With California enduring record-breaking rain and snow and Gov. Gavin Newsom recently easing restrictions on groundwater recharge, interest in “managed aquifer recharge” has never been higher. This process – by which floodwater is routed to sites such as farm fields so that it percolates into the aquifer – holds great promise as a tool to replenish depleted groundwater stores across the state.

An estimated 53 million people in the U.S. turned to food banks and community programs for help putting food on the table in 2021. In recent decades, food banks have adopted policies and practices to make sure people not only have access to food but also healthy and nutritious food. 

If you’ve ever taken a drive through California’s picturesque vineyards and pastoral farms, you know it’s impossible to imagine the Golden State without them. But California wouldn’t have become a dream destination for foodies and oenophiles without research from the University of California.

Growing wheat in drought conditions may be easier in the future, thanks to new genetic research out of the University of California, Davis.

An international team of scientists found that the right number of copies of a specific group of genes can stimulate longer root growth, enabling wheat plants to pull water from deeper supplies. The resulting plants have more biomass and produce higher grain yield, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

Artificial intelligence could be a valuable tool for the future of food safety. New research out of the University of California, Davis, finds that a technique using AI and optical imaging can quickly and accurately identify bacteria in food, making it a promising approach for preventing foodborne outbreaks and illnesses.

Post-harvest losses are common in the global food and agricultural industry. Research shows that storage grain pests can cause serious post-harvest losses, almost 9% in developed countries to 20% or more in developing countries. To address this problem, Zhongli Pan, an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, has developed a potential solution.

Maeli Melotto, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences specializing in plant immunity, has been recognized as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.

An international team has succeeded in propagating a commercial hybrid rice strain as a clone through seeds with 95 percent efficiency. This could lower the cost of hybrid rice seed, making high-yielding, disease resistant rice strains available to low-income farmers worldwide. The work was published Dec. 27 in Nature Communications. 

UC Davis researchers are providing more insight into how grape skins and seeds, which usually go to waste during the making of chardonnay wine, may be a valuable and healthful ingredient in new food products.

A review paper published by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry outlines how chardonnay marc can serve as a model for developing plant-based natural product food ingredients, and perhaps make upcycling agricultural byproducts relevant to other post-harvest processing scenarios.

A solution to world hunger might start with boba and caviar.

Using an innovative process, engineers at UC Davis are growing “myco-foods” — small balls of edible fungi that can be processed into products like boba and lab-grown caviar with a wide range of textures, colors and flavors. These myco-foods, grown from the nutrients of agricultural byproducts like coffee grounds and almond hulls, provide an important new source of protein to feed the world.