College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

The Groundwater Resources Association of California has awarded Professor T.N. Narasimhan with its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2009 for his contributions in the field of groundwater hydrology.

"This award is presented annually to individuals for their exemplary contributions to the groundwater industry and for contributions that have been in the spirit of the Groundwater Resources Association's mission and organization objectives. Individuals who receive the Lifetime Achievement Award have dedicated their lives to the groundwater industry and have been pioneers in their field of expertise," the citation reads.

The honor will be conferred on October 7, 2009 at Sacramento during the 18th Annual Conference of GRA and the concurrent 27th Biennial Groundwater Conference of the Center for Water Resources, University of California.

Previous recipients of this award from UC Berkeley include David K. Todd of Civil Engineering, and Luna B. Leopold of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:13 PM | Permalink

A recent graduate of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management has been named State Director for Rural Development by the Obama administration.

Dr. Glenda Humiston recently finished her doctoral degree in the Division of Society and Environment. Her dissertation was entitled "Sustainable Agriculture as U.S. Farm Policy: Opportunities and Threats to Reform."

Dr. Humiston served as Deputy Under Secretary of the USDA from 1998 to 2001 where she managed all aspects of USDA conservation mission and environmental programs, a $1.4 Billion budget and over 11,000 employees. Dr. Humiston is continuing her 20+ years of work facilitating local community's efforts for sustainable development.

"These [state directors] will be important advocates on behalf of rural communities in states throughout the country and will help administer the valuable programs and services provided by the USDA that can enhance their economic success," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:10 PM | Permalink

Regulatory changes enacted a decade ago appear to be responsible for dramatically slowing the flow of quality-improving agricultural biotechnology innovations to a mere trickle, reports a team of agricultural economists and biotechnology experts.

Findings from the study, published in the August issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, suggest that the slowdown may have lasting social welfare costs, such as the delay of nutritional improvements, production efficiencies and environmental protections.

"One of the great frustrations in the agricultural biotechnology community has been the failure of many new products with enhanced quality traits -- such as nutritional content, ripening control and processing attributes -- to reach consumers and processers," said Gregory Graff, an agricultural economist now at Colorado State University.

Graff led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis, working with Alan Bennett, a UC Davis plant science professor and executive director of the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture, and David Zilberman, a professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley.

Continue reading "Regulatory Woes Blocked Flow of Agbiotech Innovations " »

Posted by Cyril at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Global forces are challenging the ability of develop ing countries to feed themselves. A number of countries have organized their economies around a competitive export-oriented agricultural sector, based mainly on monocultures.

It may be argued that agricultural exports of crops such as soybeans from Brazil make significant contributions to the national economies by bringing in hard currency that can be used to purchase other goods from abroad.

However, this type of industrial agriculture also brings a variety of economic, environmental, and social problems, including negative impacts on public health, ecosystem integrity, food quality, and in many cases disruption of traditional rural livelihoods, while accelerating in­debtedness among thousands of farmers...

More: http://www.monthlyreview.org/090810altieri.php

Posted by Cyril at 11:10 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Over the past decade, scientists have been battling an epidemic that has killed more than one million oak trees in the state. If it remains unchecked, the disease could change the face of California's landscape. The good news is that researchers have found a way to inoculate individual trees against it. But time is running out before Sudden Oak Death decimates California's forests.

Posted by Cyril at 5:24 PM | Permalink

The San Francisco Chronicle recently highlighted plant biologist Chris Somerville, director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, among 10 Bay Area entrepreneurs, scientists and policymakers at the vanguard of a revolution that aims to reinvent the way people use water, power their cars, build their houses and live their lives.

"They might not become household names," wrote the Chronicle, "but their research, policy papers and startups could shape the way many households run in the years to come." The story continues:

As a plant biochemist, Chris Somerville has pioneered the search for clean liquid-fuel sources harnessed from the solar energy stored in nonfood plants. Somerville is director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, an ambitious project financed by a $500 million grant from BP, the British oil company. It is the world's largest alliance between industry and academia.

Somerville has made the study of biofuels for transportation, along with the social, economic and environmental impact of such fuels, the institute's top priority.
His research teams are using global satellite imagery, geologic surveys and market databases to identify abandoned farmlands and nonagricultural soils that could support energy crops; trying to identify the plant species most suitable for biofuels; and using biotechnology laboratories to explore nature's methods of releasing plant sugars and to create synthetic catalysts.

"We're not in commercial development; we're trying to understand it first," said Somerville. "I feel optimistic. We're trying to push the frontier forward."

Click here for the full story at www.sfgate.com.

Posted by Cyril at 8:57 AM | Permalink

Scientists from opposite sides of the world have created an improved variety of wheat by discovering how to prevent the phenomenon of premature sprouting, which can wipe out an entire crop.

The researchers, based at UC Berkeley and in Zhengzhou, China, have found a way to control “pre-harvest sprouting”—a situation in which wheat seeds sprout before they are harvested. This international problem destroys about 20 percent of all wheat in China annually. By overcoming this problem, the researchers expect to dramatically increase wheat yields and reduce the cost of products such as wheat noodles, a staple of the Chinese diet. The same procedure could be applied to barley, increasing yields for grain used in malting for beer.

Continue reading "Engineered wheat thwarts pre-harvest sprouting" »

Posted by Cyril at 10:38 AM | Permalink

It looks like Thomas Azwell -- a graduate student whose work crosses disciplanary boundaries from Society and Environment, where he is pursuing his Ph.D., to microbial biology, where he works closely with plant biologist Norman Terry -- might be on to something with his army of worms.

Azwell has developed a promising approach to safe disposal of oil spill waste (see 2:00 mark in video.)

From the California Acadamy of Sciences' Science in Action series:
http://www.calacademy.org/science/sia/2009/04/bio-inspiration-hair-mats/

Posted by Cyril at 4:12 PM | Permalink

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered a key mechanism responsible for a curious type of genetic inheritance that has been one of the great, unsolved mysteries in biology. The new findings, to be published today (Friday, Feb. 27) in Science, help explain the phenomenon of paramutation, in which certain alleles are heritably altered while their DNA sequences remain unchanged.

Paramutation violates the first law of genetics: that alleles are always inherited unchanged from the previous generation. The phenomenon was first described in 1956 for one of the factors responsible for corn-seed coloration. Since then, it has been observed in several plant species, and in 2006 an international group of researchers described an example of paramutation in mice, reinvigorating the idea that the phenomenon might represent a more fundamental aspect of biology.

The Berkeley researchers, led by Jay Hollick, associate adjunct professor of plant biology, returned to the corn plant to examine how paramutation works. They discovered that a plant-specific RNA polymerase Pol IV is responsible for the multi-generational memory of paramutation as well as normal plant development. This unusual RNA polymerase is responsible for the production of small RNA molecules from repetitive non-coding DNA.

Continue reading "UC Berkeley researchers explain key mechanism of inheritance that defies Mendel’s first law of genetics" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:50 AM | Permalink

Wine from the Sonoma Valley wasn't always so glamorous. Jim Bundschu recalls his dad hanging out at the kitchen table with California Burgundy jug pioneer August Sebastiani, playing the card game Pedro in the early 1960s. "They'd be drinking wine out of peanut butter jars while my mom made slumgulleon," says Bundschu, who oversees the vineyards of the Gundlach Bundschu estate in the hilly Carneros region of Sonoma. But in 1966, with a stiff new diploma in agricultural economics, Bundschu recognized the potential, maybe not for glamour, but certainly to create something extraordinary.

Read the story in Breakthroughs...

Posted by Cyril at 12:08 PM | Permalink

Monoculture farming leaves us highly dependent on honey bees, whose pollination affects 75 percent of fruits and vegetables and 30 percent of all food production. However, managed hives are being wiped out by colony collapse disorder at an alarming rate.

Professor Claire Kremen discusses how wild bees can boost the effectiveness of managed hives and play a critical role in pollinating the crops that keep California's economy humming.

Watch the video below or download the podcast.

Posted by Cyril at 11:36 AM | Permalink

A study prepared by Berkeley Economic Consulting, under the direction of David Sunding, professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, outlines the statewide economic and water supply implications of ongoing water pumping restrictions imposed by federal courts in California to protect the Delta smelt. In early December, 2008, environmental and sport-fishing groups filed suit to force the complete and total shutdown of delta water pumping operations.

According to the study, statewide economic impacts can exceed $1 billion per year during drought years such as those currently facing the state, and may well exceed $3 billion should the state enter a prolonged dry period. Additionally, the report documents the severe water supply implications of the Court's orders. Even during average and wet periods the Court imposed restrictions exacerbate ongoing drought conditions by limiting the ability of water managers to replenish water storage facilities and groundwater reserves. The net result is a significant additional blow to the state economy and a greatly reduced ability to respond to severe drought and other emergencies.

"The export restrictions imposed in a effort to conserve the Delta smelt clearly add significant new risks to California's water supply system," said Sunding. "The water pumping restrictions not only worsen the current drought, they also ensure that water rationing, fallowed farm land and economic dislocation will be the norm. The study highlights the unsustainable nature of the state's current water system. Rather than a series of court-imposed restrictions aimed at individual species, California would benefit from a more comprehensive fix for the delta."

Posted by Cyril at 3:56 PM | Permalink

On Dec. 11, CNR hosted "Creating Fine Wines on a Warming Planet," a panel discussion on the future of the wine industry in the face of global warming. The panel featured College faculty Miguel Altieri, professor of agroecology, and Kent Daane, CE specialist in insect biology, as well as industry experts David Graves, co-founder of Saintsbury Vineyard, and Caleb Mosley, viticulturist at Ridge Vineyards. The panel discussion was followed by a special wine-tasting event.

Panelists discussed current practices in and research on traditional, organic and biodynamic agriculture. They also assessed vineyard responses to scarce water, fluctuating fuel costs, pests and changing weather patterns, all of which will have enormous impacts on California's wine industry as the climate warms.

Continue reading "Sustaining the Harvest: Creating Fine Wines on a Warming Planet" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:05 AM | Permalink

This summer, 40 environmental professionals from around the world once again converged in Berkeley to attend the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program (ELP). This certificate program in sustainable environmental management links participants to state-of-the-art environmental and natural resource science and policy training.

Participant Liliya Smialkova, of Belarus and Italy, sums up the ELP this way: "They say that in order to make a change, one doesn't need to change the circumstances but to change his or her point of view. I feel that I have new eyes now."

Continue reading "Beahrs ELP 2008" »

Posted by Cyril at 3:00 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Dr. Rajiv Shah, director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, delivers an overview of the Foundation’s programs that addressing global poverty and hunger, and a panel of experts from the College of Natural Resources responds by discussing the challenges and opportunities to improving the lives of smallholder farmers and their families through philanthropy, technology, and policy. With questions from the audience.

Posted by Cyril at 3:59 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Notice a rise in the cost of a loaf of bread at the supermarket? You’re not alone. Overall, retail food prices in the United States have increased 4.4 percent in the last year. Other parts of the world have been harder hit and extreme food shortages have lead to riots and civil unrest.

David Zilberman, professor of Agriculture and Resources Economics at CNR, has been studying food trends for thirty years. He thinks drought, biofuels, transportation costs as well as increased income and demand for food imports in Asia are responsible for the increase in food prices.

Continue reading "Global Food Shortages: A Lasting Problem?" »

Posted by Stephanie Ludwig at 2:02 PM | Permalink

Professor Tasios Melis is unlocking the chemical power of green algae to create clean hydrogen fuel that eliminates air-polluting fossil fuels in its production. Check out "Power of Green," a segment from Fueling America, the latest episode of USDA CSREES video magazine.

Posted by Cyril at 9:16 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Peggy Lemaux, professor of Plant and Microbial Biology and cooperative extension specialist, has been selected to be a 2007 Crop Science Society of America fellow.

Continue reading "Professor Lemaux Awarded Crop Science Fellowship" »

Posted by Stephanie Ludwig at 10:56 AM | Permalink

by Sarah Yang, UCB Media Relations

A renewed focus on agricultural development is critical to successfully reducing global poverty and hunger, according to a new World Bank report co-authored by Alain de Janvry, professor of agricultural and resource economics and of public policy.

The report, "World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development," was released today (Friday, Oct. 19), at the World Bank's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"What we're hoping to do with this report is put agriculture back on the map," said Alain de Janvry, who was also co-director of the report. "The agricultural sector in developing nations has been underfunded for the past two decades. The Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty and hunger in developing nations by half by 2015 is not going to be achieved unless more attention is paid to where the world's poor are and what they do."

Continue reading "ARE Professor Co-Directs World Bank Report" »

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 8:52 PM | Permalink

California farmers depend on bees to pollinate the state's multi-million dollar fruit and nut crops, but last season thousands of bee colonies disappeared around the country.

The KQED science program Quest recently featured CNR ecologist Claire Kremen, and her research on bee pollination. In addition, an online-only special features the urban bees of entomologist Gordon Frankie.

Better Bees: Super Bee and Wild Bee

Posted by Cyril at 1:28 PM | Permalink

Devastating over 1 million oak trees across Northern California in the past 10 years, Sudden Oak Death is a killer with no cure. But biologists including CNR's Matteo Garbelotto are looking to the trees' genetics for a solution.

Posted by Cyril at 9:30 AM | Permalink

Public curiosity about bees kept UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Harmon-Threatt on her toes at an annual wildflower festival at the Sunol-Ohlone Regional Wilderness, south of Livermore, on April 7. Kids and adults alike peered through her magnifying glass at a collection of native wild bee species on display: bumblebees, mining bees, sunflower bees, leaf-cutter bees, yellow-faced bees — even bees that "land on you lightly and drink your sweat," she told incredulous young visitors.

Continue reading "Bees keep her busy as a, well, a bee" »

Posted by Cyril at 2:45 PM | Permalink

From the Associated Press:

Increased production of biofuels such as ethanol might help farmers' bottom lines and address climate-change concerns, but it could inflate food prices worldwide, warns a former White House economist.

"Worldwide, especially in developing countries ... food price increases are definitely something we're going to have to come to grips with," said David Sunding, who served on former President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.

Sunding, an [agricultural resources and economics] professor at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke on March 26 to water experts at a conference at the University of Nebraska.

The combination of rising energy prices and the demand for corn, which is used to produce ethanol, will continue to drive up commodity prices, he said.

Corn prices have already begun to soar. A rush to turn more land into corn production could decrease supplies of other commodities, driving up prices of them as well.

The resulting higher market prices could then dampen the public's support for government subsidies that are designed to help farmers reap profits when markets are down.

Sunding envisioned a scenario in which price supports for farmers are replaced by another government program — one to purchase food to keep prices affordable and prevent hunger.

Energy costs will also be a factor, said Sunding, who predicted that "ag policy will ... become energy policy."

"The ag sector," he added, "is so vulnerable to energy price changes."

Higher fuel costs affect farm operations that depend on irrigation and make it more expensive for farmers to transport their crops.

A study released last month by the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the federal government that provides energy statistics, forecasts that world oil prices might decrease over the next five or six years, then steadily increase over the next two decades.

Original article (IHT)

Posted by Cyril at 8:28 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

From The San Francisco Chronicle [original URL]
By Alison Rood

When Professor Gordon Frankie wants to impress schoolchildren with the importance of bees, he lays out an array of foods such as berries, grapes, pears and chocolate alongside a couple of dried-out tortillas and rice cakes and asks them which foods they prefer.

"Invariably the kids go for the fruits and chocolate," he said. "Then I tell them: In a world without bees, the only choice they'd have would be the dried-out tortillas or rice cakes, since wheat and rice are self-pollinated. Even chocolate, from the cacao plant, depends on the pollination of bees. That gets their attention."

Frankie, an entomologist at UC Berkeley and a specialist in the behavior of native bees, has been the leader of a decadelong urban bee research project. By documenting bee diversity and populations in urban gardens throughout California, he's discovering which flowering plants attract native bees and determining whether urban gardens can support bees. He said the declining native bee population is comparable to global warming in terms of a potential ecological catastrophe.

READ THE ARTICLE

Posted by Cyril at 1:33 PM | Permalink

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has awarded the Cozzarelli Prize to ARE assistant professor Max Auffhammer and his co-authors for their 2006 paper showing that reductions of human-generated air pollution could create unexpected agricultural benefits in one of the world's poorest regions.

Auffhammer, along with co-authors from UC San Diego, analyzed historical data on Indian rice harvests and found that harvests would have been 20 to 25 percent higher during some years in the 1990s if certain negative climate impacts had not occurred.

Just six papers, out of the 3,300 research articles published in PNAS in 2006, were chosen for the Cozzarelli prize.

The award, originally named the "Paper of the Year Prize," recognizes recently published PNAS articles of scientific excellence and originality. The lab motto of Nick Cozzarelli, the late Editor-in-Chief, was "Blast ahead," as he encouraged researchers to push the envelope of discovery. In his honor, this year the award was renamed the Cozzarelli Prize.

Integrated model shows that atmospheric brown clouds and greenhouse gases have reduced rice harvests in India by Maximilian Auffhammer, V. Ramanathan, and Jeffrey R. Vincent.

Posted by Cyril at 2:50 PM | Permalink

Growing genetically engineered (GE) crops in the United States continues to stir debate, but some University of California scientists believe attention should now be focused on how farmers opposed to the technology and those in favor of it can step back from the controversy and successfully produce and market their crops in the way they personally see fit.

Continue reading "Is peaceful coexistence with biotechnology possible?" »

Posted by Cyril at 3:17 PM | Permalink

Watch Video

Continue reading "Video: Pest Affecting Honeybees, Food Supply" »

Posted by Cyril at 10:18 AM | Permalink

Continue reading "Farmworkers: Can't afford the food they grow?" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:33 AM | Permalink

Continue reading "Reducing pollution could increase rice harvests in India" »

Posted by Cyril at 9:06 PM | Permalink

The study is the first global estimate of crop production that is reliant upon animal pollination. It comes one week after a National Research Council (NRC) report detailed the troubling decline in populations of key North American pollinators, which help spread the pollen needed for fertilization of such crops as fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices and oilseed.

Continue reading "Pollinators help one-third of world's crop production" »

Posted by Cyril at 4:11 PM | Permalink

Posted by Cyril at 11:10 AM | Permalink

On September 16, 2005, the College of Natural Resources celebrated Amadeo Peter Giannini's foresight and his generosity to the University of California and to agriculture in California and throughout the world.

The Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics was established in 1928 through the gift of $1.5 million dollars from Amadeo Peter Giannini, founder of the Bank of America. One third of the gift was designated to construct Giannini Hall and the remaining two thirds was used to establish the Giannini Foundation, which supports the Giannini Libraries and research on agricultural economics at the University of California.

Continue reading "CNR Celebrates 75th Anniversary of the Construction of Giannini Hall" »

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 10:34 AM | Permalink