When you grow anything indoors, you can control a lot of the conditions, including temperature, irrigation, insect and disease resistance, and water quality and consumption. ARS researchers are using indoor recirculating systems to improve the health and yields of rainbow trout while maintaining great taste and market size.
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Fish farmers are using natural contained aquifers to grow fish to market size at an incredible fast rate. That’s because aquifers can provide optimal conditions for fish rearing. Unfortunately, you can’t scale-up aquifers. ARS researchers are working with fish farmers to develop and implement best management practices to increase fish yields, health, and size of fish reared in aquifers.
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Did you know that many of the advances in wool and leather clothing were developed in Wyndmoor, PA, including a technique to get rid of the yellowing of wool?
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We travel to Corvallis, Oregon, to meet with ARS research geneticist John Henning. Here at the Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit, John and his team recently released two new beer hop varieties: Vista and Triumph.
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ARS researcher Bill Kustas, a Research Hydrologist and Distinguished Senior Research Scientist at ARS’s Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory in Beltsville, MD, is part of a collaborative team called GRAPEX. The GRAPEX research program involves using satellites and even unoccupied aerial vehicles to identify vine water use and stress throughout a vineyard. Growers can use these data to determine if certain areas are getting too much, too little, or just the right amount of irrigated water.
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Corn is grown all over our planet and is an important crop in all parts of our lives. ARS Research Entomologist Xinzhi Ni, at ARS’s Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit in Tifton, GA, is looking at how corn plants get stressed, and how those stressors invite diseases and pathogens to proliferate inside the crop. Ni is hopeful the work will help future entomologists and breeders find solutions to these perennial problems.
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We travel to Byron, Georgia, to the ARS Fruit and Tree Nut Research Unit, and visit with Research Horticulturist Chunxian Chen. Dr. Chen and his group recently released three new peach cultivars: Rich Joy, Crimson Joy, and Liberty Joy.
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Check out our newest strawberry, and hear how new strawberry cultivars are created.
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Learn how a USDA breeding program was responsible for the development of the blueberry growing industry in the southeastern United States and how ARS scientists have developed and are continuing to work with farmers to create new cultivars of blueberries that we all get to enjoy.
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Where was the Roma tomato developed? Rome? Nope, the answer may surprise you. Learn this and more interesting facts about the Roma tomato.
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ARS researchers make sure the science, chemistry, and math all add up to great wine grape production across the U.S. Learn about ARS’s crucial roles in wine grape production as our researchers’ find answers to the biggest problems facing the nation’s wine grape industry.
For this season of Science in Your Shopping Cart, we’re hitting the virtual wine trail to learn the science behind wine grape growing and how everything in our environment, including wildfires, can influence the characteristics that pour into a glass of wine.
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ARS researchers Nancy Keim and Wally Yokoyama are looking to turn wine waste – mainly pomace or what the researchers call marcs – into healthy food products that end up in our shopping carts.
Keim is studying the health benefits of combinations of chardonnay grape pomace and chardonnay grape extract. As expected, the enriched flour is high in fiber and has a lot of bioactive material, which means it will react favorably with organs, tissues, or cells in the human body. How this material interacts with the gut microbiome could be key to seeing these nutrients translate into actual health benefits.
While Keim is looking at the health benefits of white grape pomace, Yokoyama is studying the health benefits of waste from red wine grapes. Red wine grapes are high in polyphenols, which are compounds found in plants that act as antioxidants and have anti-inflammatory properties. Polyphenols have been linked to lowering cholesterol and protecting against certain diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. But Yokoyama is studying whether polyphenols from red grapes can reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia.
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ARS researcher Kerri Steenwerth, a research soil scientist with the Crops Pathology and Genetics Research Unit in Davis, CA, battles weather extremes and ways to keep wine grape growers ahead of the environmental curve.
Her research involves regenerative viticulture practices, which is similar to regenerative farming, or farming with sustainability and the environment in mind. Regenerative farming focuses on building and sustaining healthy soil, and it’s not a new practice; it’s been adopted by most wine growers for decades.
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ARS researcher Lance Cadle-Davidson, a research plant pathologist at ARS’s Grape Genetics Research Unit in the finger lakes region in Geneva, NY, is helping protect wine vineyards that produce European style wines in the U.S. Cadle-Davidson and his team have created an automated process utilizing high resolution cameras with illumination to see fungal disease easily from LED lighting with artificial intelligence to quantify disease and robotics that capture images quickly in an automated system that speeds up the process of detecting and treating disease to keep wine growers one step ahead of deadly pathogens in upstate New York.
Check out the Blackbird robot in action at the link below.
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ARS researcher Bradley King, a research agricultural engineer at ARS’s Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research lab in Kimberly, ID, is utilizing AI technology to help wine growers determine the best times to water their vineyards. King and his colleagues developed a validated, automated model that uses artificial intelligence to remotely calculate the daily crop water stress index so wine growers know when to water their vines, and how much, to achieve maximum results for great tasting wine.
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The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) protects and helps the wine industry thrive in the United States. Learn some fun facts to share at your next wine tasting including the birthplace of American wine.
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ARS researchers are working with the National Grape Research Alliance (NGRA) to help wine grape growers adapt to ever-evolving weather patterns as well as extreme weather conditions. Believe it or not, it may not be all bad.
One of the unintended consequences of shifting weather patterns is the ability of certain regions to produce grape varieties they’ve never been able to grow before. This is also creating a resurgence of grape production in areas that were once prominent for wine growing.
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Meet ARS researcher Jacob Corcoran, a research molecular biologist at ARS’s Biological Control of Insects Unit in Columbia, MO. Corcoran and his team are working on a new age, next generation approach to biological control to slow down the reproductive process to protect wine vineyards from dreaded vine mealybugs.
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ARS researcher Arran Rumbaugh, a research chemist at the Crops Pathology and Genetics Research Unit in Davis, CA, is studying how smoke from wildfires can affect the chemical composition of wine grapes.
Wildfires from 2020 hurt wine grape production and had an estimated 3.7 billion dollars of economic impact on the wine industry due to smoke exposure and fire. Dr. Rumbaugh is working on an early screening method that could quickly detect the smoke exposure and impact on grapevines. This ARS research has the potential to save time, money, and millions of wine grapes.
To learn more about Arran Rumbaugh’s research, please visit the link below.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/project/?accnNo=447625
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ARS researchers work with the National Grape Research Alliance (NGRA) to initiate novel research projects and programs to solve industry challenges. And there’s no bigger challenge today than dealing with extreme weather and shifting weather patterns.
Thankfully, ARS researchers are on the job, working with the NGRA to solve problems and find solutions in the areas that grape research is needed most.
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