Plant Sciences | College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Bringing Big Data to the Vineyard

Big data is all around us –– even in the wine we drink. UC Davis’ Smart Farm Big Idea is tackling how to take some of this vast trove of information and synthesize it for the benefit of agriculture.

Mason Earles, assistant professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology and the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, is applying big data by merging agricultural and machine learning to glean information that improves vineyards’ health and yields.

Food & Agriculture

A group of people celebrating the Teff study at UC Davis.

CA&ES faculty receive funding for a diverse array of public impact research projects

The UC Davis Public Scholarship and Engagement Program has awarded funding to 14 new research projects, including five to faculty in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, that will address diverse issues such as climate change, the welfare of families, and cultivating a new grain crop.

University News

Plant scientist Jennifer Schmidt selected for Kinsella Memorial Prize

Jennifer Schmidt, a Ph.D. candidate in plant sciences, has been selected as the 2020 recipient of the Kinsella Memorial Prize for outstanding research on a doctoral dissertation.

University News

UC Davis Releases 6 New Varieties of Organic Beans

Field Trials Find Varieties Sustainable, High-Yielding and Disease-Resistant

Plant breeders at the University of California, Davis, are releasing six new varieties of organic beans. Field trials found that the new varieties produced high yields, and were resistant to bean common mosaic virus, a disease that prevents bean plants from maturing promptly and uniformly.

Food & Agriculture

Almond Orchard Recycling a Climate-Smart Strategy

The Practice Can Create Healthier Soils, Save Water and Yield More Almonds

Recycling trees onsite can sequester carbon, save water and increase crop yields, making it a climate-smart practice for California’s irrigated almond orchards, finds a study from the University of California, Davis.

Whole orchard recycling is when old orchard trees are ground, chipped and turned back into the soil before new almond trees are planted.

Environment

Wildfire Perceptions Largely Positive After Hiking in a Burned Landscape

Post-Fire Surveys at Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve Describe ‘Awe-Inspiring’ Experience

When hikers returned to UC Davis Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve in 2016, a year after a wildfire swept through its expanse of oak trees and chaparral in Northern California, half of them expected to see a devastated landscape. But pre- and post-hike surveys conducted by the University of California, Davis, reveal that roughly a third returned energized, awed and excited about the changes they saw.

Environment

Professor Cameron Carter, School of Medicine (left) and Li Tian, associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences will be co-directors of the Cannabis and Hemp Research Center at UC Davis. The center will guide and support cannabis- and hemp-related research across the Davis and Sacramento campuses.

Carter and Tian Named Co-Directors of the UC Davis Cannabis and Hemp Research Center

Professor Cameron Carter and Associate Professor Li Tian have been appointed as co-directors of the UC Davis Cannabis and Hemp Research Center by Vice Chancellor for Research Prasant Mohapatra. The center was established in 2019 by campus leadership based on recommendations from a multidisciplinary workgroup, which identified several research needs that UC Davis was uniquely positioned to address.

University News

UC Davis Plant Sciences Professor, Jorge Dubcovsky is among 16 current UC Davis faculty named as among the top 1 percent in their fields for citations of scientific papers. Dubcovsky is a leading expert on wheat genetics. (UC Davis photo)

UC Davis Researchers Are Highly Cited

Sixteen UC Davis researchers have been named in the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2019 list released by the Web of Science Group, which compiles statistics on scientific publishing. The list identifies scientists and social scientists who have published multiple papers ranking in the top 1 percent by citations in a particular field and year, over a 10-year period.

Citation counts represent how often a particular paper has been cited in other scientific publications.

UC Davis researchers included in this year’s list are:

University News

Becoming Arizona: Sacramento’s Urban Heat Island Divide

Beyond Beautification, Trees Are a Health and Climate Justice Solution

A tree sits in the middle of a big empty lot in South Sacramento. It is huge and leafy, its arms open wide, an arc of green swooping across a hot summer sky. Fenced off in this abandoned car lot, the tree is a bold sign of life in an otherwise barren expanse of dirt and busted concrete. It’s a wonder that it’s still here.

This old lot looms large for Victoria Vasquez. Her dad used to live a half mile from this spot.

Environment

Agricultural Innovations help Cambodian Farmers Thrive

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.

With help from American researchers, they’re growing nutritious crops that boost their income.

They say a farmer’s work starts before dawn, but in Cambodia’s Battambang province farmers work together late into the night to prepare their vegetable harvest for the overnight bus ride to the capital city’s markets.

Food & Agriculture