California Ag Network

Tag: UC Davis

  • New Video Series to Sharpen Skills of California Vegetable Growers

    To train new people to work with California specialty crops and update the skills of current workers, educators from University of California, Davis and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, Fresno State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Chico State and five California community colleges are producing educational videos. The training video series is available to the public for free on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@jeffreymitchell759/playlists.

    “As California’s farmers age, shortages of suitably trained agricultural workers increase, and workers increasingly come from non-farming backgrounds, the role of agricultural colleges in teaching both the theory and practice of agriculture is key today,” said Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.

    “The average age of agricultural producers in California is currently about 59.2 years,” said Mitchell, who is based at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier in Fresno County. “Therefore, there is an urgent need to encourage and recruit young people into agriculture to sustain current and future production.”

    It is also vitally important that those entering the workforce receive adequate training in current production practices of the state’s particularly dynamic specialty crop industries.

    “In response to the growing demand for online education following COVID-19, I have strategically incorporated YouTube video clips – particularly those produced by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources – into my course material to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes,” said Sophia Marin, Bakersfield College adjunct professor. “One of the greatest challenges in teaching agriculture in a virtual setting is the inherently hands-on nature of the industry.”

    Marin has been using videos produced a few years ago. The video curriculum series currently being developed includes integrated weed management, postharvest technology, crop breeding, microgreen production, soil management, labor and specialized farm machinery.

    Many key concepts, especially those related to plant pathology and crop management, are difficult to fully convey through traditional textbooks or static images alone, Marin noted.

    “To address this gap, I began supplementing my lectures with real-time video recordings captured during farm visits, with the consent of local growers,” she said. “These video clips provide students with invaluable exposure to real-world agricultural practices and allow them to observe phenomena such as plant diseases – including Southern Blight – in a way that is far more dynamic and informative than text-based descriptions.”

    “Through visual media, students can see subtle distinctions in plant symptoms, understand how and why spores develop, and gain deeper insight into diagnostic and treatment processes,” Marin noted.

    In addition to addressing current practices, the training video series also anticipates the challenges that producers will face.

    Vegetable farmers – who tend to have greater labor needs than many in other agricultural sectors – face mounting worker shortages and need to modernize their farm workforce.

    “Vegetable production systems need to be dynamic to keep pace with unpredictable economic, social, environmental and regulatory changes,” Mitchell said. “These systems must continually adapt to innovations and must have a workforce that understands and can implement ever-changing technologies.”

    Visiting farms and viewing videos give Bakersfield College students a clearer idea of the kinds of jobs they would like to pursue, according to Marin.

    “These professionally produced clips complement textbook topics such as urban agriculture, propagation, transplanting and field packing, offering students a visual context that supports their understanding of the material,” Marin said. “What I have noticed is these resources promote active learning: students tend to engage more deeply in discussion boards via Canvas, conduct independent research to supplement course content, and demonstrate increased confidence in both their academic progress and career aspirations.”

    Development of the teaching modules to train workers for California’s vegetable crops industry is funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Block Grant Program. The videos will be used and rigorously evaluated by the four universities and five community colleges that serve as key conduits for agricultural workers to the state’s vegetable production regions.

    The first training video of the new series, “Contemporary and future approaches to plant breeding,” is available. New videos will be added at https://www.youtube.com/@jeffreymitchell759/playlists weekly until the 25-part series is complete.

    Other project partners include Madera College, Merced College, Santa Rosa Community College, Hartnell College and Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association in Salinas.

    UC Agriculture and Natural Resources brings UC information and practices to all 58 California counties. Through research and Cooperative Extension in agriculture, natural resources, economic growth, nutrition and youth development, our mission is to improve the lives of all Californians. Learn more at ucanr.edu and support our work at donate.ucanr.edu.

  • UC Davis Entomology Doctoral Candidate Wins Major Leadership Award

    UC Davis doctoral candidate Mia Kanako Lippey, described as a “leader extraordinaire and an awe-inspiring entomologist who not only excels in leadership, but in research, academics, public service, science communication, computer programming, and scientific illustrations,” received the 2025 Student Leadership Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA).

    The award recognizes a Pacific Branch entomology student (undergraduate or graduate) “for outstanding leadership in his/her department, university, community, and professional societies, while still achieving academic excellence.” Lippey received award at the PBESA’s annual meeting, which ended April 2 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

    Lippey studies with  UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Jay Rosenheim, an insect biologist, and assistant professor Emily Meineke, an urban landscape entomologist. In her research, Lippey explores plant-insect interactions in agricultural and urban environments and the impact that global change has on these relationships. She recently received a 2024 USDA AFRI NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship of $120,000. (NIFA is the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and AFRI is the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.)

    At the 2024 ESA meeting in Phoenix, Lippey won a President’s Prize for her outstanding research presentation on “A Big Data Approach to Characterizing Impacts of Climate Warming on Agricultural Arthropod Populations” in the Plant-Ecosystems, Biocontrol Category.

    She holds a 4.0 GPA and anticipates receiving her doctorate in June 2025. She received her bachelor’s degree in entomology at UC Davis in 2019 with high honors.

    Lippey is a past president (2023-24) of the Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA). Since 2023, she has served as the student representative of the department’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, creating systems to improve communication between students and faculty. She led a DEI teaching seminar focused on a holistic and inclusive approaches for mentoring underrepresented students.

    Her activities include leading an Ecological and Evolutionary Response to Rapid Environmental Changes Program; and co-leading a UC Davis STEM Squad outreach program for middle and high school students in the Yolo County area. She engaged the students by creating hands-on activities, focusing on entomological research through insect collection and curation.  Lippey has also led STEM projects, encouraging and guiding underrepresented students to seek careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and assisting them with career explorations, job searches, networking, resumes and cover letters.

    Lippey is active in both the Entomological Society of America and the Ecological Society of America. She organized an Ecological Society session on effectively communicating climate change and sustainable agriculture to policy makers. “This level of involvement is relatively unusual for a graduate student and is a testament to Mia’s leadership qualities outside of the lab as well,” said Sara Emery, formerly of the Emily Meineke lab and now an assistant professor at Cornell.

    In other leadership and mentoring activities, Lippey led a graduate student seminar on agricultural entomology and ecology, zeroing in on traditional ecological knowledge. She created a course syllabus and led weekly discussions. Her titles also include teaching assistant and research mentor: she mentored two undergraduate researchers in the UC Davis Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, training mentees in GIS skills, R programming and statistical methods.

    As a volunteer at the California Academy of Sciences, Lippey identified and curated donated collections and built entomological displays for outreach and education. Her experience also includes work as a junior specialist and scientific illustrator for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Insect Service (APHIS); and a UX designer at Dolby Laboratories, where she developed professional audio software and designed icon libraries and high-fidelity graphics.

    Powerful Advocate for Other Graduate Students

    Her professors and colleagues describe her as:

    • “An exceptional and beloved peer within the entomology graduate students at UC Davis”
    • “An advocate for her fellow students, a constant supporter of their success, and is heavily involved with the Entomology community.”
    • “A careful and powerful advocate for other graduate students in the group.”
    • “An excellent entomologist” and “an excellent communicator”
    • “A thoughtful, creative, and intentional leader in our community. In serving with her on the DEI committee in the department, I have been deeply impressed with the creativity and intentionality she brings to her work.”
    • “An outstanding scientist whose non-traditional path in academia shape her inquisitiveness in ways that clarify the complex effects of climate change on insects. Her ability to reconceptualize accepted ideas and challenge old theories based on new evidence is inspirational.”
    • “Highly collaborative”
    • “Creative, curious and ambitious entomologist”
    • “A kind, caring and joyous person who is beloved by the Meineke lab and her Davis community.”
    • “Ambitious in a way that doesn’t knock others down, but rather allows them to thrive, too.”

    “Mia has vaulted off to an exceptional start to her career, having led research across diverse contexts, proven herself an outstanding mentor and teacher, and taken on far more service than would be expected for any student,” a faculty member said. “Indeed, Mia has already published 5 peer-reviewed papers and one book chapter, won prestigious fellowships (e.g., the USDA NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship), presented her work at multiple conferences, and attained important leadership positions. This is truly amazing for a PhD student!”

    PBESA encompasses 11 Western states, plus parts of Canada and Mexico, and U.S. territories.

  • New Map to Crack the Code of Pistachio Genetics

    California produces 99% of the nation’s pistachios, generating nearly $3 billion in economic value in the state. But pistachios have been slightly understudied in part because of the lack of a high-quality map of their DNA. University of California, Davis, researchers have now generated the most comprehensive genome sequence of the pistachio, allowing plant breeders to create better — perhaps more nutritious — varieties. They’ve also detailed how pistachio nuts develop, which will help farmers manage their crop more sustainably.

    New Phytologist published the study on March 20th.

    Scientists have sequenced the DNA of pistachios before, but co-corresponding author J. Grey Monroe, an assistant professor with the Department of Plant Sciences, said this new genetic map is vastly more detailed and accurate.

    “The improvement in accuracy of the new reference genome is like going from a hand-drawn map of a landscape to a satellite image from Google Earth,” he said.

    Monroe and the research team sequenced the genome of the Kerman cultivar, the most common pistachio variety grown in California.

    Climate change challenges pistachio yields

    Pistachio trees are resilient to drought and salinity, but they require cold winters to flower properly. As climate change brings warmer winters, growers need new pistachio varieties that can thrive in higher temperatures. Warm winters, combined with the dissipation of fogs that cool California’s Central Valley, have caused significant losses for pistachio growers.

    Given that establishing a pistachio tree requires a commitment of up to 50 years, researchers said California growers are understandably concerned about the impacts of climate change on their crops.

    A nutty development

    The study also identifies four key stages of nut growth from flower to harvest, providing a complete physiological assessment, including shell hardening and kernel growth.

    “Knowing how the nut changes through development will help farmers make better decisions, like when to water their trees, leading to more sustainable pistachio production,” said co-corresponding author Bárbara Blanco-Ulate, an associate professor with the Department of Plant Sciences.

    A more accurate assessment of its development could also help provide growers better strategies for harvest and avoid issues such as insect damage and fungal infections.

    Blanco-Ulate said it was important to also detail not just the physical changes of the pistachios, but also the genetic and molecular drivers of those characteristics. The genomic sequence includes precedent-setting information on how different genes behave in nuts over the growing season.

    Nutritious nut

    Pistachios have always been a nutritious food, but researchers have now discovered the genes and pathways that influence their nutritional value. This includes insights into how protein and unsaturated fatty acids accumulate, which is crucial for both their shelf life and dietary benefits.

    “We’re getting information about how all these nutritional characteristics are gained in pistachios and how we can improve that from a management perspective,” said Blanco-Ulate.

    This understanding could help scientists breed more nutritional pistachios in the future.

    The first authors of the paper are Jaclyn Adaskaveg and Chaehee Lee of UC Davis. Other UC Davis authors include Yiduo Wei, Fangyi Wang, Saskia D. Mesquida-Pesci, Matthew Davis, Louis Ferguson, Giulia Marino, Patrick J. Brown, Georgia Drakakaki, Selina Wang and Filipa S. Grilo.

    Research was funded by the California Pistachio Research Board, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research. — By Amy Quinton, UC Davis

  • Sweet Molasses Feed Key to Understanding Grazing Behavior in Cattle

    Researchers tempted grazing cattle with sweet molasses feed to discover whether cows would roam far and wide to graze or stick close to the herd, water supplies and feed stations.

    The findings by animal scientists at the University of California, Davis, and published in the journal Scientific Reports, offer a low-cost way for ranchers and others to identify the best cows for their landscapes to optimize grazing while meeting the nutritional needs of cattle.

    This is the third in a series of papers about research seeking to better understand the grazing personalities of cattle. The first studies established that the cows weren’t mindless wanderers or followers but had personalities that differentiated how far and wide they would graze, said Kristina Horback, the senior author on the paper and an associate professor in the Department of Animal Science.

    “This final study is trying to figure out, ‘Can we have any early indicators so that we don’t have to put GPS collars on all cows, but just do a quick practical test?’” Horback said.

    Water quality, soil health and habitats can be degraded by cattle grazing unevenly or concentrated in specific areas. A herd with animals that wander around a landscape to graze can benefit the landscape by distributing grazing areas and defecation sites while also reducing fuel loads for wildfires.

    Routine checks yield grazing personality

    The research took place from June to August over two years at the UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center in Browns Valley. Horback and others tracked 50 pregnant Angus and Hereford beef cows wearing GPS collars across the 625-acre site, which is a mix of grassland and treed areas. The elevation ranged from 600 to 2,028 feet.

    Researchers were able to predict cows’ likely grazing personalities by analyzing behavior in situations such as pregnancy checks or vaccinations, which require the cows to walk through chutes or narrow passageways.

    At the end of the chutes, the cows had two choices: go one direction to join the herd or another direction to pursue sweet molasses feed placed at different distances. The animals that moved slowly through the chutes and would go out of the way for the feed were consistently the grazing wanderers.

    “They were the ones on range that would go far and wide, that would also not really be that motivated to be closely, tightly packed with the rest of the herd,” Horback said.

    The homebodies consistently sought out the herd.

    “They would not choose that sweet molasses,” Horback said. “They would go right back to the herd as quickly as they could, and then on range, they would just stay together. They have their social group there.”

    Future generations

    Next up in the research is to see if grazing personalities pass down to later generations. Horback is looking at the female calves of the studied cows to see if they pick up on the same patterns as their moms.

    “If there are any calves who are fostered off to another cow, do they pick up the grazing patterns of their birth mom or their adopted mom?” Horback said. “There’s no guarantee that genetics alone will determine the grazing behavior of a cow, but it could increase the likelihood that a cow is a hill-climber or a bottom-dweller.”

    She is also working with colleagues in New Zealand and New Mexico to analyze blood samples from the cows that were tracked as part of related studies to see if genetic testing can provide some insight into behavior.

    UC Davis emeritus professor Juan Medrano published research a decade ago about genetic markers in cows that could indicate either hill-climbers or bottom-dwellers.

    “I hope to build on that knowledge with a larger, international dataset to understand whether grazing personalities are heritable,” Horback said.

    Maggie Creamer, who earned her Ph.D. in animal behavior at UC Davis, contributed to the research, which was supported by the Russell L. Rustici Rangeland and Cattle Research Endowment. — By Emily C. Dooley, UC Davis

  • California Agricultural Leadership Foundation Names Lesa Eidman as New President and CEO

    The California Agricultural Leadership Foundation (CALF) announced that Lesa Eidman has been selected as its new president and CEO, effective Feb. 18. Eidman will succeed Dwight Ferguson, who has served in the position since October 2020.

    “We are thrilled to welcome Lesa to the Ag Leadership team as our new president and CEO,” said CALF Board Chair Mike Young (Class 35). “Lesa brings to the role a deep connection to Ag Leadership, as a graduate of Class 49 and an actively engaged alum, as well as an inspiring vision for the future of Ag Leadership and California agriculture as a whole. Her passion and expertise will build on the strong foundation laid by Dwight and propel CALF to even greater heights.”

    Young also expressed his gratitude for Ferguson’s contributions over the past four and a half years. “Dwight has been instrumental in professionalizing our organization, leading our last strategic plan and positioning the foundation for long-term success and sustainability,” said Young. “His leadership has set the stage for an exciting future, and we are deeply grateful for his dedication and service. On a personal note, Dwight has become a close friend and mentor, and I am truly sad to see him go.”

    Eidman has extensive experience with agricultural producers and associations over the past 20 years. Since 2015, she has worked for Superior Farms – North America’s top processor and marketer of lamb – first as director of producer resources and sustainability and for the past five years as vice president of sales. From 2003 to 2015, Eidman was the executive director of the California Wool Growers Association and California Pork Producers Association.

    Eidman is a third-generation agriculturalist with a family heritage rooted in education and production agriculture. She earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural business and management from Fresno State and a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from UC Davis.

    “I am honored and excited to be the 10th president and CEO of the California Agricultural Leadership Foundation,” said Eidman. “CALF has a strong mission of growing leaders who make a difference, and I am eager to build on that foundation. My vision is to elevate the organization’s trajectory, expanding its reach and impact to address the challenges and opportunities facing California agriculture. Together with our dedicated team and alumni network, we will continue to empower transformative leadership and shape a brighter future for the agricultural industry.”

    ABOUT
    CALF is dedicated to growing leadership in agriculturalists who have the capacity and potential to advance, benefit and promote California agriculture. Since 1970, more than 1,400 California Agricultural Leadership Program fellows have become lifelong leaders who individually and collectively act as a catalyst for a vibrant agricultural community and make a significant difference in the agricultural industry, their businesses, communities and families. agleaders.org

  • Remembering Anita Oberholster, Celebration of Life on May 12

    It is with deep sadness that UC Davis announces the passing of Dr. Anita Oberholster, Professor of Cooperative Extension in Enology in the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Her passing leaves an immeasurable void in our UC Davis V&E family. Above all, our thoughts are with Anita’s husband, Connie, and their two children during this difficult time.

    Anita grew up on a farm in Malmesbury in the Cape Region of South Africa with her parents and two older siblings prior to completing her BSc with Honors in chemistry at Stellenbosch University. She continued her education with a PhD in Wine Chemistry at the University of Adelaide in Australia, working on factors influencing wine mouthfeel. Upon completing her research in Australia, Anita returned to South Africa, where she joined the Department of Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University as a researcher and instructor. In 2011, Anita started in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis as our CE Specialist in Enology.

    Anita was the ideal CE Specialist—she was smart, a warm person and terrific communicator, and a researcher who excelled at applied research that the industry valued to solve their most pressing problems. In recent years, she led a large group of researchers working on methods for assessing and mitigating the impact of wildfire smoke on wines, providing information that the California wine industry desperately needed in vintages like 2017, 2018, and 2020 when wildfires closed in on key growing regions. Anita was also the lead investigator on a USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative grant that aimed to understand the impact of Grapevine Red Blotch Virus, a disease that has had an enormous economic impact on the California industry.

    Anita communicated extensively with growers and producers all over California, including through traditional on-campus educational extension programs, on the road seminars and winery visits in growing regions in all corners of the state, online Zoom programs, social media outlets, and via YouTube videos—any method to give our stakeholders the information they needed. Anita’s presentations were authoritative and informative but were delivered in a friendly and approachable manner. She clearly had a talent for explaining difficult concepts in an easy-to-understand (and apply) manner that our stakeholders valued so much.

    In addition, Anita was a terrific colleague, always ready to jump in when needed, whether as a research collaborator on basic research, a co-mentor for a student’s research project, chairing committees to make our facilities better, helping our VEN Graduate Group operate, or leading in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the UC Davis campus, or UC ANR. Anita was giving of her time and talents off-campus as well, serving for multiple terms on the Board of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture.

    As much as she excelled in all these areas, perhaps Anita’s greatest passion was in mentoring a long line of trainees including postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate interns, guiding and inspiring them to find their common love of science while embracing them in an exciting and caring environment. Those Anita mentored have become leaders themselves in industry and in academia on at least four continents around the world.

    We were lucky to have had Anita with us for the past fourteen years. She has had a significant and long-lasting impact on the grape and wine sectors in California. For these efforts and their impact, Anita was recognized by many organizations. She received both the Extension Distinction Award from ASEV and the UC Davis Academic Federation Distinguished Service Award in Spring of 2021. Anita received the California Association of Winegrape Growers’ Leader Award of Excellence in April 2022, and she received a Wine Enthusiast Wine Star Award (with Tom Collins and Elizabeth Tomasino) in January 2023, a Northern California Public Media Food and Wine Award (Wine World Game Changer) in March 2023, and then in July 2023, Congressman Mike Thompson honored Anita with an American Dream Award for Yolo County. The American Dream Awards are presented to California’s Fourth District (Lake, Napa, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo Counties) residents who have come to the United States and made outstanding contributions to our communities.

    On a more personal note, Anita was a wonderful friend and colleague. Even with the very busy life she lived, she always found time for warm hospitality with great wine and food, often introducing South African dishes to her guests from California and around the world, from meat and breads on the brai (barbecue) with her husband, to table-sized charcuterie boards and South African casseroles, salads, and desserts. We will miss her very much.

    The Department is planning a Celebration of Life for Anita on May 12th from 2 – 5 PM and will announce further details as they are available. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center Research Fund in Anita’s memory. A UC Davis memorial fund has also been set up in her memory.

    The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis also published an article about Anita that can be viewed here.

    Finally, if you have memories, stories, photos or condolences to share, we invite you to do so via this website. Your words and photos will be collected and shared with Anita’s family and colleagues within the UC Davis and ANR communities.

  • Long-Awaited UC Davis Bee Genetics Book Updated

    Hear that buzz? The long-awaited update of the landmark UC Davis-authored book, Queen Bee Rearing and Bee Breeding by Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. (1907-2003), “the father of bee genetics,”  and his former doctoral research mentee Robert E. Page Jr., now an internationally known bee geneticist, is about to be published.

    Wicwas Press of Kalamazoo, Mich., published the landmark book in 1996 and now will publish the updated book, Honey Bee Genetics and Breeding, written by Page and dedicated to Professor Laidlaw.

    UC Davis Professor Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. with graduate student and mentee Robert E. Page Jr., circa 1980

    “This book is long overdue,” said Page, whose career took him from doctoral student to professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology to provost of Arizona State University. “Although it isn’t actually a revision of Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding that I wrote with Harry Laidlaw 25 years ago, it does bring that book up-to-date with respect to genetics and breeding.  And there is still a lot of Harry in it.”

    The Laidlaw-Page book was “for beekeepers who know little about genetics, and geneticists who know little about beekeeping.”

    Page said he never expected Wicwas Press would still be selling the inaugural book nearly 30 years later.  “Harry used to remind me frequently that a revision was needed, we intended to do it, but he passed September 19, 2003, at the age of 96. I considered revising the book many times, but life got in the way, and I struggled with what more I could say about queen rearing.”

    Reviewers hail the 182-page book as “probably the best reference for learning about bee breeding theory and practice and the history of honey bee genetics.” Page offers examples of both successful and unsuccessful bee breeding programs.

    The chapters include “Principles of Inheritance,” “Mechanisms of Inheritance,” “Principles of Breeding,” “Disease Resistance,” “Defensive Behavior” and “Honey Production.”

    “The fundamentals of queen rearing have been with us since G.M. Doolittle’s book Scientific Queen Rearing first published in 1889,” Page related. “Methods have evolved through a process of natural selection with different queen producers developing their own specific modifications that get passed on, shared, and adopted or rejected by others until we have the practices used by queen producers today. But still, they are not far from the fundamentals of Doolittle.”

    Page noted, however, that “our understanding of the genetic basis of inheritance and the development of genetic tools for exploring the genetic architectures of honey bee traits has undergone a major transformation since 1996. The biggest leap in honey bee genetics came with the sequencing of the honey bee genome, published in 2006, an enormous international effort to assemble 240 million base pairs (building blocks of DNA) that contain about 10,000 genes.”  Gene Robinson of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, spearheaded that effort.

    “Colony and individual traits are now routinely explored by genetic mapping, facilitating the identification of associated genes whose expression may be altered, thus enabling the investigation of their effects,” Page writes in his book. “We are on the cusp of the next great transformations: (1) the use of gene sequence information to reliably identify specific genes and enhance classical selection for economically important traits, and (2) the ability to transform genes, by editing them, into more favorable forms that may affect behavior and/or disease resistance.”

    Robert E. Page

    Since 1996, the main emphasis of bee breeding “has shifted from increasing honey production and reducing defensive behavior to controlling diseases,” Page wrote. “The increasing apicultural problems presented by varroa mites and their associated diseases puts pressure on bee breeders to find solutions through genetic stock improvement to reduce the use of chemical treatments in hives.”

    “The purity of honey is paramount in the perception of the public,” Page shared. “We must do all we can to preserve that. The tremendous worldwide effort to breed varroa resistance mechanisms into commercial honey bees has had only limited success, so far. But much has been learned about honey bee genetics and breeding, varroa biology and potential mechanisms of resistance in honey bees. Hopefully, the new genetic tools being developed will be employed and lead to more success.”

    Internationally recognized bee breeder and geneticist Susan Cobey, a mentee of Laidlaw, a former manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis,  and a newly retired Washington State University scientist, praises the book as demystifying technical aspects and filling in the knowledge gaps.  “Honey bee breeding is a lifelong adventure and passion,” she writes in the foreword. “As a young, idealistic beekeeper venturing into developing a commercial stock, Dr. Harry Laidlaw told me, ‘You will never be bored by the challenge of selecting the ‘super’ bee. She doesn’t exist, the journey will be the reward.’ Four decades later, this has proven true.”

    Cobey applied the Page-Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding Program (CPBP) theory to develop and maintain her New World Carniolan line. “The practicality and simplicity of the program gave it longevity. Many bee breeding programs have now converted to use this breeding scheme, including the USDA Hilo project.”

    “The literature addressing bee genetics, breeding scheme methodologies and assays for selecting desirable traits are scattered in the scientific, research and beekeeping journals,” Cobey wrote. “It’s like a large puzzle with missing pieces. Finally, in this book, Rob Page covers these subjects clearly, comprehensively, supported by his research with a highly informative and fascinating presentation.”

    Page, considered by his peers as “the most influential honey bee biologist of the past 30 years,” is known for his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. One of his most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large.

    Page pioneered the use of modern techniques to study the genetic basis of social behavior evolution in honey bees and other social insects. He was the first to employ molecular markers to study polyandry and patterns of sperm use in honey bees. He provided the first quantitative demonstration of low genetic relatedness in a highly eusocial species.

    For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.

    Page is also the author of The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies (Oxford University Press, 2020).  In 2023, he launched a publicly accessible  and free YouTube Channel, https://youtube.com/@artofthebee.

    A native of Bakersfield, Page received his doctorate in entomology in 1980 from UC Davis, studying with major professor Norman Gary and Laidlaw, his doctoral research mentor. Page  advanced  to professor and chair of the Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology), serving as the chair from 1999-2004. A second career emerged when Arizona State University (ASU) recruited him in 2004.

    Today Page holds the titles of ASU University Provost Emeritus and Regents Professor Emeritus as well as UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor and Emeritus Chair of the UC Davis Entomology Department.

  • Ag Workers Reduce Hours or Move Locations to Avoid Wildfire Smoke

    Millions of cell tower pings from dating, weather, messaging and other mobile apps that use location-sharing services are helping agricultural economists better understand how farmworkers respond to environmental hazards such as wildfire smoke.

    During California’s most destructive wildfire season in 2020, the number of farmworkers in a surveyed field fell by nearly 35% and the number of hours worked in that same location dropped by 37% on smoky days when elevated levels of particulate matter were in the air.

    On less smoky days, the number of workers in surveyed fields was nearly 18% below typical levels and the hours worked were 23% below normal, according to novel research from the University of California, Davis, to be published in the January edition of Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

    “When this smoke is really heavy there’s a large reduction in the amount of people in a field in day,” said Tim Beatty, chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the senior author on the research.

    The researchers also found that farmworkers tended to work more hours in the days leading up to smoke events and switched fields to avoid the worst conditions.

    “We could figure out very rich hourly information of where these farmworkers went and if they moved to another location,” said Goeun Lee, a postdoctoral scholar and lead author on the journal paper. “This is kind of the first application of this data to answer some important questions in agricultural economics.”

    A new resource

    The research represents a new way of gleaning information about one of California’s most elusive workforces – farmworkers who harvest crops that help feed the nation – that conventional sources cannot quantify.

    “The results are relevant for policy makers seeking to protect workers health, safety and well-being and to ensure the sustainability of one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world,” the authors wrote.

    Lee and Beatty used crop field boundaries to define agricultural crop locations, overlayed smoke plume and weather data to determine environmental conditions and accessed cell phone data from a company that collects location information from about 400 mobile applications.

    They identified time, place and movement data of cell phones at the field level from January to mid-October for 12,667 crop workers – representing 8% of the agricultural workforce in California – and a sample size 20 times that of the federal National Agricultural Worker Survey of 2020, which is a main but limited point-in-time resource for tracking this population.

    “We don’t do a good job of collecting data on these pretty marginalized groups who are very important, so it’s very hard for us to say anything about policies that affect them because they don’t turn up in the data,” Beatty said. “This mobility data is interesting and important to really answer questions about a group of people who are underrepresented in surveys.”

    Shocks on the horizon

    Major wildfires and other environmental shocks are projected to become more frequent and current protections may not be adequate to protect farmworkers and their financial health, the authors said.

    “Farmworkers primarily work outdoors and they’re exposed to many environmental shocks and factors that can affect their health and productivity negatively,” Lee said. “Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of wildfire smoke and California relies a lot on this labor force. They are essential for California agriculture.”

    Wildfire smoke can cause fatigue, dizziness, headaches, confusion and other symptoms that increase the risk of injury. The researchers defined high smoke days as those with 40 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate matter. California regulations require workers to wear protective gear like respirators, alter their schedule or work in an area with better air quality when particulate matter is 55.5 micrograms per cubic meter.

    The short harvest season coincides with more intense wildfire months, which means farmworkers could lose wages while avoiding smoke hazards. “We should worry about people’s health but also their ability to earn a living because that also impacts their health and wellbeing quite directly,” Beatty said.

    Future studies

    The research has some limitations related to who made decisions related to smoke.

    “It could be as simple as farmers have multiple fields and they just switch the field they’re harvesting that day. It could be they work for a farm labor contractor and they just basically change the client they are working for that day,” Beatty said. “That sets the table for a lot of future questions.”

    The methodology could be used to answer future labor, environmental and agricultural economics questions and the authors are using cell phone data to track farmworker movement and behavior during extreme heat events and after pesticide use.

    “This kind of new data set that we made can be a valuable resource to answer other questions about farmworkers,” Lee said.

    The research was funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. — By Emily C. Dooley, UC Davis

  • Making High-yielding Rice Affordable and Sustainable

    Rice is a staple food crop for more than half the world’s population, but most farmers don’t grow high-yielding varieties because the seeds are too expensive. Researchers from the University of California’s Davis and Berkeley campuses have identified a potential solution: activating two genes in rice egg cells that trigger their development into embryos without the need for fertilization, which would efficiently create high-yielding clonal strains of rice and other crops.

    A team led by Venkatesan Sundaresan, a Distinguished Professor in the departments of Plant Biology and Plant Sciences at UC Davis, previously showed that a gene called BBM1 in rice egg cells could switch on the ability of a fertilized egg to form an embryo. However, the method only worked about 30% of the time. Now, in collaboration with researchers from UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute, the team has shown that simultaneously activating a second gene, WOX9A, increases the success rate to around 90%.The finding was published Nov. 12 in Nature Plants.

    “It’s remarkable that after 20 years of unsuccessful efforts in clonal hybrids, there has been so much recent progress — from showing that it is actually possible back in 2019, to showing now that it can work efficiently in 2024,” said Sundaresan. “I’m very optimistic now that hybrids will no longer be the barrier to achieving sustainable agriculture with high yields all over the world.”

    A cost-effective way to feed the world

    Hybrid strains of rice, which are produced by crossing two pure strains, can yield almost double the harvest, but producing them is expensive and requires farmers to purchase new seed each year. If the hybrid plants could reproduce asexually, farmers could save seed from one year to the next. How to engineer asexually reproducing rice has been a puzzle that scientists have been trying to solve for more than 30 years.

    Sundaresan’s team previously showed that BBM1 is an essential trigger for plant embryo development, and that activating this gene in eggs can override the need for fertilization.

    “Switching on BBM1 artificially in the egg cell is enough to start embryogenesis and make a new plant, but this process only worked about a third of the time,” said Sundaresan. “One of the things we wondered was, maybe BBM1 is not enough; maybe it needs help.”

    By examining which genes are turned on in fertilized plant eggs, the researchers identified a gene, WOX9A, for which only the sperm-carried copy of the gene is expressed. When they simultaneously activated both BBM1 and WOX9A in rice egg cells, it resulted in embryo formation 90% of the time, though activating WOX9A alone did not result in embryo initiation.

    “We think BBM1 is flipping a switch that primes the egg cell to transition into an embryo, but the switch is not fixed,” said Sundaresan. “So, then WOX9A comes in and clamps down on the switch so that it doesn’t flip back.”

    Hybrid vigor without need for hybrids

    Because they arose from unfertilized eggs, the plants produced via this method are haploid, meaning they contain half the usual number of chromosomes. Though haploid rice plants do germinate and grow, they tend to be stunted compared to diploid plants that carry two copies of each gene.

    “Haploids are valuable tools in plant breeding for producing pure lines, which enable uniform crop production,” said corresponding author Imtiyaz Khanday, assistant professor in the Department of Plant Sciences in the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “These findings also have significant implications for producing clonal seeds at high frequencies that retain the benefits of hybrid vigor.”

    The next step, the researchers say, is to combine this method of activating both BBM1 and WOX9A with “synthetic apomixis,” a technique that they previously developed for asexually producing clonal seeds. This will mean that farmers can reap the benefits of hybrid vigor year after year by simply saving some of the harvest to plant the following year.

    “If we combine this trick of making an egg cell turn into an embryo without fertilization along with another technique that knocks out meiosis, we can efficiently produce high-yielding hybrid seeds,” said Sundaresan. “In a world where resources are increasingly limited, it provides a path forward for sustainable agriculture for rice farmers, and in the future, for other crops as well.”

    Additional authors on the study are: Hui Ren and Kyle Shankle, UC Davis and Myeong-Je Cho and Michelle Tjahjadi, UC Berkeley. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Experiment Station. — By Liana Wait, UC Davis

  • Feeding Grazing Cattle Seaweed Cuts Methane Emissions by Almost 40%

    Seaweed is once again showing promise for making cattle farming more sustainable. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that feeding grazing beef cattle a seaweed supplement in pellet form reduced their methane emissions by almost 40% without affecting their health or weight. The study was published today (Dec. 2) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    This is the first study to test seaweed on grazing beef cattle in the world. It follows previous studies that showed seaweed cut methane emissions 82% in feedlot cattle and over 50% in dairy cows.

    How much methane do cattle produce?

    Livestock account for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the largest portion coming from methane that cattle release when they burp. Grazing cattle also produce more methane than feedlot cattle or dairy cows because they eat more fiber from grass. In the U.S., there are 9 million dairy cows and over 64 million beef cattle.

    Ermias Kebreab, Professor in the Department of Animal Science, UC Davis

    “Beef cattle spend only about three months in feedlots and spend most of their lives grazing on pasture and producing methane,” said senior author Ermias Kebreab, professor in the Department of Animal Science. “We need to make this seaweed additive or any feed additive more accessible to grazing cattle to make cattle farming more sustainable while meeting the global demand for meat.”

    Difficulty in lowering grazing cattle emissions

    Kebreab said that daily feeding of pasture-based cattle is more difficult than feedlot or dairy cows because they often graze far from ranches for long periods. However, during the winter or when grass is scarce, ranchers often supplement their diet.

    For this study, researchers divided 24 beef steers (a mix of Angus and Wagyu breeds) into two groups: one received the seaweed supplement, and the other did not. Researchers conducted the 10-week experiment at a ranch in Dillon, Montana. Since these were grazing cattle, they ate the supplement voluntarily, which still resulted in a nearly 40% cut in emissions.

    Most research to reduce methane emissions using feed additives have taken place in controlled environments with daily supplements. But Kebreab noted in the study that fewer than half of those methods are effective for grazing cattle.

    “This method paves the way to make a seaweed supplement easily available to grazing animals,” said Kebreab. “Ranchers could even introduce the seaweed through a lick block for their cattle.”

    Kebreab said pastoral farming, which includes large grazing systems, supports millions of people around the world, often in areas vulnerable to climate change. This study suggests a way to make cattle grazing better for the environment and play a role in fighting climate change.

    A related article in the same PNAS issue highlights the need to improve the efficiency of livestock production in low- and middle-income countries using better genetics, feeding and health practices. UC Davis Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist Alison Van Eenennaam, the article’s author, said it is the most promising approach to meet the global demand for meat while limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

    Other authors of the seaweed study include UC Davis postdoctoral researchers Paulo de Méo Filho Paulo Meo-Filho and John-Fredy Ramirez-Agudelo.

    The research was supported by Matador Ranch in Dillon, Montana. — By Amy Quinton, UC Davis