ars

As we reflect in celebration of USDA’s 150^th anniversary, it’s easy to take pride in the problem-solving abilities of agricultural scientists since 1862.

The challenges in America have been great, including the Dust Bowl, wars, human health threats, and attacks on crops and animals from pests. Researchers have met these challenges and will continue to do so, while enabling growers to produce abundant food that is safe to eat.

On January 9, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack put forth USDA’s “Blueprint for Stronger Service” which focuses on streamlining operations and cutting costs throughout the Department.

The “Blueprint for Stronger Service” calls for USDA to close 259 domestic offices, facilities and laboratories, as well as taking business-related actions such as consolidating cell phone plans across the Department, standardizing civil rights training and purchase of cybersecurity products, and centralizing activities related to civil rights, human resources, procurement and property management.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Understanding the causes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural landscapes is truly a multi-scale challenge, with GHG sources ranging from whole plant, to the microscopic microbe level.  For example, denitrification, the production of nitrous oxide, is the result of the action of just a few unique enzymes produced by a small number of bacteria and fungi in the soil.  These small players have huge importance because nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Increases in nitrous oxide and other GHGs have been implicated in major global changes such as increased mean annual temperatures, resulting in melting glaciers, increasing floods, and more frequent heat waves.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA's rich science and research portfolio.

With spring not that far away, the garden catalogues are starting to fly through the mail, but the “must read” of the moment for America’s estimated 80 million gardeners is the new Plant Hardiness Zone Map rolled out by USDA last week at www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

In the 1920s, U.S. Navy recruiting posters exhorted young men to “Join the Navy and see the world!”  If USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) chose a similar slogan, it would probably be, “Join ARS and change the world!”

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Stainless steel’s all the rage in gourmet kitchen design, but its appeal could soon extend well beyond the kitchen to the nation’s dairy farms, thanks to intriguing discoveries by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the agency’s Animal Waste Management Research Unit in Bowling Green, Ky.

U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station is breaking out its 79-year-old collection of 20,000 fungus cultures – yes, the stuff that grows in dark, damp places – to help create a new 1,000-species fungal directory.

USDA employees raised about 40 semi-trailers worth of food nationwide during the 3^rd annual Feds Feed Families Food Drive! Put another way, 40 semi-trailers is equivalent to an astonishing 1,791,393 pounds of food. This number shattered USDA’s already ambitious goal of raising 500,000 pounds of food this summer. Accomplishing this goal is a testament to the dedication of USDA employees around the country to feed our neighbors. Whether that is through the department’s 15 different nutrition assistance programs that touch the lives of one in four Americans, or from their own generosity, USDA employees are making a big difference during a time of need.

When President Obama honored 94 researchers on Sept. 26 as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, chances are there was only one former pet-shop-manager-turned-zookeeper-turned-scientist in the bunch: Jonathan Lundgren.

Lundgren works at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory at Brookings, S.D., and he's also the ARS Early Career Scientist of 2010.  He calls himself a "predator ecologist," but he's also known within ARS as "the bug detective."

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA's rich science and research portfolio.

What a long, strange trip it’s been for newly discovered South American varieties of cacao beans—all the way from the remote Amazon Basin in Peru to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) labs in Beltsville, Md., where the beans are being studied as a possible source of future high-end chocolates that could one day be marketed, like fine wines, by geographical provenance.