Read the magazine story to find out more.

ARS meteorologist Jeanne Schneider and hydraulic engineer Jurgen Garbrecht are working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to translate seasonal climate forecasts into possible daily weather outcomes for farmers. Click the image for more information about it.

Clues on corn yields, weather conditions and climate patterns   ARS Grazinglands Lab in Oklahoma celebrates anniversary

Making NOAA Climate Forecasts Useful to Farmers

By Don Comis
November 6, 2009

Climate forecasts are becoming more useful to farmers and ranchers, thanks to research by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their cooperators.

Meteorologist Jeanne Schneider, hydraulic engineer Jurgen Garbrecht and hydrologist John Zhang at the ARS Great Plains Agroclimate and Natural Resources Research Unit in El Reno, Okla., are working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to translate seasonal climate forecasts into possible daily weather outcomes. This research supports the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s priority of helping farmers and ranchers cope with climate change.

Currently, NOAA forecasts are seldom used in agriculture. One problem is that they cover too large an area for direct agricultural application.

Schneider found that NOAA’s predictions of periods of above-average temperatures were accurate enough to be possibly useful for agriculture over most of the lower 48 states. However, currently available forecasts for cooler-than-average temperatures are generally too unreliable for many uses anywhere in the country.

Forecasts for wetter- or drier-than-average conditions are mostly useful in only about 10 percent of the lower 48 states. In these regions, seasonal precipitation predictions may assist crop insurance programs and other agricultural enterprises that operate at regional scales.

Garbrecht, Schneider and Zhang are developing computer models for climate-related decision support. Schneider developed new methods to downscale seasonal forecasts to the farm scale and express them in one-month increments. Garbrecht modified an ARS-developed software program to generate daily weather outcomes corresponding to these monthly climate forecasts. And Zhang developed a winter wheat grazing model to assess potential impacts of the seasonal forecasts on forage, beef and grain production.

Forecast methodologies are improving rapidly, spurring major advances in NOAA forecasting.

Demonstrations of specific agricultural applications in regions that can currently benefit from forecasts should help spur wider use elsewhere as forecasts improve.

Read more about this and other climate change research in the November-December 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

ARS is USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency.

ARS computational molecular biologist Brian Scheffler is heading an effort to create a genomics toolkit to help plant breeders develop new varieties of sweetpotato, the world's seventh most important food crop. Click the image for more information about it.

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Sweetpotatoes Get High-Tech Help

By Jan Suszkiw
November 5, 2009

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS) computational molecular biologist in Mississippi is launching a project to create a genomics toolkit to help plant breeders develop new varieties of sweetpotato. Brian Scheffler and his colleagues will use the state-of-the-art equipment at the ARS Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit in Stoneville, Miss., to develop and locate DNA markers on the 90 chromosomes of sweetpotato.

Sweetpotato, the world’s seventh most important food crop, is extremely important to global food security, according to Scheffler. Yet very little genomics information is available in a form that sweetpotato breeders can use to develop new varieties for enhanced nutrition or improved resistance to stresses brought about by climate change, adverse environmental conditions, or pests and diseases.

Scheffler will receive $120,000 in funding through the agency’s 2010 T.W. Edminster Award to pay for a two-year postdoctoral research associate to work with him on the sweetpotato project. The award, named for a former ARS administrator, enables postdoctoral researchers to work closely with experienced scientists in their fields of interest, as well as conduct high-priority research on pressing agricultural issues. The Edminster Award is presented to the highest-ranked research proposal among 50 proposals selected for funding through ARS’ annual Postdoctoral Research Associates Program. ARS scientists submitted 450 proposals to this year’s program.

In addition to creating genetic maps of sweetpotato, Scheffler and his postdoctoral associate will use a high-throughput DNA sequencer to develop a sweetpotato microarray for studying where, when and how certain genes are expressed. Of particular interest are genes affecting rhizome (underground stem) production in sweetpotato, especially during stress related to environmental factors such as drought.

The markers, microarrays and gene expression data will constitute the “tools” in the genomics toolkit, and should enable sweetpotato breeders to speed their identification and integration of important new traits into their elite breeding lines.

In addition to providing funding for Scheffler’s project, this year’s ARS Postdoctoral Research Associates Program will fund projects on assessing host specificity in aphid parasitoids, developing novel controls for stable flies, and improving drought tolerance in wheat.

ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The sweetpotato project supports the USDA research priority of ensuring international food security.

ARS ecologist William S. Longland is trying to determine what gives western juniper a competitive advantage in the environment. Photo courtesy of Joseph M. DiTomaso, University of California - Davis, Bugwood.org

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Spread of Western Juniper Seeds Studied

By Marcia Wood
November 4, 2009

Aromatic, evergreen foliage and plump, dusty-blue to nearly purple berries make western juniper appealing, whether it's a small shrub or a lofty tree. The trouble is, during the past 100 years or so, some once-open western juniper woodlands in this species' native range of California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho and Washington have become dense stands.

The result is that fire-danger ratings can skyrocket, according to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) ecologist William S. Longland at the agency's Exotic and Invasive Weeds Research Unit in Reno, Nev. What's more, the stands crowd out tasty, nutritious understory plants that cattle and wildlife could otherwise graze or browse.

This year, Longland developed new studies to determine whether a natural process known as diplochory gives western juniper a competitive advantage. In published research, Longland explains that diplochory is a two-step process in which seeds are handily dispersed by two different sets of "agents."

In the first step of what could turn out to be diplochory in western juniper, birds such as robins and Townsend's solitaires pluck western juniper's chunky berries from its branches, then fly away to places where they can safely eat their prize—the berry's fleshy fruit that surrounds its small, hard seed. This feeding helps survival of the seed by moving it away from the competition of the parent trees.

Seeds that birds swallow may pass through their digestive systems, land on the ground, and, in what may be the second phase of diplochory, be carried away and buried by small mammals like deer mice or kangaroo rats. Burying hides the seeds from other seed-eaters and helps the seeds germinate.

In a preliminary study, Longland's network of motion- or heat-sensor-activated cameras captured real-time snapshots of birds and mammals holding juniper berries or seeds in their beaks or paws. Though these caught-in-the-act candids strongly suggest diplochory at work, more evidence is needed. That might come from follow-up research by Longland and co-investigators Steve Vander Wall of the University of Nevada-Reno and Diana Hiibel of the Reno-based Animal Ark Wildlife Sanctuary.

ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read the magazine story to find out more.

ARS soil scientist Jane Johnson is looking for practical ways to keep carbon in the soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production. Click the image for more information about it.

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Searching for Ways to Reduce Agriculture's Climate Change Footprint

By Dennis O'Brien
November 3, 2009

Curbing greenhouse gas emissions from cultivated fields may require going beyond cutting back on nitrogen fertilizer and changing crop rotation cycles, according to research by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists.

Jane Johnson, a soil scientist at the ARS North Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory in Morris, Minn., is looking for practical ways to keep carbon in the soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In a comprehensive study, she raised corn, soybean, wheat and alfalfa in rotation so that each crop grew in the same year, on plots treated with and without fertilizer. She also used a less-aggressive tillage system known as strip tillage, in which only narrow bands of soil are tilled instead of an entire field. For comparison, she replicated the cropping system adopted by many Minnesota farmers-raising corn and soybeans in a two-year cycle on fertilized plots tilled with a chisel or moldboard plow.

She used a hydraulic soil probe to measure the organic carbon sequestered in the soil, and closed-vented chambers to measure emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. She found that when measured over the course of a year, greenhouse gas releases were largely the same under two-year and four-year rotation systems, and that applying nitrogen fertilizer had less overall impact than anticipated on nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrous oxide emissions peaked during spring thaws when the sun warmed the soil, regardless of which tillage or rotation system was used.

Chisel and moldboard plowing increased carbon dioxide emissions for a short time. But measured over the course of a year, carbon dioxide emissions were no different from plots with intensive tillage than plots without it. She also found no consistent patterns to methane releases.

Johnson's work is part of a five-year ARS project known as GRACEnet (Greenhouse gas Reduction through Agricultural Carbon Enhancement network) in which researchers at more than 32 sites are examining strategies to help reduce agriculture's climate change footprint. The project supports the U.S. Department of Agriculture priority of responding to climate change.

Read more about this research in the November/December 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.

Read the magazine story to find out more.

Red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum).Click the image for more information about it.

Key red flour beetle gene sequenced   Agricultural pest's genome is sequenced   How the beetle gets its shell

Scientists Plot Genetic Ploy Against Grain Pest

By Jan Suszkiw
November 2, 2009

Aided by a genomic map of the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and university scientists are plotting a kind of genetic sabotage on the pest’s basic life functions—from locomotion to digestion.

Nationally, infestations of flour beetles and their beetle cousins cost millions of dollars in losses annually to stored grains and the food products made from those grains. Warehouse sanitation usually keeps beetle numbers down, but severe cases can necessitate the use of chemical controls. The problem is that T. castaneum has shown a propensity for developing resistance to insecticides.

As an alternative, a team of ARS and Kansas State University scientists is examining ways to exploit specific genes that regulate where, when and how a substance called chitin is used to form the beetle’s outer shell, or exoskeleton.

Led by ARS entomologist Richard Beeman, the team identified nine genes encoding specialized enzymes, dubbed “chitin deacetylases” (CDAs), which trim off branches of a long chain of simple sugars that make up raw chitin.

Which branches get trimmed depends on where chitin is needed on a developing beetle’s body, and for what purpose, explains Beeman, with the ARS Stored Product Insect Research Unit in Manhattan, Kan. For example, around leg joints, chitin’s branched-chain structure must be snipped to allow for flexibility and movement. But around the head and thorax, where protection of vital organs is key, a heavier, stiffer chitin deposition is needed, requiring a different form of CDA trimming.

Beeman and KSU collaborators Subbaratnam Muthukrishnan and Yasuyuki Arakane used a biotech procedure called “RNA interference” to demarcate the genes’ roles and observe what effect their elimination had on the insect’s development or survival. Some CDA-deficient strains developed in the lab couldn’t bend their legs as adult beetles, making it impossible for them to walk, mate or feed. Another such strain couldn’t shed its old exoskeleton.

Ultimately, such observations could open the door to chitin-disabling biopesticides or anti-chitin proteins engineered into crop plants.

Read more about this research in the November/December 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

The research supports the U.S. Department of Agriculture priority of promoting international food security.

ARS is USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency.

Nocturnal predators like the carabid beetle, Cyclotrachelus alternans, have a large appetite for corn rootworms, the most costly pest of corn in the world. Click the image for more information about it.

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Spying on Corn Rootworm Predators’ Nightlife

By Don Comis
October 30, 2009

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologist Jonathan G. Lundgren, while exploring corn fields at night, has found a very different group of predators than the ones that feed during the day. It turns out that these night-time predators have a great appetite for corn rootworms, the most costly pest of corn in the world.

Research on day-active and night-active predatory insects is important for scientists who are developing strategies that maximize the potential of the natural predators in crop pest control.

During his night studies, Lundgren focuses on the top few inches of the soil surface, where rootworm larvae do most of their damage to corn roots. Lundgren works at the ARS North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory in Brookings, S.D.

He’s found that during the night, there is abundant and diverse life underground, with predators including ground beetles, rove beetles, spiders, crickets, and daddy-longlegs.

Wondering how so many and such diverse species could manage in the confines of the upper surface of soil near corn roots, Lundgren's research revealed the answer might be separation by time, with some insects confining their activity to as little as a three-hour window.

The scientists have two ways to spy on predators. One is to place pinned rootworms as sentinels. The researchers come back later with a red light to see which rootworms have been attacked and which predators are hanging around. Insects can’t see red light. The second way is to collect predators in a timed trap. Trapped predators are analyzed for corn rootworm DNA. This gives researchers information about how long the predators are hunting and the amount of rootworms the predators eat.

Lundgren found that one common carabid beetle, Poecilus chalcites, prefers day work, while another common carabid, Cyclotrachelus alternans, works a night shift, from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Wolf spiders search for rootworms during the night, while some other spiders hunt during the day.

This work supports the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research priority of ensuring international food security. ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of USDA.

ARS has released the first hard winter wheat varieties bred and developed for production in the eastern United States. Photos courtesy of David Marshall, ARS.

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ARS Releases First Hard Winter Wheat Varieties for Eastern U.S. Production

By Stephanie Yao
October 29, 2009

The first hard winter wheat varieties bred and developed for production in the eastern United States have been released by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

NuEast, a hard red winter wheat, and Appalachian White, a hard white winter wheat, were bred by ARS plant pathologist and geneticist David Marshall, research leader of the Plant Science Research Unit in Raleigh, N.C.

Soft winter wheats, which are used to make pastries, cookies and biscuits, are typically grown in the eastern United States. Hard wheats, on the other hand, are best suited for making bread. Hard wheat has not traditionally been a successfully grown crop in the eastern states because the area's humidity increases the incidence of disease in the field. This in turn affects yield and the quality of the grain.

But NuEast addresses these problems. In field tests, NuEast had significantly higher grain yield than the check varieties over four years of testing. It also showed moderate reaction to powdery mildew but was more resistant than some check varieties. NuEast's resistance to leaf rust is good, and it is moderately resistant to stem rust, including Ug99 races.

There are very few hard white wheats grown and produced in the United States. The main challenge with growing hard white wheat under humid conditions in the eastern states is the pre-harvest sprouting typically associated with white wheats, according to Marshall.

Throughout six locations and over three years of testing, Appalachian White had significantly higher yield than the only other variety that could be considered acceptable when grown under weather conditions in the eastern states. Appalachian White also showed a higher level of resistance to powdery mildew, stripe rust, leaf rust and Hessian fly.

According to Marshall, the key to developing a hard wheat for eastern U.S. production is the ability to produce consistently good grain quality, resulting in good milling and baking characteristics when grown in a humid environment.

Millers and bakers that are part of the North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project, an initiative supported with funding from the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund and Santa Fe Tobacco, have been testing the wheats since their release. So far, the feedback has been positive.

ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read the magazine story to find out more.

Kids' fast-food meals that included low-fat milk had a better chance of meeting the nutritional standards of the National School Lunch Program than meals having a sweetened beverage, such as a soda. Click the image for more information about it.

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Research on Childhood Obesity May Help Fight Epidemic

By Marcia Wood
October 28, 2009

More than 16 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight–a doubling of the estimated incidence of overweight among children and a tripling of the rate among adolescents in the past two decades. But scientists funded by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and based at the ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, Texas, are fighting back.

The researchers' investigations may lead to new, cost-effective strategies to help America's kids make healthier food choices, manage their weight, and set and achieve fitness goals.

Among these researchers is Jason A. Mendoza, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at BCM. In one early investigation, reported in 2008, Mendoza, study leader and economist Sharon I. O' Donnell and colleagues scrutinized the nutritional quality of kid-oriented "combo" meals offered at 10 well-known regional or national fast-food restaurant chains in Houston.

According to the scientists, only 3 percent of the kids' meals met seven key standards set by the National School Lunch Program for meals intended for children in kindergarten through third grade. Best-choice meals featured a deli-style sandwich combined with a fruit or a veggie that wasn't fried, and low-fat milk as the beverage. Also making the grade: a kids' meal that featured a plain hamburger, fruit as a side, and low-fat milk.

There's another way to look at the combo meals' report card: dietary energy density, calculated by dividing the total number of calories by the serving's weight in grams. The average energy density of the fast-food meals that did not meet the School Lunch standards was 2.3 calories per gram, compared with only 1.5 calories per gram for the meals that met the standards.

Read more about this research in the October 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

The CNRC is a joint venture of ARS, BCM, and Texas Children's Hospital. ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's principal intramural scientific research agency. The Houston studies reflect USDA's research priority of enhancing children's nutrition and health.