The University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, in collaboration with the North Dakota-based Grand Farm, broke ground earlier this month on the UGA Grand Farm in Perry, Georgia. The 250-acre site will be a hub for agricultural innovation projects, demonstrating new technologies and automation focused on specialty crops from Georgia and the Southeast. The first projects are set to go live this year.

Meet Scott Jackson, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Synthetic Biology. Jackson's research at the University of Georgia focuses on accelerating crop improvement to benefit farmers, communities and a rapidly expanding global population. “We’re utilizing advanced modeling to explore the role of multiple, interacting aspects of agricultural systems, genetics to management, with the ultimate goal of improving productivity and sustainability,” said Jackson, faculty in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Calling all chicken wranglers: If you raise free-range or pastured chickens on your commercial farm, researchers at the University of Georgia want to know what your feathered friends are eating. To find out, the research team at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences wants your chicken poop for the Chicken Ecology and Ecosystem Services, or ChickEES, study.

University of Georgia professors C. Robin Buell and Daniel R. Perez have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the organization announced on April 29. Members are elected to NAS in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors a scientist can receive.

It’s a Thursday morning in the Perry Events Center, a high-ceilinged, white-walled open room that used to serve as an armory. It’s filled with just shy of 150 attendees of the second Integrative Precision Agriculture Conference hosted by the University of Georgia’s Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture.

For the 20th consecutive year, the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences hosted the prestigious E. Broadus Browne Research Awards competition, resulting in three new graduate students being honored for their outstanding efforts in research and communication. In recognition of former Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station Director Edmund Broadus Browne, the annual competition highlights some of the best graduate research from departments within the college and challenges contestants with an oral presentation.