Biodegradable Spray Keeps the Toxins Away

Aflatoxins are highly toxic substances produced by some species of Aspergillus fungi and can contaminate common crops such as corn, peanuts, and cotton. In high enough doses, these toxins are known to cause liver damage or cancer, ultimately threatening the health of both animals and people.

In Stoneville, MS, a team of ARS researchers developed a new bioplastic-based spray to fight aflatoxins using natural ingredients like cornstarch and beneficial microbes such as fungi and bacteria strains. The spray is relatively inexpensive, easy to apply, storable, biodegradable, and capable of significantly reducing aflatoxin contamination. 

Learn more:

• Biodegradable Spray Helps Battle Crop Pathogens
• Protecting Plants May Start with the Seed

ARS Lab Participates in Expedition Colorado

On May 5, 2022, 10 staff members from the ARS Soil Management and Sugar Beet Research Unit in Fort Collins, CO participated in Expedition Colorado, an annual field trip held at Colorado State University for 4th grade students in the Poudre School District to teach students about natural resources and conservation practices.

Approximately 1,400 students went through various stations at the Lory Student Center which included an ARS hosted workshop on different types of soils and plants.

Vertical Farming Is Moving Up

Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers. It allows farmers to grow fresh produce indoors year-round and could be part of the solution to growing crops where there is a limited availability of land and water.

It sounds like a futuristic concept, but gears are already in motion for practical implementation. Small fruiting crops like tomatoes as well as leafy greens have great potential for vertical farming production. Tomatoes can be grown hydroponically (in a nutrient-rich solution rather than in soil) in a greenhouse.

ARS plant pathologist Dr. Kai-Shu Ling and research horticulturalist Dr. James Altland discuss vertical farming in the August 2021 issue of Under the Microscope.  

If You’re Happy and You Know It, Strut Around

In recent years many non-farmers have discovered that raising chickens can be a very rewarding hobby and also has many benefits, including providing fresh eggs and nutrient-rich fertilizer for your garden. Some people even enjoy them as outdoor pets! As a matter of fact, you may even know of some friends, or neighbors who are raising chickens in their backyard and wondered if you could do the same thing.

It turns out that keeping your backyard chickens happy can be a challenge, even for the “old hand” owner. Raising healthy chickens requires planning, attention to detail, and fastidiousness when it comes to completing daily chores. So, before buying some chickens of your own, check out a few tips. 

A Halloween Mystery – A Globe-trotting Weed and the Queen of the Gypsies

Quick, when you think of Halloween what usually comes to mind? Ghosts, black cats, mysterious graveyards? Too creepy? Well, it turns out that graveyards (also known as cemeteries) can be a pretty cool place… if you’re a scientist. In fact, one cemetery in Mississippi helped scientists figure out the globe-trotting journey of a restless plant.

You see graveyards can be a good place to scout for plant species, which is what Mississippi State University graduate student Lucas Majure was doing when he found an unknown sedge (a type of weed). He asked ARS botanist Charles Bryson, who keeps an eye out for new and potentially invasive plants, to help identify the mystery plant.

After several months of searching, Dr. Bryson was able to confirm that the plant was blue sedge, Carex breviculmis, a native of Asia and Australia and previously unknown in North America. So how did this strange weed end up in Mississippi?

Read "A Mississippi Graveyard - The Perfect Place for a Plant Mystery" to learn more.

Should Plant-Based Meats Be Cooked?

Guidelines for properly cooking meats are well documented, but what about for plant-based products? Unfortunately, there is little information available on the time and temperature combinations required to safely cook and eat certain plant-based foods. Consumers generally, and correctly, consider burgers to be raw and to require cooking prior to consumption. However, many view plant-based burgers as not raw because they contain plant material, and some plants can be eaten raw.

“Many consumers believe that plant-based foods are minimally processed, more healthful, and nutritionally superior to otherwise similar animal-based counterparts,” said John Luchansky, lead scientist at the ARS Eastern Regional Research Center’s (ERRC) Food Safety and Intervention Technologies Research unit in Wyndmoor, PA. “In reality, plant-based meats are ultra-processed and contain numerous food-grade chemicals as ingredients.”

“Plants often harbor high levels of foodborne pathogens and, as such, plant-based burgers should be considered and handled just like for example, raw ground beef,” said Luchansky’s research partner Anna Porto-Fett, microbiologist at ERRC.

Read more here.

Insect Fight Club: Stink Bug vs. Samurai Wasp

A tiny parasitic wasp called the Trissolcus japonicus, also known as the samurai wasp, may be the solution to the major economic damage to fruit, vegetable, and field crops perpetrated by the invasive brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys).

Natural enemies to the stink bug back in their native Asia, samurai wasps love to detect and follow unique chemical trails left behind by these bugs to parasitize their eggs.  According to ARS scientists, this strong preference makes the samurai wasp an ideal way to naturally suppress brown marmorated stink bug populations here in the U.S. as well.

Want to learn more? Read "To Deal With The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, ARS Scientists Bring In Its Arch Enemy." 

This Bee Lives Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Have you ever paid a visit to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Park in Utah? If so, you may be intrigued  to learn about a fuzzy gray bee that carves its nest into chunks of sandstone!

One day several years ago, Utah State University graduate student Michael Orr was working in the park when he spied some bees's nests made in a column of sandstone rock. With a sweep net in hand, Michael scaled a sandstone rock cliff to capture some specimens of the bees and then consulted with ARS scientist Terry Griswold to devise a plan to learn more about the about the strange but tenacious bee. Find out what he discovered.