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Supply chain disruptions and material shortages are fueling speculation about a herbicide shortage for the 2022 agriculture growing season. Bill Johnson, Purdue professor of weed science and Purdue Extension weed specialist, is encouraging producers to…
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With looming threats of coffee leaf rust to farmers’ yields, Purdue University mycologist Catherine Aime is working to protect this staple of daily lives and the economies of areas throughout the world.
Aime and colleagues warned of the potential threat to the coffee industry in June. She now is part of a team supported by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and led by the Synergistic Hawaii Agriculture Council to investigate the fungus that causes the disease and to develop tactics to counter it.
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“My community, friends and peers are the reason I am making it through graduate school,” Katherine Rivera-Zuluga said. “One hundred percent.”
Rivera-Zuluga is a Ph.D. student in botany and plant pathology. She is one of four Colombian students currently pursuing a doctorate in the plant sciences and one of many Colombian students in the college and university at large. This community of countrymen and women has been a key support system for Rivera-Zuluga and many others, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were all away from home in the middle of a pandemic where everyone is getting sick and is scared,” she continued. “It was hard and depressing, but we gathered together when we could, we tried to keep each other safe in many ways. Most of us didn’t travel home over Christmas, but we had each other.”
Like the plot of a mystery novel, research has found a twist in the way plants cannibalize their own cells to survive under stress.
READ MOREThe tar spot disease in field corn is causing concern this season across the Midwest, including Indiana. Purdue Extension’s field crop pathologist, Darcy Telenko, expects this year’s outbreak to result in significant yield loss.
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“Being in the heart of the Congo Basin, I came to understand forestry’s importance to us as a country and was curious to do studies in that area,” shared Blaise Jumbam, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology.
Jumbam had long been interested in biology, but family members in his hometown of Bamenda, Cameroon urged him to pursue banking. Jumbam gave finance a try, studying at the University of Dschang, but switched to botany at the University of Buea.
READ MOREThe world around you is teeming with life you can’t see. Plants, soil, water, insects – even your hair and skin – are home to microfungi, and they both sustain and devastate life on our planet.
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Twelve student-athletes from Purdue University’s College of Agriculture were named Big Ten Distinguished Scholars for their academic excellence during the 2020-21 school year. In total, 85 Boilermakers earned the honor, setting a record for the university.
READ MOREStarting in the 2011-12 growing season, a powdery orange fungus called coffee leaf rust spread like wildfire throughout Latin America and Central America, damaging crops on 70% of farms and causing more than $3.2 billion in damage. The epidemic stemmed…
READ MORELeaves are the primary plant organs responsible for photosynthesis. Their size, shape and angles — all affected by cell patterning and growth — can also expose more of their surface to the sun, increasing energy stores and grain production in crops. E…
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If Mike Woodard walks into a greenhouse space and finds a researcher mixing fertilizer one batch at a time in a watering can, he will likely mention the availability of a fertilizer injector. Or if he sees someone watering by hand, he’ll offer information about an automated irrigation system.
READ MOREThe creation of genes with new functions is a major driver of developmental innovation in all living organisms. How these genes acquire new functions over evolutionary time scales, however, is unclear.
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Three student-athletes from Purdue University’s College of Agriculture earned Academic All-Big Ten recognition during the winter sports season. They were among 68 Purdue student-athletes to earn the title across the university.
To qualify for Academic All-Big Ten honors, student-athletes must carry a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher while enrolled full-time.
READ MOREFor thousands of years, humans have altered — often negatively and inadvertently —microbial communities in a quest to improve agricultural crops. In recent years, knowledge about the roles microbes play in these systems has grown rapidly but is not yet…
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Online searches to buy succulents have steadily risen over the past five years, reaching an all-time high in 2020. Succulents like the eastern prickly pear cactus, Opuntia humifusa, are hardy enough to grow almost anywhere with dry soil, including Indiana. Their resiliency has helped their popularity bloom, but it is also why they can be a nuisance for weed management specialists like Bill Johnson, professor of botany and plant pathology.
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“2020 was a year unlike any other, with numerous challenges, opportunities and accomplishments across our college,” said Karen Plaut, the Glenn W. Sample Dean of the College of Agriculture. “Through it all we were proud to share Purdue Agriculture’s stories with the incredible community of faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors and so many other supporters.”
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Faculty, staff and graduate students from the Purdue College of Agriculture and Purdue Extension were recently awarded eight North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NCR-SARE) Program grants, accounting for over 20% of the $…
READ MOREThe U.S. grows high-yielding types of cotton that have fibers that are thicker and shorter than their luxury pima cotton relative from Egypt. Improving the shape and mechanical properties of cotton cells would make this already $25 billion industry mor…
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