With funding from USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), a non-profit organization in Virginia is working to make its community more self-reliant at maintaining its food systems while addressing food, nutrition, and farm issues.

Lynchburg Grows is a multi-faceted non-profit program that brings the healthy benefits of organic gardens to its community. Lynchburg Grows educates the public, especially children, about local and organic food, gardening and nutrition programs for local primary schools, and vocational training for disabled and low-income people. 

Lynchburg Grows incorporates hands-on urban agriculture and a food and nutrition curriculum at five local elementary schools to reache over 560 children annually. This curriculum meets the Virginia Standards of Learning and provides educational experiences through classroom lessons, tastings, and cooking demonstrations.

“A big focus of what we’re trying to do is hands-on,” said Michael Van Ness, a co-founder of Lynchburg Grows. The program brings teachers together to understand how to incorporate gardening into their schoolyard as a laboratory for real-life learning.

The program also reaches at-risk youth from Rivermont Day School, the Juvenile Detention Center, and special needs students at E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, Va.

“[The farm] gives [students] a place where they don’t have to be on guard all the time. They can relax and learn things,” said Dereck Cunningham, co-founder of the program.

Providing vocational training and job placement opportunities for special needs individuals is a cornerstone to Lynchburg Grows and a key reason for Cunningham’s active participation. Diagnosed with spina bifida, a spinal cord condition that limits mobility, doctors did not expect Cunningham to live past the age of 12.  Now a man of 36, Cunningham wants to provide opportunities to people with special needs.

“Individuals with special needs, whatever they may be, would love to give back to the community, but sometimes have a hard time finding a way [that they can] contribute. This program is one way that we can allow them to do that,” Cunningham said.

The group expanded their operations in 2006 after purchasing the Schenkel farm, a 6-acre plot of land formally used for rose cultivation. The group continues to grow the Schenkel family roses, but the farm now overflows with tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, basil, fennel, sesame seeds, lettuce, Swiss chard, pumpkins, squash, watermelon, corn, sunflowers, nasturtium, and herbs.

The program also operates six community gardens within Lynchburg’s city limits that sustain local, organic food production. Lynchburg Grows assists with community revitalization through new, workable garden spaces that provide access to fresh, healthy produce. The community gardens also provide an alternate source of personal food production and economic and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Flowers and produce cultivated at the farm and community gardens are sold at the local Lynchburg Community Market every Saturday. The program also provides local restaurants with a fresh, local supply of vegetables and greens.

Lynchburg Grows was founded in 2003 by Dereck Cunningham, John Wormuth, Scott Lowman, and Michael Van Ness.

CSREES funded this project through the Community Foods Project program. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education, and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future. For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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Nutritionists encourage eating a healthy diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables. In response, consumers flock to their grocery stores and stock up these healthful foods. Too often, though, produce spoils soon after purchase. This is becoming more common as more produce is imported from around the world.

The cause of the untimely spoilage is ethylene, a plant hormone that fruits and vegetables produce naturally as they ripen. Even at temperatures colder than 39° Fahrenheit, apples and avocados produce high quantities of ethylene. The situation is complicated when fruits and vegetables are packaged for long trips—as the air in the confined container circulates, the concentration of ethylene gas, even as low as .01 parts per million, accelerates the ripening of stored produce.

Postharvest losses due to spoilage, estimated at 30 to 40 percent worldwide, affect the economic success of growers, packers, storage houses, and distributors of produce. 

With funding from USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), Dr. Reza Shekarriz and W. L. Allen of Fluid Analytics, Inc., in Lake Oswego, Ore., have developed a compact sensor to accurately measure low concentrations of ethylene on transport containers.

“This issue is becoming more critical as global trade and year-round consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables increases,” Shekarriz said. “Ethylene-related problems make up a significant portion of postharvest losses in developing countries, resulting in negative economic impacts worth billions of dollars every year.”

Produce freshness can be controlled by carefully monitoring and regulating exposure to ethylene during transport. Reducing produce exposure to ethylene slows the natural ripening process, thereby extending produce shelf life.

The new sensor continuously samples air at a regulated flow rate, normally 12 to 30 cubic inches of air per minute. Not only can the sensor detect ethylene at concentrations low enough to ripen produce, it also reports ethylene concentration in real-time to provide greater control over ethylene levels during transport.

“This sensor is far more sensitive to ethylene detection than previous technology. Future developments may increase sensitivity to provide better response times and will be integrated with ethylene scrubbers to actively remove ethylene from cold storage rooms and shipping containers” said Shekarriz.

This device is particularly important for organic produce that does not use other chemicals to control the ripening process.

The beneficiaries of this new sensing technology include horticulture and floriculture research institutions, growers, packing houses, cold-storage facilities, greenhouses, shipping containers, and consumers.

Scientists in the United States, Germany, England, France, and the Netherlands are already using prototypes of the ethylene sensor.  Future work by this research team will focus on developing new technology to remove ethylene from an enclosed space to further reduce the complications of postharvest ripening.

This technology has been licensed to a French company, ABSOGER, for commercialization into the European cold storage market.  The commercial units are expected to reach the market in mid-2009.

CSREES funded this research project through the Small Business Innovation Research program. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education, and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues that impact people’s daily lives and the nation’s future. For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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Nothing says summer like a ripe, juicy slice of watermelon on a hot day. However, this important summertime fare is under assault and may not even make it to the table; a tiny pathogen is ravaging crops, causing the rind to weaken and allowing the fruit to ooze out into the field.

The disease, called watermelon fruit blotch, accounts for losses of up to 90 percent of marketable yield in some watermelon fields. Fruit blotch was first detected in Florida in 1989. Since that time, it has migrated along the eastern seaboard and into Indiana, affecting 11 states. The rapid migration and expansion of this disease may lie in its seeds.

The U.S. watermelon crop is worth $434 million; for each 1 percent of the crop lost to the disease, it accounts for an annual loss of $4.34 million. In addition, the average value of watermelon per acre of land is $3,488; if a farmer lost 90 percent of a crop to watermelon fruit blotch, the loss would be $3,139 per acre.

With funding from USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES), scientists in California have developed a test to detect the presence of this important fruit pathogen on watermelon seeds.

“Seed health testing is important in order to identify infected seed lots,” said Parm Randhawa, at the California Seed and Plant Lab, Inc. “[It allows us to] prevent the introduction of diseases by eliminating infected seed lots from sales.”

Since only one or two seeds in a lot consisting of thousands of seeds might be infected, sensitive tests are essential. Randhawa and colleagues have developed a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test that is sensitive enough to detect watermelon fruit blotch in watermelon and melon seeds. The test has the added benefit of determining if the pathogen is alive or dead. The test has been accredited by the National Seed Health System.

The PCR test’s power comes from its ability to amplify a few copies of available DNA and replicate it by several orders of magnitude. By generating millions of copies, it is possible to easily test for the presence of the pathogen.

“In a blind test, the new test successfully detected the pathogen-infected seeds in 30 samples,” said Ronald Walcott at the University of Georgia.
 
The research team has successfully tested watermelon and melon seeds over the past 5 years, testing 1,925 seed lots, each consisting of 10,000 seeds. Their clientele include Shamrock seeds, Tokita seeds, Known-You seeds, United Genetics, Syngenta Seeds, and South Western Seeds.

Fruit blotch, transferred into a field by infected seeds or transplants, is first expressed as the fruit begins to develop. The disease appears as a coffee-colored stain on the rind of the fruit. The stain marks a point of weakness where the rind splits open allowing microorganisms to invade and rot the fruit.

The team plans to develop for growers and industry a PCR test kit for 10 of the most important bacterial pathogens to vegetable crops.

“The commercial application of this test kit will aid agriculture and the seed industry to detect bacterial pathogens easier, faster, and cheaper,” Randhawa said.

CSREES funded this project with Phase I and Phase II funds through the SBIR program. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future. For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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This beverage, which has become all the rage in organic agriculture, is not made from earthworms. No, this tea is made from earthworm excrement steeped in liquid. Earthworm tea is easier to transport and apply to crops than other types of fertilizers, and plants love it.

With funding from USDA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, administered by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), scientists in Oregon and Ohio examined how plant compounds, incorporated into earthworm tea, affect plant growth and development and suppress diseases and pests.

Soil is a medium that supports plants and stores the nutrients necessary for plant growth and development, but the choice of soil makes a substantial difference to how plants thrive. Earthworms and microbes play an important role in improving soil fertility.

Vermicompost, the end product of an earthworm meal, not only dramatically increases plant growth and yield, but also suppresses diseases, parasitic nematodes, and arthropod pests. Vermicompost maintains high levels of microbial activity, which produces such valuable plant compounds as growth hormones, plant growth regulators, and soluble nutrients.

These compounds normally break down quite rapidly in soils, but they stick to the humic acid produced during the vermiculture process. Like a time-release capsule, the chemicals release slowly to promote enhanced plant growth and production.

Keith Fletcher and colleagues at Oregon Soil Corporation, in conjunction with Clive Edwards of The Ohio State University, tested food-waste teas on the growth of tomato and cucumber plants.

“The vermicompost tea increased plant growth and yields dramatically—by up to 50 percent,” Edwards said.

In addition, the teas successfully suppressed pests and diseases and limited the damage caused by plant pathogens, parasitic nematodes, aphids, and spider mites.

Most importantly, the tea produced the favorable environmental soil conditions required for healthy microbial activity, made nitrogen available to the plants, and provided plant growth promoters.

Organic gardeners, growers, and farmers are always looking for non-chemical methods to suppress plant pathogens and pests. “The benefit of increasing crop production is an added bonus. The ease of use of vermicompost teas is particularly attractive to organic growers,” Edwards said.
 
The use of vermicompost and vermicompost tea reduces the application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides onto farmland with little or no impact to soil and water quality or to the surrounding lands.

Future work will focus on the shelf life of vermicompost teas to ensure the highest quality product for commercial application and its use on other crops.

CSREES funded project with SBIR Phase I and Phase II funds. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future.  For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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With funding from USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), scientists in California are teaching the next generation of scientists to identify and predict the migration and fate of disease-causing pathogens.

Sharon Walker and colleagues at the University of California–Riverside established a water quality research program that offers under-represented students a chance to conduct research and build scientific skills. 

Every year, two students are selected from Riverside Community College. During the program, students spend the summer in campus dormitories and receive a salary to conduct guided research.  Following their summer program, the students continue for a year-long part-time internship in Walker’s laboratory.

The student research covers a variety of scientific questions pertaining to food-borne pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. coli. Their work, to date, ranges from how pathogens persist in water to how the same pathogens adhere to common household surfaces. 

Each student project adds to the overall goal of understanding and predicting the various physical and chemical mechanisms that control how pathogens persist in water and soil.

“In our laboratory, we are really interested in water quality and, in particular, the fate of particles that can be a public health hazard,” Walker said. “We're very interested in understanding the movement of these particles in the environment; with an understanding of those mechanisms, we can develop means of removing them.”

This research is timely. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 76 million cases of food-borne disease occur each year in the United States. The CDC estimates that there are 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to food-borne diseases each year. 

In addition to the research, the program pairs the undergrads with graduate student mentors.

“We have a real collaboration going on in the lab. We train undergraduates and let them participate in cutting-edge research in our laboratory.  In return, their time and effort eases our daily schedule and helps our productivity too. They have sharp eyes to catch points we miss. In addition, mentoring undergraduate students has helped me improve my communication, team work, and time management skills,” said Berat Haznedaroglu, a Ph.D. candidate.

In the past 2 years, the program has successfully recruited and retained four community college students in the program. All of the students continue their education at 4-year colleges, including the University of California, California Polytechnic Institute–Pomona, Colorado State University, and University of California–Irvine.

"I am extremely focused on leading the way in a new direction for Hispanic people in science-related fields," said Juan Lucio, a 2007-2008 program participant. Lucio is the first member of his immediate and extended family to attend college.

“We hope that [the program] can continue beyond this year. It has clearly been successful in providing community college students crucial mentoring and professional opportunities that help them [succeed] in engineering and scientific fields,” Walker said.

CSREES funded this research project through the National Research Initiative Water and Watersheds program. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education, and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future. For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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Now, however, scientists have uncovered the secret behind the C. perfringens’ success.

With funding from USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), scientists in Pennsylvania discovered an important mechanism that protects the bacterium from common food hygiene techniques, such as heat and cold treatment and chemical preservatives.

Bruce McClane and Jihong Li at the University of Pittsburgh identified a small acid-soluble protein, called Ssp4, which imparts heat and sodium nitrite resistance to spores of the bacterium.

The gastrointestinal symptoms associated with C. perfringens food poisoning are caused by a toxin called enterotoxin that is produced by some strains of these bacteria. The enterotoxin gene can be carried on a chromosome or a plasmid, which is an extra segment of DNA.

Most enterotoxin-producing bacteria are also capable of producing spores that are exceptionally resistant to hostile environmental conditions. The spore, which forms inside the bacterial cell, contains a complete copy of DNA and allows the bacterium to become dormant and survive environmental stress.

The small, acid-soluble protein is located inside the spore, where it binds to, and protects, the bacterial DNA. The super-resistant spore of food poisoning strains involves, at least in part, production of an usual variant of Ssp4 that binds exceptionally tight to DNA. By protecting its DNA, the bacterium can withstand and survive hostile environments and be transferred following improper cooking, preparation, or storage techniques.

“Think of the variant Ssp4 made by food poisoning strains of bacteria as a protective cloak. This cloak prevents damage to the DNA by heat or other food-associated stresses so that the bacterial cell can resume growth when environmental conditions improve,” McClane and Li wrote.

Food-borne pathogens that survive improper food preparation commonly transfer. A small number of disease-causing bacteria that survive the heat of cooking begin to multiply during the cool-down and storage stages. Meat and meat products are the most common foods implicated with this food-borne pathogen.

Ssp4 also appears to be made by other Clostridial species, including Clostridium botulinum, another important cause of food-borne illness. A similar mechanism appears to impart protection to Bacillus organisms, another bacterial pathogen responsible for food poisoning events. Spores of both Clostridium and Bacilluspersist in soil, sediments, and areas subject to human or animal fecal pollution.

Food-borne illness and death is most prevalent in young, elderly, or debilitated populations.

Future work on the small acid-soluble protein and spores of bacteria responsible for food-borne illness may provide new strategies to interfere with bacterial strains; this ultimately improves the safety of the food supply. The information gained from C. perfringens may be applied to other disease-causing bacteria to ensure the safety of the food supply.

CSREES funded this research project through the NRI Ensuring Food Safety program. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future.  For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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The Auburn team, led by rural sociologist Conner Bailey, identifies scale-appropriate harvesting and wood processing technologies, and uses locally produced lumber to build low-cost housing.  USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) is funding the project.

The need for a project such as this stems from the evolution of the forest products industry in the South.  “If you don’t have at least 50 acres of good timber, no commercial logger wants to even talk to you,” Bailey said.  “That was not the case 30 years ago, when logging operations were made up of small trucks and chain saws.  Today, loggers are heavily mechanized and it is expensive to move the equipment and set up operations.”  This expense compels loggers to direct their deliveries to large mills.

There are two consequences of this technological change:  many forestland owners have lost access to timber markets, and many rural communities no longer have a local source of lumber.  The Auburn project will address both problems.  For example, the availability of inexpensive portable sawmills creates new opportunities for the production of building material where it is needed.  The extension component of the Auburn project promotes adoption of these harvesting and wood processing technologies to generate income and produce affordable building materials.  Extension efforts are focused in rural areas that lack ready access to the major retail building supply stores that serve urban markets.

An important component of this integrated project is linkage to Auburn’s Rural Studio, a program of the College of Architecture.  Through this program, students learn to become “citizen architects,” using their talents to serve the needs of the rural poor.  During 2007-2008, students designed a house and built it using locally-harvested timber and a total material budget of approximately $10,000.  Next year, students with the Rural Studio are going to build on this experience and use local timber resources to construct a number of projects.  These projects provide both important learning opportunities for students and high quality, inexpensive housing for local residents in west Alabama, the poorest region of the state.

The work of Bailey and his colleagues will strengthen the availability of local resources to rural communities. By using local materials, residents can bolster economic development while improving their community.

CSREES funded this integrated research-extension-instructional project through the National Research Initiative Rural Development program. Through federal funding and leadership for research, education, and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future. For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov.

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With funding from USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), the Small Farmer Agricultural Leadership Training Institute at the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Baton Rouge, LA, promotes small and family farm sustainability by enhancing business management skills and leadership development.

Dawn Mellion Patin, agriculture specialist at the Ag Center, developed the Small Farmer Agricultural Leadership Training Institute, which brings its services to minority and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.  “By developing leaders in local communities, we will enhance the participants’ business and farm management skills,” Mellion Patin said.

The institute assists minority, socially disadvantaged, and limited-resource agricultural producers from 10 Southern states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.  Participants are selected through a competitive application process.

The 2-year course consists of training seminars, video lessons, and study tours.  Students participate in interactive, experiential learning workshops where they take part in small and large group exercises to broaden and enhance their communications skills. 

“The impacts from this initiative have been immediate.  Four of the graduates serve on regional or local advisory committees and three have been selected as ‘small farmer of the year’ in their states,” Mellion Patin said.  “The skills learned in this course have empowered small farmers to become key decisionmakers in their small, rural communities as well as in the larger agricultural community.”

The institute’s curriculum covers knowledge of agricultural infrastructure, state and federal government, agricultural economics, and the effect of global agriculture on the U.S. economy.  Participants develop the leadership skills they need to improve their ability to manage farm businesses in a competitive global economy.  In addition, course materials introduce participants to public policy and help them prepare to participate in this process.

The project builds unity and confidence to a formerly isolated group of agricultural producers – the leadership skills they develop provide confidence and self-esteem and their new business management skills build capacity and improve opportunities needed to grow this agricultural sector.  As a result, participants bring increased revenue and prospects to rural communities.

Willonese Tillman-Adams, an educator-turned-farmer, participated in the program after retirement.  “The number one problem facing us [with the farm] was record keeping,” Tillman-Adams said.  “When tax time came, we had no system in place [to handle the] deficiency in records. The Small Farmer Agricultural Leadership Training Institute [provided] all of the risk management training and was the best thing to happen to me since I became a farmer.”

CSREES funded this research project through the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers program.  Through federal funding and leadership for research, education and extension programs, CSREES focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future.  For more information, visit www.csrees.usda.gov or or www.suagcenter.com.

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