Recently added articles from Agricultural Research:

My life with bees.(FORUM)(writer's interaction with bees and nature)(Viewpoint essay)

Feb 01, 2008; James, Rosalind R. ... My first encounter with a bee was when I was probably 4 or 5 years old, growing up in Syracuse, New York. My family was getting ready to go out for the day, and my mother had gotten me all cleaned up, in a nice dress and polished shoes. I was supposed to wait--and stay clean--while the ...

Wonderful wild bees: how they can help the harried honey bee.(rsearch on honey bees )

Feb 01, 2008; Wood, Marcia ... Working quietly behind the scenes, America's wild bees help with pollination chores. Luscious berries, crunchy almonds, and many more foods that we enjoy each benefit when these mostly unheralded insects visit blossoms and inadvertently--but, for us and the plant, fortuitously--place ...

Improving honey bee health: coordinated areawide program is under way.

Feb 01, 2008; Flores, Alfredo ... The world's food supply depends on pollination by bees. So anything that causes a significant loss of honey bees would severely limit the foods available to us. For example, in California alone, the almond crop requires the service of 1.2 million bee colonies--about half of all ...

MegaBee: new food for America's beleaguered honey bees.

Feb 01, 2008; Wood, Marcia ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Just like people, bees that show up for work well-rested and well-fed have a better shot at doing good work than if they're tired and not eating right. That's true no matter what the bee's work is, from indoor chores like tending the next generation, ...

Diamond planting design and planter for peanut crops.

Feb 01, 2008; Durham, Sharon ... A variety of machinery and techniques is required to plant, cultivate, and harvest the wide range of U.S. agricultural commodities. Over the years, ARS has researched many innovations in equipment and methods. For example, adapting equipment to plant runner-type peanuts in a ...

Fruitful returns from fruit fly management project.

Feb 01, 2008; Kaplan, J. Kim ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A 32-percent return is an excellent yield on a commercial investment; it is a superb economic return for an agricultural research project. But a 32-percent return is just what has been achieved by the Hawaii Areawide Fruit Fly Pest Management ...

Breeding better cotton.

Feb 01, 2008; McGinnis, Laura ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] People expect a lot from cotton. Consumers want durable, comfortable fabrics. Producers want easy-to-manufacture textiles. And growers want hardy, thriving plants. Uniting these traits in individual cultivars is the goal of ARS cotton breeders ...

Managing beef cattle to protect lakes and rivers.(animal waste and grazing pollutes water)

Feb 01, 2008; Flores, Alfredo ... Beef cattle browse more than 11 million acres of grazinglands in the State of Florida. In fact, Florida is 11th among U.S. beef-producing states, and 4th among those with herds of more than 500 brood cows. Florida producers run 4 of the nation's 15 largest ranches, the largest of which ...

The touch, the feel--and now, the heal--of cotton.

Feb 01, 2008; Peabody, Erin ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Its cultivation may be ancient--dating as far back as 5,000 years ago--but cotton, and its characteristically soft, downy fibers, could be just what modern medicine has been waiting for. Believed to have first been grown in the Indus Valley of ...

Potato nemesis found in Idaho!(Science Update)(research on potatoe structure)(Brief article)

Feb 01, 2008; Skantar, Andrea ... A potato pest plaguing European growers for some time has now been confirmed in soil at a potato processing plant in eastern Idaho. Called the "pale potato cyst nematode," Globodera pallid was traced from the plant to a few nearby potato fields. To make a positive identification, ...

Irrigating raspberries: what's best?(Science Update)(Brief article)

Feb 01, 2008; Bryla, David R. ... Does it make a difference whether a raspberry plant receives water from the top down or from the bottom up? Irrigation methods used in producing this fragile fruit vary regionally in the Northwest, where 80 percent of the popular berries originate. So researchers have evaluated two ...

Spotting insects in stored grains electrically.(Science Update)(Brief article)

Feb 01, 2008; Pearson, Thomas C. ... A novel approach to detecting insect pests in stored grain has been tested and found effective. It relies on a specially adapted roller mill that can screen 1 kilogram (about 30,000 kernels) in 1 minute. In tests, researchers were able to spot 80 to 90 percent of wheat kernels with rice ...

On the horizon: a new desert science.(Science Update)(Drylands Development Paradigm workshop)(Brief article)

Feb 01, 2008; Herrick, Jeffrey E. ... A worldwide effort is afoot among environmental and social scientists interested in developing a template for a new desertification science that will incorporate human dimensions--as well as physical and biological ones. Part of the effort is what's called the "Drylands Development ...

Vaccine could offer FMD control.(Science Update)

Feb 01, 2008; Grubman, Marvin J. ... Joint research between ARS, the Department of Homeland Security's Targeted Advanced Development Unit, and the Vector Science Group of GenVec, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in Gaithersburg, Maryland, has led to development of a promising vaccine for protecting cattle, swine, sheep, and ...