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- Agricultural Research Service News and Events
- Animal Welfare Information Center News
- Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)
- West Nile Virus and Horses
- Economic Research Service News from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
- National Agricultural Statistics Service News
- National Agricultural Statistics Service's Daily Reports
- Top Stories from Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division (PECAD) at USDA
- Top Stories from Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division (PECAD) at USDA 2005
- World Agricultural Production News Feed from USDA, FAS-PECAD
USDA Agricultural Research Service
The United States Department of Agriculture- Making Climate Forecasts More Useful to Farmers
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.
Making NOAA Climate Forecasts Useful to Farmers
By Don Comis
November 6, 2009Climate 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.
- Sweetpotatoes Get High-Tech Help
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.
Sweetpotatoes Get High-Tech Help
By Jan Suszkiw
November 5, 2009An 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.
- Spread of Western Juniper Seeds Studied
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
Spread of Western Juniper Seeds Studied
By Marcia Wood
November 4, 2009Aromatic, 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.