Plant Sciences

Thinning forests and conducting prescribed burns may help preserve trees in future droughts and bark beetle epidemics expected under climate change, suggests a study from the University of California, Davis.

With a terrain covering volcanoes, steaming fumaroles and forestlands, the Lassen Field Station became the newest addition to the University of California, Davis’ Natural Reserve System today (May 16), following approval by the UC Board of Regents.

Scientists have successfully sequenced the coast redwood and giant sequoia genomes, completing the first major milestone of a five-year project to develop the tools necessary to study these forests’ genomic diversity. The research partners, composed of the University of California, Davis, Johns Hopkins University and the Save the Redwoods League, are making the data publicly available today.   

UC Davis recently joined a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to bring agricultural expertise and training from four American land-grant universities to agricultural universities in Egypt.

The five-year, $30 million project will establish a Center of Excellence for Agriculture at Cairo University. The goal is to equip faculty and students with the tools to make an impact as research scientists, employees, policymakers and innovators in Egyptian agriculture.

The University of California, Davis, has been selected by the U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID) as part of a consortium to improve nutrition for women and children in low- and middle-income countries around the globe. 

Plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, have discovered a way to make crop plants replicate through seeds as clones. The discovery, long sought by plant breeders and geneticists, could make it easier to propagate high-yielding, disease-resistant or climate-tolerant crops and make them available to the world’s farmers. 

UC Davis recently boosted its agricultural research capabilities with major irrigation infrastructure improvements on 300 acres just west of Highway 113. The upgrades include five miles of new underground PVC piping, a pumping and filtering station and state-of-the-art control technology.

If you were to take a seed and zap it into the future to see how it will respond to climate change, how realistic might that prediction be? After all, seeds that actually grow in the future will have gone through generations of genetic changes and adaptations that these “time traveling” seeds don’t experience.

A new breed of ranchers is bringing diverse demographics and unique needs to rangeland management in California. These first-generation “ranchers” are often young, female and less likely to, in fact, own a ranch. But like more traditional rangeland managers, this new generation holds a deep love for the lifestyle and landscapes that provide a wealth of public benefit to California and the world.

When it comes to watering walnuts, most California growers believe you need to start early to keep trees healthy and productive throughout the long, hot summer. But according to striking results from a long-term experiment in a walnut orchard in Red Bluff, California, growers can improve crop production if they hold off irrigation until later in the season and directly measure their trees’ water needs.