USDA and Montana Microbial Products patented an enzymatic process that strips carbohydrates out of barley to concentrate its protein for fish feed, turning the carbohydrate into ethanol. Rainbow trout digested up to 95 percent of the nutrients, and salmon fed it grew about as well as on fishmeal.
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Sci-Tech
Science and technology from food, agriculture and nutrition research.
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Sci-Tech
Reducing Fertilizer Use with a More Accurate Soil Test
USDA soil scientist Richard Haney built the Soil Health Tool, which dries and rewets soil and uses the organic acids plant roots use, to capture microbial activity that standard nitrate tests miss. Growers using it cut fertilizer costs by about $10 to $15 an acre on average.
Sci-Tech
Responses will assist in planning future research, educational programming
Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension, the animal science department and the veterinary college have mailed an anonymous survey to Texas stocker cattle producers to gather trend data for shaping future research protocols and educational programs.
Sci-Tech
A&M farm crop tour features latest weed control advances in corn, cotton
More than 100 producers, consultants and industry partners attended the 2014 Crop Tour near College Station, where Texas A&M AgriLife and BASF specialists presented overlapping residual herbicide programs for managing resistant weeds in corn and cotton.
Sci-Tech
Magnetised wine sparkles in less time
A team at the University of Ljubljana attached magnetic nanoparticles to yeast, cutting removal of spent yeast from sparkling wine from as long as 60 days to 15-20 minutes. Sensory tests suggest bouquet, mouth feel, taste and bubble size are unaffected.
Sci-Tech
Blackhawk arrowleaf clover released by Texas A&M AgriLife Research
Texas A&M AgriLife Research released Blackhawk, an arrowleaf clover bred for resistance to the soil fungus Pythium ultimum and tolerance of bean yellow mosaic virus. In lab inoculations 33% of its seedlings showed damage, against 100% for Apache and 73% for Yuchi.
Sci-Tech
Scientists Say Mix-and-Match Cover Cropping Can Optimize Organic Production
USDA researcher Eric Brennan compared rye, mustard and a legume-rye mix in an organic lettuce-broccoli rotation. All three produced more dry matter than the two tons per acre often recommended, but legume-rye needed triple seeding to suppress weeds.
Sci-Tech
Physicians and Scientists Call for an End to Fluoridation
The Orthomolecular Medicine News Service points to a free video archive at fluoridealert.org where dentists, toxicologists, a Nobel laureate in medicine, National Research Council reviewers and journalist Christopher Bryson set out their opposition to water fluoridation.
Sci-Tech
An Inconvenient Tooth - Fluoride Documentary
Portland's City Council approved fluoridating the water supply on September 12 despite opposition from a clear majority of residents. The item also notes New Zealand's Royal Society dropping fluoridation from its work program and citizen pressure in Cornwall, Canada and Phoenix, Arizona.
Sci-Tech
Technology Enhanced to Evaluate Tenderness and Color Stability in Meat
A USDA system using visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, built to spot tender beef without damaging the carcass, also predicts pork loin tenderness and meat color stability. Scientists have tested it on over 4,000 beef carcasses and 1,800 pork loins.
Sci-Tech
New Cherry Tree Highlights 100th Anniversary of Japanese Gift
USDA released a flowering cherry named for Helen Taft to mark the centenary of Japan's 1912 gift of cherry trees. Bred at the National Arboretum by crossing a Yoshino with a Taiwan cherry, it reaches about 35 feet and keeps its pale pink blossoms instead of fading to white.
Sci-Tech
Wood Chips Help Curb Nitrate Leaching
USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists in Ames, Iowa buried wood-chip-filled trenches beside field drainage pipes and cropped the fields for nine years. Annual nitrate loss fell from 48.6 pounds per acre under conventional drainage to 21.8 pounds with the wood-chip walls.
Sci-Tech
Study shows electron-beam irradiation reduces virus-related health risk in lettuce, spinach (PR)
Texas A&M-led researchers measured how sensitive poliovirus and rotavirus are to electron-beam irradiation on fresh-cut lettuce and spinach, and quantified the theoretical health-risk reduction at different contamination levels and doses. Applied and Environmental Microbiology published it.
Sci-Tech
USDA Research Demonstrates New Breeds of Broccoli Remain Packed with Health Benefits
USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists grew 14 broccoli cultivars released over more than 50 years and found no significant rise or fall in mineral levels since 1975, with calcium, copper, iron, magnesium and potassium at similar levels. The work appeared in Crop Science.
Sci-Tech
Vaccine Protects Against Leptospirosis
USDA researchers vaccinated cattle and then challenged them with Leptospira borgpetersenii serovar Hardjo three months and one year later. The commercial vaccine appeared effective at both points and cut bacterial shedding, though protection from shedding was incomplete at a year.
Sci-Tech
South Texas Beef Cattle Short Course set for January in San Antonio (PR)
Texas AgriLife Extension and the Bexar Beef Cattle Committee will run the South Texas Beef Cattle Short Course on three Thursday evenings in January at Palo Alto Community College. Each session costs $10, requires an RSVP, and carries continuing education or Beef Quality Assurance credit.
Sci-Tech
Making Tomorrow's Bioenergy Yeasts Strong
USDA researchers report that Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain NRRL Y-50049 ferments plant sugars into cellulosic ethanol despite furfural and HMF, compounds created by acid pretreatment that normally damage yeast. Evolutionary engineering sped the microbe's adaptation.
Sci-Tech
New bitter blocker discovered (PR)
Monell Center and Integral Molecular researchers report in PLoS ONE that probenecid, a gout drug commonly used in receptor assays, inhibits a subset of the roughly 25 TAS2R bitter taste receptors. They frame bitterness as a barrier to pediatric drug compliance and good nutrition.
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