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A monthly round-up of top stories from the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station.
October 31, 2023
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IN THIS ISSUE:
- Poultry scientists gather in Fayetteville for the International Avian Influenza Summit
- New Southern SARE Fellow Trey Malone will travel the U.S. to investigate sustainability
- Creepy crawly things are central to forest health research for entomologist Natalie Clay
- Elvis Elli aims to help adapt row crops to climate change
- More on turkeys, chickens, food processing and brewing science
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The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s International Avian Influenza Summit drew more than 1,800 registrations from 81 countries to discuss strategies in coping with the ongoing plight of the global bird flu epidemic.
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Guillermo Tellez-Isais shares opening remarks at the event, which featured an international lineup of expert presenters. | |
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“It’s important to come together now and be proactive in discussing the strategies that we can look to, to mitigate further spread of this terrible disease,” said Guillermo Tellez-Isais, a research professor at the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza has been confirmed this year in commercial and/or small flocks in Oklahoma, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota.
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Trey Malone, assistant professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness, was recently named the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Fellow, a two-year program focused on sustainable agriculture efforts nationwide.
“Arkansas is an agricultural hot spot in the backyard of the world’s largest and fourth-largest grocery stores, so if you are ever going to transform agriculture to be more sustainable, this is ground zero where that needs to happen,” Malone said.
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Ashley Dowling, professor of entomology, has been working with associate professor of computer science and computer engineering Khoa Luu to develop a smarter insect trap. Powered by artificial intelligence, the device will give growers a live snapshot of the different species of pests living in their fields during the different stages of plant growth through a season.
Their work recently received additional funding in the form of a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research program grant. SolaRid AR, an Arkansas-based ag-tech company, is the primary recipient of the $981,168 grant, with roughly $340,000 of this award going to Dowling and Luu.
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Division of Agriculture professor of entomology Ashley Dowling, right, and Khoa Luu, assistant professor of computer science and computer engineering, test out the AI-powered smart insect trap, developed in collaboration with ag-tech company SolaRid AR. | |
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Beth Kegley grew up on a dairy, beef and sheep farm in Virginia but says Arkansas has been good to her. Beth’s research focuses on the impact of nutrition on immune response, disease resistance and growth performance of beef cattle. Her long-term goal is to reduce the need for antibiotics in beef cattle. She says that if it's better for the calf, it's better for the entire food system.
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Managing risk in the real world is central to Andrew McKenzie's research and teaching program. As the Fryar Endowed Professor in Risk Management, Andrew investigates how to manage commodity price risk in the agricultural supply chain. Ultimately, adopting risk management tools helps improve efficiency across the entire system.
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Poultry scientists with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station are working to decrease the time and cost to diagnose an emerging disease affecting the turkey industry.
Billy Hargis, Distinguished Professor of poultry science and director of the John Kirkpatrick Skeeles Poultry Health Laboratory, said he and Ph.D. student LaTasha Gray are working with with Randy Moore, director of the Division of Agriculture’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and Tim Johnson at the University of Minnesota to sequence the DNA of Streptococcus gallolyticus for a fully assembled genome to make validation of suspected infections cheaper and faster to complete.
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Billy Hargis, left, Distinguished Professor of poultry science, and poultry science Ph.D. student LaTasha Gray work with a commercial cross white turkey in their research. | |
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Natalie Clay studies the health of forest ecosystems — not only by examining the trees but by inspecting the organisms living below them.
Clay is a new associate professor of entomology and plant pathology. Her research primarily focuses on how the availability of food and living space for leaf litter and soil arthropods impacts the forest ecosystem’s function.
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Elvis Elli is the new assistant professor of crop physiology and adaptation to climate change for the department of crop, soils & environmental sciences.
Elli uses a combination of disciplines and tools to predict how crops might respond to a complex and changing environment. One of his research objectives is to integrate field experimentation with crop modeling.
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Welcome to our new faculty! | | |
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Research and independent creative projects are featured each year in Discovery, the undergraduate research journal of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. This year's edition includes articles about heat stress in chickens, ground beef shelf life, fruit breeding and more.
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