Biological and agricultural engineering associate professor Stavros Vougioukas is leading two new research projects to mechanize the orchard and pick fruit more effectively.

Red, ripe strawberries are the hallmark of spring in California. Two new varieties from the Public Strawberry Breeding Program at the University of California, Davis, will provide consumers with big, flavorful strawberries throughout fall and winter, too.

“These cultivars were developed to provide high-quality fruit from late summer through the holidays,” said Professor Steve Knapp, director of the UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program.

University of California, Davis, researchers have bred a new walnut variety designed to provide growers a way to harvest earlier and boost the harvest efficiency of California’s $1.6 billion walnut industry.

Economic research measuring the overall losses to California agricultural exports resulting from the trade war shows that two years of Market Facilitation Program (MFP) payments only covered roughly half of the net losses to California commodities, according to a new article in the Nov/Dec edition of ARE Update.

Bouillon is a staple ingredient in West African cuisine. The cubes are used to flavor soups, stews, gravies and rice. Popular dishes include Red-Red, a bean stew made with red palm oil and fried ripe red plantain, and Jollof Rice, a spicy rice dish prepared with tomatoes, peppers and onions.

California’s small-scale fruit and vegetable processors and handlers will be getting new food safety online education and in-person workshops thanks to a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded to UC Davis community food safety specialist Erin DiCaprio and fellow collaborators.

Joanne Emerson is a virus hunter. She has tracked viruses in a hypersaline lake in Australia, analyzed viral communities in the thawing permafrost of Sweden and contributed to studies of oceanic viruses that infect marine microorganisms.

Diets lacking fiber are linked to health concerns such as colon cancer and heart diseases, but Americans only consume 30 percent of the recommended daily amount of fiber. One way to increase fiber consumption is to produce wheat varieties that contain more fiber.

Pamela Ronald, distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis, and with the UC Davis Genome Center, has been named the 2020 World Agriculture Prize laureate by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences, or GCHERA.

It’s not always easy to find silver linings during the COVID-19 pandemic, but here’s one that food scientists at the University of California, Davis, have discovered: More people are exploring the ancient art of fermented foods.

“My mom made her first batch of sauerkraut this summer,” said Maria Marco, a microbiologist and food science professor with the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “With so many of us sheltering-in-place, fermented foods are more popular than ever.”