Field, Lab, Earth

"Registration of 'Butta 12', A Two-Row Malting Barley Adapted to the California Central Valley with Proven Floor-Malting Success and Craft Brewer Acceptance" with Lynn Gallagher and Ron Silberstein California is a prime location for craft brewers and microbreweries. However, fungi and virus disease susceptibility have made it difficult for many barley varieties (such as those used for the malt use...

Locusts are one of the most damaging agricultural pests in the world, causing problems since ancient times all the way up until today. This episode, we talk with Ellen Weatherford of the Just the Zoo of Us podcast to learn more about these frightening insects for a special Halloween special. Tune in to learn: How Ellen would rate locusts on effectiveness, ingenuity, aesthetics, and spookiness on a...

The World Food Prize is awarded to those who have made outstanding contributions to food and food security around the world. The brainchild of Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug, it was founded in 1986 and is the foremost international award for those in these fields. Dr. Rattan Lal is the 2020 World Food Prize Laureate for his continent-spanning work with climate change and holistic soil health. T...

Dr. Norman Borlaug was an American agronomist who specialized in wheat breeding. Known as the Father of the Green Revolution, he helped other hunger fighters save hundreds of thousands of lives in Mexico, India, Pakistan, and other countries throughout his long and varied career. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and founded the World Food Prize to celebrate other food fighters worldwide. This...

"Tapping into Wild Carrot Diversity for New Sources of Abiotic Stress Tolerance to Strengthen Carrot Pre-Breeding in Bangladesh and Pakistan" with Dr. Philipp Simon. Carrots are a diverse crop that grows worldwide. Packed with nutrients and flavor, many of its wild relatives also carry important traits such as resistance to abiotic stresses like drought, heat, or salinity. These traits can be cruc...

"Research and Funding in the Time of COVID‐19" with Dr. Gary Pierzynski. The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption worldwide, with research projects, schools, grocery stores, and more all impacted. Dr. Gary Pierzynski, the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University, has seen much of this...

"A Review of Turfgrass Sports Field Variability and Its Implications on Athlete-Surface Interactions" with Dr. Chase Straw. Sports scientists study how athletes perform during exercise and how that affects the body. Turfgrass scientists study how to improve and maintain the health of turfgrass. But what happens when you combine the two? Dr. Chase Straw's review paper decided to find out, searching...

"A preliminary investigation of wild pig (Sus scrofa ) impacts in water quality" with Dr. John Brooks. Wild pigs are an invasive species that impact at least thirty-five states in the United States with a population of approximately six million and growing. With few natural predators and a high reproduction rate, they are a highly mobile species that can contaminate local waters with soil, fecal m...

It's our second birthday today, which means we're releasing a second blooper reel. We are now also offering continuing education unit (CEU) quizzes for all past, full-length episodes. If you are a certified crop advisor or certified professional soil scientist, you can purchase them on an individual basis or as part of your online classroom subscription. For a full list of the available podcast qu...

"Impacts of Oyster Aquaculture on Subaqueous Soils and Infauna" with Chelsea Duball. Oysters are praised as ecosystem engineers, not only for their filter feeding, which draws particulate matter and nutrients out of the water, but also for their ability to create natural structures in the wild that can protect against storm surges on the coasts. But, as they expel excess nutrients that they don't...

"Evaluation of Water Retention Products to Conserve Urban Water Resources in Home Lawns" with Vikram Baliga. Water retention products are designed to help turfgrasses conserve water. But as water conservation becomes an issue of ever greater importance, it is important not only to know which of these products to use, but also how best to use them within larger water conservation initiatives. Enter...

"Crop Production on Heavily Disturbed Soils following Crude Oil Remediation" with Dr. Tom DeSutter and Sam Croat. When an oil spill occurs on land, there are myriad ways to approach cleanup, from adding oxidizers or nutrients to speed natural processes, burning off surface oil, replacing contaminated top soil with top soil from other regions, or even just removing the soil to a landfill. When an o...

"Crude Oil Effects on Redox Status of Salt Marsh Soil in Louisiana" with Dr. John White. Also featuring Dr. John Pardue. Ten years ago, on April 20th, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded, killing eleven crewmen and releasing about five million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding environment over the next 87 days. Drs. John White and John Pardue have spent much of t...

"Top 10 Plants: Increasing Awareness of Plants" with Dr. Mary Hockenberry Meyer and Dr. Natalie Bumgarner. Plant blindness is the inability to "see" the plants around us, that is, to recognize them as separate and important pieces of our surroundings beyond their roles as general background or landscape. But for those who do "see" plants and their varied species, how can they communicate that info...

"Analysis of Children's Drawings to Gain Insight into Plant Blindness" with Dr. Christina Hargiss and Dr. Paula Comeau Plant blindness is a phenomenon that, despite its name, has nothing to do with whether or not plants can see. It is actually defined as our inability to see or value the plants around us. Interdisciplinary researchers Drs. Christina Hargiss and Paula Comeau have spent a lot of tim...

"Analysis of Children's Drawings to Gain Insight into Plant Blindness" with Dr. Christina Hargiss and Dr. Paula Comeau Plant blindness is a phenomenon that, despite its name, has nothing to do with whether or not plants can see. It is actually defined as our inability to see or value the plants around us. Interdisciplinary researchers Drs. Christina Hargiss and Paula Comeau have spent a lot of tim...

In North America, standards for soil health and fertility in organic systems are regulated at the federal level. But for those transitioning to organic farming, it can be difficult to know how to meet those standards without access to the same toolkit they used while practicing conventional farming. Join us and moderator Chris Boomsma in this last installment of our four part series on transitioni...

Tom Frantzen has been in organic agriculture for thirty years with his wife Irene in Iowa. Join us and host Dr. Erin Silva for part three of our four part series on transitioning to organic farming, where we'll discuss his introduction and transition to organic farming, lessons he's learned, the values and disciplines he treasures, and the changes he's seen in organic farming over the decades. Tun...

The organic industry generates 50 billion dollar a year. But if you're looking at transitioning into organic farming, where do you begin? Anders Gurda and Paul Dietmann work with organic farmers every day. Join us with host Dr. Erin Silva for part two of our four part series on transitioning to organic farming, where we discuss how to improve your organic business, how to navigate the financials o...

Episode Title: Organic Certifications with Harriet Behar Show notes: Getting organically certified is one of the first and most important steps to transitioning to organic farming, but how does one actually go about it? Harriet Behar has worked in organic systems for over thirty years and is an expert on the regulations, processes, and requirements for getting organically certified. Join us and ho...

"Genome-Wide Association Studies in Apple Reveal Loci for Aroma Volatiles, Sugar Composition, and Harvest Date" with Dr. Zoë Migicovsky, Dr. Carsten Pedersen Apple breeding can take a long time. Because each seed is the progeny of two different trees and each tree takes five to six years to produce its first fruits, breeders can be waiting years, if not decades, to see the results of their hard wo...

"Winter Phosphorus Release from Cover Crops and Linkages with Runoff Chemistry" with Dr. Merrin Macrae Cover crops can offer a variety of ecosystem services, including reducing soil erosion. However, in colder climates, where cover crops can freeze and die over the winter, there is the possibility that the Phosphorus within cover crops can then leach into surface runoff. Dr. Merrin Macrae and her...

"Plant Species and Hydrology as Controls on Constructed Wetland Methane Fluxes" with Karla Jarecke and Dr. Terry Loecke Wetlands are important ecosystems that provide many important services, such as assisting in water quality, flood control, erosion protection, carbon removal and storage, and biodiversity. Hydrology is the study of water, specifically in how it moves throughout the landscape. Com...

"What We Talk about When We Talk about Soil Health" with Dr. Ryan Stewart. Soil health is an important topic for today's scientists, but how do we quantify it, and when we talk about "healthy soils," what do we even mean? Dr. Ryan Stewart and his team set out to answer just that. Doing a meta-analysis on dozens of studies listed in The Soil Health Institute's Research Landscape Tool, Ryan and his...

"Celebrating the 350th Anniversary of Phosphorus Discovery: A Conundrum of Deficiency and Excess" with Drs. Andrew Sharpley, Helen Jarvie, Don Flaten, and Peter Kleinman. 350 years ago, German alchemist Hennig Brandt accidentally discovered phosphorus during his quest to find the philosopher's stone. As it turns out, phosphorus can't turn base metals into gold, but it is one of the most important...