Gene editing can improve crop performance, but there’s a catch: It can be hard to grow plants from cells after you’ve tweaked their genomes.

At 5 feet, 2 inches, Plant Sciences Professor Emerita Barbara D. Webster may have been petite in stature, but she was a powerhouse when it came to reducing barriers for women in academia.

“She was formidable,” said her daughter, Susan V. Webster, with a chuckle. “She didn’t back down.”

Four years after plant sciences professor Kentaro Inoue was struck and killed while riding his bike, the last three graduate students from his lab are ensuring his scientific legacy lives on through their published research, careers in industry and academia, and mentoring of future science students.

Two UC Davis students—Abelina Jackson and Saarah Kuzay—are among those who have been selected as 2020 Borlaug Scholars by the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB).

The Borlaug Scholars Program seeks to strengthen the plant breeding profession by helping support attendance of future leaders at the NAPB annual meeting. However, this year’s annual meeting will be held in a virtual format because of COVID-19 concerns. Each student will receive free registration for the conference and a membership in NAPB.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.