News Stories - Page 48

Agricultural advocates and educators topped this year’s list of the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Alumni Association’s best and brightest alumni.

Groundnut producers face challenges in the field, from unpredictable rainfall to acidic soils to a particularly difficult menace, groundnut rosette disease. These types of challenges are the reason that plant breeders systematically create new varieties, targeting the genetic traits that carry resistance or improve yield. A project funded by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut is equipping plant breeders from across East and Southern Africa with innovative software to make that work quicker and more efficient.

The University of Georgia’s 86 weather stations record data 24 hours a day, seven days a week across Georgia. Farmers use this data to help them determine when to plant and treat their crops. During Hurricane Michael, the system helped the National Weather Service to track the storm and save lives.

Author and international development expert Robert Paarlberg has spent years dismantling the oversimplified narratives surrounding global hunger and its remedies.

Georgia peanut farmers, still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Michael on October 10-11, are facing uncertainty about when and where to unload their crop after harvest, says University of Georgia Cooperative Extension peanut agronomist Scott Monfort.

What was an extremely promising Georgia cotton crop was devastated when Hurricane Michael ravaged south Georgia Oct. 10-11. According to Jared Whitaker, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension cotton agronomist, the prospects of 1,500 to 1,800 pounds of dryland cotton for some producers were reduced, resulting in 80 to 90 percent losses in some fields.