The college and its divisions are home to a wide variety of research facilities, many of which attract competitive federal funding. Their missions include goals related to research, education, and outreach. Their focus areas address diverse issues such as the environment, plant and animal biology, and human health and well-being.
Analytical Laboratory
In addition to analytical services, the Analytical Laboratory provides project assistance in the areas of analytical, agricultural and environmental chemistry. The Laboratory has an educational role, providing training to students and researchers in the operation of a number of analytical methods and instruments. The laboratory performs analyses on selected chemical constituents of soil, plant, water and waste water, and feed in support of agricultural and environmental research and UC Cooperative Extension activities.
Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture
The center provides leadership, focus, and support to UC Davis researchers in addressing problems associated with California’s cultured and wild aquatic biological resources.
Contained Research Facility
The Contained Research Facility provides researchers with the opportunity to investigate invasive plant pests that otherwise could not be studied under normal laboratory conditions. The facility is designed to ensure a highly controlled and contained research environment that does not allow the release of experimental organisms to the environment.
Foundation Plant Services
Foundation Plant Services produces, tests, maintains and distributes elite disease-tested plant propagation material; provides plant importation and quarantine, disease testing, virus elimination, and DNA identification services; coordinates release of UC-patented horticultural varieties; and links researchers, nurseries and producers.
The Foundation Seed Program
The Foundation Seed Program (FSP) is an organized service unit, administered through the Department of Plant Sciences in the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The program was created in 1937 for the following purposes to grow, increase, and maintain seed of cultivars developed by University of California and other public plant breeders; to maintain genetic purity; and to insure certified seed of these cultivars are made continuously available to the public.
Greenhouses
The Plant Growth Facilities consists of three greenhouse sites supported by the College of Biological Sciences and one growth chamber site supported by the Office of Research. These facilities consist of greenhouses, growth chambers, lath houses and contained outdoor growing areas, and are available for University of California research and teaching activities.
The Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility
The Laidlaw Facility provides leading cutting‐edge research focusing on basic bee biology and genetics. The faculty also addresses international concerns about bee health, and meet the needs of California’s multibillion dollar agricultural industry. The facility's expertise includes honey bee breeding and genetics, and native bee biology. This facility is uniquely qualified to investigate declining populations of honey bees, native bees and other insect pollinators and to provide solutions.
Informatics Center
To increase the use and sophistication of information technology in research and teaching in the university. The Environmental and Agricultural BioInformatics Computer Labs' functions are to serve as an informational and educational resource for the campus and the public in environmental and agricultural information technology.
Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility
The Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility is a unique 300-acre facility near the UC Davis campus dedicated to investigating irrigated and dry-land agriculture in a Mediterranean climate. It’s also a unit of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI). Among Russell Ranch’s ongoing experiments is a 100-year study referred to as Long Term Research in Agricultural Sustainability(LTRAS).
Plant Transformation Facility
The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Plant Transformation Facility was established at UC Davis to provide cost effective plant transformation and plant cell biology services for the plant research community.
Student Farm
The Student Farm is a community where students work to create, maintain, and explore sustainable food systems. At the farm, students grow in many ways, learning from seasoned field-based educators, from their peers and from themselves. They come to understand sustainability through the soils, crops, climate and community in which they work. In the process, they gain the systems-based thinking and doing skills needed to make a positive difference in today’s world.