevada forests faced almost no competition from neighboring trees for resources. The tree densities of the late 1900s would astonish most Californians today. Because of fire suppression, trees in current forests live alongside six to seven times as many trees as their ancestors did — competing for less water amid drier and hotter conditions. 

Article originally written by Pamela Kan-Rice from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

A simple roadside weed may hold the key to understanding and predicting DNA mutation, according to new research from University of California, Davis, and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany. 

The findings, published today in the journal Nature, radically change our understanding of evolution and could one day help researchers breed better crops or even help humans fight cancer.

Agriculture is the cornerstone of livelihoods across the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where small-scale farmers’ livelihoods depend on the food they can grow, climate change has worsened the risk of drought and unpredictable weather, increasing barriers to opportunities for a better future through agriculture.

Concerns over foodborne risk from birds may not be as severe as once thought by produce farmers, according to research from the University of California, Davis, that found low instances of E. coli and Salmonellaprevalence. 

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A team of researchers from University of California, Davis, has been awarded a $6.5 million grant to use 3-D modeling, artificial intelligence and crop genetics to develop a tool to improve and accelerate breeding pipelines for legumes and sorghum.

Funding for the project, known as GEMINI*, comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.