Finding New Ways to Farm

By Randy Weckman

Kentucky’s agricultural economy has been hiccupping for the past few years, in almost perfect synchrony with federal cuts in tobacco quota. Bargain-basement grain prices caused by large world surpluses have further ratcheted down agriculture’s contribution to the state’s economy. Over time, those hiccups have become seizures that have quaked their way through the state’s economy, shaking rural economies dependent on the golden leaf practically to their foundations.

Farmers throughout Kentucky looking for a commodity that will replace lost tobacco income are unlikely to find any single, legal crop that can mimic the qualities of tobacco: a crop with a high return from small acreage with a ready market. Although several crops together may replace lost income, farmers need help in finding those crops and learning how to produce and market them.
The New Crop Opportunities Center, an initiative of the College of Agriculture unveiled in July 2000, is helping farmers identify those crops, find out how best to produce them, and locate markets for them.

“The center isn’t really a place at all— it’s a virtual or conceptual center comprised of College of Agriculture faculty from a variety of disciplines. It was developed to provide a systematic evaluation of both the production and marketing of crops that haven’t been a major component of Kentucky’s traditional mix of farm commodities,” said Dewayne Ingram, chair of the department of horticulture and co-director of the New Crop Opportunities Center.
Marketing is as fundamental to profits as producing the crop itself, he said. Thus, the faculty, staff, and student teams are concentrating on both at the same time.

“A farmer can grow bumper crops of Jerusalem artichokes, for example, but if there isn’t a market (as there wasn’t in the early 1980s when the Jerusalem artichoke was touted as a panacea for rural America’s troubles), then it is useless to plant them,” Ingram said.

Bottom Line Questions and Research

While the New Crop Opportunities Center
already has under way a spate of research and Extension projects— both in production and marketing of new and sometimes novel crops— its biggest contribution to date may well be its template for farmers to use in evaluating whether a new or novel crop could fit into a farm’s operation profitably.

Dewayne Ingram

A Primer for Selecting New Enterprises for Your Farm, developed by agricultural economics faculty members, asks the farmer for answers to thorny questions before a farmer plunges headlong into production of any new commodity. While using the Primer won’t necessarily make a farmer successful, it can help avoid investing money and time into an enterprise that won’t be profitable.

And research under way under the auspices of the New Crop Opportunities Center is helping farmers with both production information and marketing information. Here’s a taste of the current research projects:

• evaluating the disease resistance of bell pepper varieties to bacterial spot,
• the feasibility for growing and marketing soft white winter wheat (used for specialty bakery items such as flat breads, cakes, pastries, crackers, and noodles),
• blackberries for fresh and u-pick operations, and
• producing and marketing novel soybeans, such as edamame and varieties that produce better-tasting soybean products.

In addition, the Center is funding projects that investigate landscape plants and native plants that have landscape potential and programs for producing and marketing them. A controlled water table irrigation system for greenhouse production of bedding plants, potted plants, and vegetable transplants is being evaluated in commercial greenhouses.

Success Stories

Sometimes, we know of a crop that would be a real
money maker for Kentuckians, but there’s just a small glitch with it and our scientists will find a way to overcome that glitch,” Ingram said.

Take bell peppers for example. Bell peppers were a profitable crop in the 1980s for a few Kentucky farmers but their good fortune with raising them was generally short-lived. It wasn’t a marketing issue that caused almost all bell pepper farmers to abandon production. In fact, Kentucky had a pretty good marketing system in place—buying stations where farmers could deliver their peppers for grading and sales were located close to production areas. What dissuaded farmers from growing them was bacterial spot, a disease that could reduce a promising harvest to “not worth picking” status in quick order.

But thanks to research by horticulturists and plant pathologists associated with the New Crop Opportunities Center, bacterial spot is a manageable issue now. Many producers have once again begun producing bell peppers, using varieties developed in the mid and late 1990s that can return between $900 and $1,000 per acre for land and management. (Farmers who provide their own labor can add the cost of labor to their profits.)

“Our research was unique. Not only did we assess different varieties’ abilities to withstand disease pressure, we also evaluated their desirability for marketing. Even if a variety showed great resistance to bacterial spot, if it didn’t produce peppers with excellent market characteristics, we didn’t recommend it to farmers,” said Bill Nesmith, plant pathologist.

The New Crop Opportunities Center is also funding scientists to evaluate blackberry varieties for Kentucky and to develop production and marketing protocols.

“Blackberries can be quite profitable for producers who can wait a few years for a patch to come into full production. In fact, a fully mature patch of blackberries has the potential to return somewhere between $1,500 and $1,800 per acre,” said Tim Woods. Woods is an agricultural economist who has conducted marketing feasibility studies for a variety of crops new to Kentucky.

And several small to mid-sized packing companies in Kentucky and in neighboring states are interested in buying blackberries for freezing if growers can provide a volume sufficient to change their production lines, he said.
“Many of Kentucky’s small blackberry producers find ready markets for their produce at farmers’ markets and in u-pick operations,” he said.

Amber Waves of Grain

It isn’t just horticultural crops that may hold promise for Kentucky’s farmers. The New Crop Opportunities Center also is supporting research for crops suited for larger acreage and less intensive management. Scientists are investigating soft white winter wheat as a specialty crop for some farmers, particularly those who already have the know-how to grow wheat successfully. (Kentucky wheat production is generally of the soft red winter wheat variety— which is often blended with hard red winter wheat, produced in the Great Plains for all-purpose flours.)

Soft white winter wheat is nearly exclusively grown in the Pacific Northwest and Michigan, where the climate is quite different from Kentucky’s. (Wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest is used for Asian noodles; that grown in Michigan generally ends up in cereal products.) But because wheat has been adapted to different climates for centuries— it was first grown in Mesopotamia in ancient times— it may be possible that a variety of soft white winter wheat can be developed to fit Kentucky’s growing conditions better. That’s what wheat breeder David Van Sanford is working on.

Millers prefer the soft white wheat over soft red winter wheat, which is traditionally grown in Kentucky, because they can mill a little closer to the bran without fear of introducing the bitter taste of bran into the flour.

This past year saw soft white winter wheat production double— to about 1,500 acres, all being grown by producers who contracted to deliver it to a Hopkinsville miller at a premium above September future prices.

Van Sanford, who is also co-director of the New Crop Opportunities Center, is working on developing a new wheat variety, especially adapted for Kentucky, that will be resistant to vomitoxin and sprouting in wet weather— two problems with current varieties. (Vomitoxin results when a fungus, Gibberella zeae, invades the kernel of grain. It gives the grain an off-flavor, has an adverse effect on dough products, and can cause sickness in high doses.)

“If we can develop a wheat cultivar that can be grown in Kentucky that is resistant to both sprouting and to the fungus that causes vomitoxin, we can help Kentucky farmers increase their profits from growing this specialty wheat,” he said.

David Van Sanford

A Soybean by Any Other Name...

Even new and sometimes novel crops may hold a
place in the panoply of commodities that might help Kentucky farmers replace lost tobacco quota income.

Take edamame (ed-ah-MAH-may), an edible green soybean that can be boiled, shelled, or eaten as a snack, or tossed into salads and other dishes, and whose nutritive virtues are legend. The market is such that it may hold some potential for a few producers in Kentucky right now and perhaps more later, should the market for the bean expand.

Sara McNulty and Sally Ellis, two Daviess County farmers, are experimenting with the crop— with help from the faculty cooperating in the New Crop Opportunities Center. In 1998 and 1999, McNulty produced edamame in test plots. She harvested some of the beans at the green stage and marketed them in specialty stores in Owensboro and Louisville. At the green stage, the beans are slightly oval to round, a bit greener than peas (but not as dark as green beans) and taste just a bit richer and nuttier than butterbeans.

In 2000, McNulty teamed up with Sally Ellis, a neighboring commercial vegetable producer, to increase the scale of production. That harvest was marketed in Lexington, as well as Louisville and Owensboro. McNulty coordinated sales for two other producers from Shelby County whose beans sold through the Louisville Farmers’ Market, where health-conscious consumers scarfed them up at $4 to $5 per pound. The edamames sold out every weekend at that market.

Tim Woods and Extension associate Matt Ernst, both agricultural economists, worked with the two farmers to develop budgeting and marketing information for their crop— about an acre all totaled last year.

Woods’ budget indicated that the potential for edamame for the frozen market might be $300 return for each acre grown— which compares favorably with some other more traditional crops, but not with tobacco. But after a year’s experience in growing edamame, the two farmers believe that the return can be between $1,500 and $1,800 per acre, if certain post-harvest issues can be worked out; namely, the beans have to be chilled quickly in the field and then delivered to the plant post haste so they can be flash frozen to keep them from turning sour.

And if a large enough fresh market can be developed, McNulty believes that growers can wholesale them for about $3 per pound. Harvest can be up to 9,000 pounds per acre. (Fresh markets require that growers mind their p’s and q’s at harvest. Just like those for the frozen market, the beans have to be picked by hand, quickly chilled either in the field or right after picking, and rushed to market to be sold in a couple of days to avoid the beans turning sour, McNulty said.)Larger acreages might mean that machinery can pick and sort the beans.

In other soybean work, UK agronomists are assessing comparative yield and quality characteristics of several types of novel soybean varieties, including some with high protein, tofu, natto (for fermenting), and high sucrose qualities that will bring a premium in niche markets.

“These projects are just the beginning. Our faculty will continue to explore new opportunities for farmers and to provide research and Extension support for these new initiatives,” Ingram said.

Sally Ellis

Sara McNulty

Promotion is the Art of the Possible

Can two part-time farmers whose names are Cynthia and Cynthia compete with the likes of Ernest and Julio Gallo, not to mention haute-cuisine French labels?

“You bet, provided you market the wine around tourism,” said Cynthia Bohn, an entrepreneur who’s more than dabbling in wine production at her Woodford County farm, Equus Run. Bohn, an IBM executive by day and farmer by weekend and evenings, started her 35-acre vineyard, or as she calls it, wine boutique, in 1998 near Midway, Kentucky, whose major industry these days is the block-long strip of boutiques and antique stores.

The idea of the winery business came to Bohn while she was at a Harvard Business School management class, studying the Mondavi and Gallo (wine producers) case studies.

“After a year of planning and fine tuning, I called my college best friend (Cynthia Hall) in the banking business and asked for her input and financial review of the business plan. She joined the company as a business partner and financial retail manager,” Bohn said.

Raised on a tobacco farm near Elizabethtown, Bohn describes their enterprise with a large dose of romantic language. Their web site refers to the vineyard as set “amidst picturesque stone fences, thoroughbreds and the quaint charm of Midway” and “gently wrapped by the banks of the Elkhorn Creek.”

Their idea is working and the two Cynthias are indeed profiting from it— and they hope to profit even more in years to come as Equus Run Vineyards becomes really popular. The operation produced 4,100 cases of wine last year with the goal of 10,000 cases in the next few years.

Equus Run has a tasting room, which is emerging as a tourist attraction— last year more than 15,000 people stopped and tasted wine and bought at least one bottle of Equus Run wine. And special wine-tasting events— held throughout the year and which include such ambiance boosters as soft music from a jazz combo— set the stage for success in marketing wine at $4.50 a glass. (The wine glass, with the Equus Run logo, is a take-home item— a memento of a glorious day in the country that helps customers recall the pleasure of the day they enjoyed.)

Equus Run also markets wine through nine restaurants and retail shops.
“We have a waiting list for our wine distribution— as soon as we make more. We look forward to using more Kentucky-grown grapes as other vineyards across the state continue to mature,” Bohn said.

Bohn and Hall worked closely with several College of Agriculture faculty, including horticulturists John Strang, Jerry Brown, and Dewayne Ingram, to get the vineyard up and running.

“The university has been gracious in responding to the recent growth and changes in the Kentucky grape and wine industry. We are moving forward in funding additional academic and Extension support because of their valuable help in making our enterprise work,” Bohn said.

Cynthia Bohn

Helping Hogs Smell Better

by Randy Weckman

There’s good reason that no entrepreneur has tried to market a cologne called Eau d’ Sooey or Evening in the Hog House.

Hog odors are the number one complaint people have about concentrated hog production. But several UK researchers are trying to eliminate those smells.
One approach that is getting worldwide attention is to take the smells of the hog house and send them sky high.

At least that’s what biosystems engineer Richard Gates hopes he can do. Gates is currently testing a system that takes the malodorousness of the hog house and sends it into the ether.

His rationale is this: If he can send the odors high enough into the sky, the smells will dissipate before they come back down. And so far, his first efforts suggest that the idea is worth pursuing.

Using tall, skinny, stainless steel chimneys equipped with powerful fans at their base, Gates has been able to send the unpleasant smell from the hog house 80 feet into the air. And by the time the smelly stuff drifts back down to terra firma, he hopes the gases that create the unpleasant smells will have been so diluted with fresh air that we humans won’t smell them. Bloodhounds might, but not humans. Then again, bloodhounds don’t complain much about their neighbors.

Up, Up, and Away

That in a nutshell is Gates’ concept of dealing with unpleasant odors from swine buildings a good-neighbor concept if there ever was one. But like so many seemingly straightforward concepts, the devil is in the details. Those include: How many hogs, how much smell, how high the chimney or stack, and how much temperature and wind? In terms of the practical, how close to human dwellings? And not the least, how sensitive the nose?

The gleaming stacks Gates designed are being tested under varying conditions at the Woodford County Animal Research Center. The hog barn, located within shouting distance of Versailles, is beyond state-of-the-art. It is the state-of-the-art five years or more from now. On the outside of the low barn, like pipes from a church organ, the 48 smokestacks— or smellstacks— rise 39 feet in the air. With high powered fans inside the stacks at their base, the chimneys send the smells emanating from the hog house up another 40 feet or so— depending on the weather— so that the plume of gas gets well mixed with air before the molecules drift back down to earth.

While Gates has measured how far up the fans blow molecules— he tested the smellstacks by releasing purple smoke at various parts of the building— he still has to work out whether the fans are large enough to keep things smelling rosy at ground level under various weather conditions.

“When the wind is blowing hard— which sometimes it does in early spring— we can expect that the plume of gases from the hog house won’t rise as high as when the weather is calm,” he said. “We have to figure out the size of the fans to make sure that we can eliminate hog house smells in nearly all weather conditions. Some neighbors may have a low tolerance of hog house odors.”

On-going Research

Gates also said his research will investigate various building materials from which to construct the smokestacks in an effort to make the concept affordable for the average hog farmers. His are of stainless steel, a relatively expensive building material.

“We designed these particular stacks out of stainless steel for a couple of reasons. First, some of the gases coming from the hog buildings are quite corrosive; second the smooth surface of stainless steel will allow us to research other odor abatement technologies,” Gates said.

Those abatement technologies include wet scrubbing, which consists of misting water at the top of the stacks, while the fans are blowing upward— creating a scrubbing effect that removes dust particles from the exhaust air. Some of the odors associated with animal agriculture become impregnated in the dust particles; thus, removing them with the wet scrubber will eliminate them in the air.

Ozonation is another technique that the unique facility will allow researchers to investigate. In ozonation, ozone (O3, a byproduct of creating electricity) is mixed with the gases coming through the stack of the hog houses. As the ozone is mixed with the smelly gases, it oxidizes them (breaks them into component parts), yielding odorless, harmless gases. When ozone is mixed with ammonia, for example, the outcome is gaseous nitrogen and water vapor.
“The research into hog house environments will help us provide precise, science-based data if government organizations seek to more closely regulate the animal industry,” Gates said.

His idea and structure have created a great deal of enthusiasm worldwide, with scientists from the Silsoe Institute, formerly associated with Oxford University in England, sending scientists to the Versailles (Kentucky) research farm to see the big chimneys.

What Causes Hog Odors

Hog odors are caused by some 150 gases that result from the bacterial decomposition of manure. These gases tend to travel in a plume and often are noticeable even at considerable distances unless they are diluted with fresh air.
Odors come from hog barns where manure is coupled with the heat of the hogs themselves, which amplifies the odor. (A freshly scrubbed pig in a freshly washed room has almost no detectable odor.)
Odors also come from lagoons, which are man-made ponds that hold the soup mixture of water, manure, and urine, a nasty broth that is attractive only to bacteria and their ilk. The bacteria that inhabit lagoons break down the mixture into component parts. It is during this breakdown that smells intensify, as you could imagine.

The Porcine Palace at Woodford County Farm

The swine facility at the University of Kentucky’s Animal Research Center in Woodford County is setting the current standards for swine production, and its appurtenances are not just for show. The facility is built for traditional swine research, including nutrition, reproduction and the like. It also is the venue for research into environmental quality issues, including the environment in the hog house, as well as on the entire farm.

Conspicuous is its waste management system that will return all nutrients back to the farm. In essence, all feedstuffs will be grown on the farm, fed to livestock— including sheep, cattle, and horses— and then the nutrients excreted from the animals will be returned to the land through a soil injection system and manure spreading. Land, air, and water quality will be monitored as part of the closed nutrient system to assure environmental integrity.

Multi-Disciplinary Approach

Animal scientist Gary Cromwell has joined forces with biosystems engineers Larry Turner and Joe Taraba to investigate another way to help alleviate the odor problem from hogs. His approach uses precision feeding to cut down on the amount of nitrogen in hog manure.

Two of the most odoriferous outcomes of swine production— through the decomposition of manure— are hydrogen sulfide (which smells like rotten eggs) and ammonia (which can bring tears to your eyes if its concentration is strong). In addition, both of these gases can cause major problems for workers and the animals in the hog house if concentrations get too high.

Cromwell, who specializes in swine nutrition, knows that the amount of nitrogen— an element that combines with hydrogen to form ammonia (NH3)— increases when high protein rations are fed to hogs. (Remember that protein is made up of mostly nitrogen along with carbon hydrogen, oxygen and sometimes sulfur.) Excess protein isn’t utilized and is excreted with the manure and urine. When bacteria start to break down the excreted protein into its component parts, the nitrogen is released and recombines with hydrogen to form ammonia, which can make the pigs in the hog house sick and the neighbors uneasy.

The key to Cromwell’s research is the knowledge that protein is utilized according to its composition. Proteins are made up of amino acids, ten of which are essential for animal life. Because animal feeds differ in the relative amounts of amino acids they contain, they sometimes are overfed so that the animal gets enough of a particular amino acid that might be in short supply. Corn, for example, is well-known to be short in the essential amino acid lysine. Thus, to get the right balance a hog needs, he may have to eat more of a high-protein supplement (like soybean meal) than he needs for growth so he receives enough lysine. The hog extracts the lysine he needs during digestion and the remainder is excreted as manure and urine, both rich in nitrogen.

Cromwell’s research has shown that supplementing standard feeds with amino acids to “balance” them more fully allows producers to feed less protein-containing feed, which leads to less nitrogen excretion. Less nitrogen, less ammonia. And it appears that a low crude protein diet, with amino acid supplementation, also reduces hydrogen sulfide emissions from the manure.
Cromwell found that a 10.5 percent crude protein diet (comprised of corn-soybean meal but fortified with the amino acids lysine, threonine, and tryptophan) led to a 50 percent reduction in ammonia generation in manure. At 16.5 percent crude protein the resulting manure produced ammonia levels of 21.4 parts per million; at the fortified 10.5 percent crude protein level ammonia production was reduced to only 10.1 parts per million. And because the limiting amino acid in the feed was added as a supplement, growth of the hogs in the test was unaffected.

In his research Cromwell also has evaluated other feed additives purported to reduce odors from hogs. Indeed, in his experiment with four of the products, the amount of ammonia generated from the hogs decreased substantially.
“Our research indicates that hog producers can reduce odors from ammonia production by lowering the dietary protein or adding certain feed supplements to the swine diet,” Cromwell said.

What Goes In...

Odors from hog production, however, don’t just come from the hog house. Modern swine production involves storing manure until it can be recycled onto farm land. These storage units— sometimes pond-like lagoons or container-type storage tanks— can be a major source of odors if they aren’t operating correctly.
The science is this: as the manure starts to break down due to bacteria in the lagoon or tank, various gases are formed— and some are unpleasant.
The swine facility at Woodford County Farm uses a storage tank to contain the waste from the swine operation. That enclosed tank is connected by duct work to a biofilter, which is a huge, thick mat of moist organic matter in which bacteria thrive. Those bacteria inhale, so to speak, the odorous gases and decompose them into odorless gases and water.

The container tank can be emptied and the sludge injected onto the crop land of the 1,440-acre farm. Injecting the stuff, rather than spraying it, keeps odors down to a minimum while returning the nutrients back to the soil.
The system, designed by biosystems engineer Joe Taraba, had two criteria. First, the nutrients returned to the soil had to be no greater than the amount that crops use for growth. Second, the waste material had to be kept from entering into the water supply. (This is particularly important, because like many other farms in the Central Blue Grass region, this farm sits atop a karst— or cave— geology.)

To make sure that both criteria are met, Taraba has installed monitoring systems throughout the farm that record daily a variety of substances in the ground water, including nitrate nitrogen, phosphorus, organic compounds, and bacteria.
“Although the purpose of the swine facilities is to allow researchers to conduct nutrition research, the fact that we will have such an aggregation of swine at this location means that we need to control both odor and potential pollution to groundwater. Thus, the research at the farm is multi-faceted,” Taraba said.

Creatures from the Black Lagoon

And that’s where the research of animal scientist Melissa Newman comes in. She explores the creatures of the lagoon— anaerobic bacteria. (Anaerobic bacteria thrive in oxygen-deprived media.)

“The majority of lagoons used in swine production today are anaerobic lagoons, usually very deep with small surface areas. The bacteria and the enzymes they produce are very efficient in decomposing most kinds of organic matter. Unfortunately, they often give off large quantities of unpleasant odors,” Newman said.

Her research seeks to maintain the bacteria’s keen ability to decompose the organic matter while minimizing the odors associated with the process. Specifically, her research is two-pronged: investigate the use of enzymes that can be added to the lagoon to enhance fiber degradation; and alter the normal bacterial population in lagoons to favor organisms— odor eaters— that degrade odor-forming compounds such as volatile fatty acids and phenolic compounds.
If these researchers are successful, you may want to schedule your next garden party or soiree at the swine facility in Woodford County.

Shaping the future of Plant Science

By Randy Weckman

The UK College of Agriculture has hired four plant scientists through
funds generated from the Kentucky General Assembly’s Research Challenge Trust Fund (RCTF). Popularly known as “Bucks for Brains,” this program matches donations to the university dollar-for-dollar.

The scientists’ research illustrates both the breadth and depth of studies that have the potential to improve farming and the environment. The studies range from very basic research at the molecular level to more applied research where the results can be put to practical use almost immediately. Their research is described here.

Better Wetlands, Cleaner Water

Marshes, bogs, and swamps are sometimes called the “kidneys of the landscape,” because they remove pesticides, nutrients, and metals contained in water through a slew of physical and chemical processes. In so doing, these wetlands cleanse the water entering into lakes and streams. On top of that, wetlands support a wide range of wildlife, from frogs to birds and other mammals.
In Kentucky, 80 percent of the state’s natural wetlands have been lost due mostly to farming and coal mining. But Kentucky is one of the few states that is actually increasing its amount of wetland acreage, in large part because of federal rules that require developers who disturb natural wetlands to replace them with man-made wetlands on at least an acre-for-acre, and sometimes more, basis.

But are these new, constructed wetlands the real deal? How well do they purify water compared with the natural ones that are centuries old? Those are some questions that soil biochemist Elisa D’Angelo is asking. Her research compares the nutrient storage and transforming capacities of man-made wetlands (called mitigated wetlands) with the real thing, natural wetland areas next to rivers that have been around for eons of time.

Specifically, she’s monitoring several key biochemical processes in wetland soils responsible for water quality improvement at more than a dozen man-made and natural wetlands in western Kentucky. The man-made wetlands range in age from one year to more than a decade.

Wetland soils, compared with upland and aquatic soils, she explained, are unique in that they harbor microorganisms that biochemically purify water that flows through them. They are truly Mother Nature’s water treatment plant.
“The science of creating man-made wetlands is in still in its infancy. And without accurate knowledge, we can only guess at where and how man-made ones need to be built,” she said.

That guesswork can lead to costly or inefficient use of constructed wetlands.
“If the constructed wetland works only half as well as a natural one, we would need to use twice as much land to achieve the same results; if it works as well as or better than naturally occurring wetlands, then a two-for-one rule that is sometimes applied is highly expensive,” she said.

D’Angelo’s approach is unique: it’s a biogeochemical approach, which implies measuring physical, chemical, and biological processes inside the wetland, rather than measuring only inputs and outputs, which has been the standard technique so far.

“We know the big-picture processes responsible for water purification in wetlands such as deposition of nutrient-enriched sediments and plant detritus, the decomposition of organic matter by aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, nitrification and denitrification, sorption and precipitation reactions. How efficient these processes are depends on environmental conditions and microbial communities in the wetlands, which are likely different in man-made sites compared with pristine ones,” she said.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are the main elements of concern in her research, as they are largely responsible for the algal blooms and aquatic plant-clogged waterways. Besides causing off-flavors in drinking water and being a nuisance to boaters and fisherman, aerobic decomposition of dead algal cells and plants in lakes and streams leads to lower levels of dissolved oxygen and fish kills.
A well-known example is “the Dead Zone”— a tract in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey— in which all manner of aquatic life perishes for several months each year as a result of low dissolved oxygen caused by algal decay and overabundance of nutrients emanating from the Mississippi River. Losses of wetland areas adjacent to the Mississippi have been linked to this phenomenon.
“We expect that there will be significant changes in rates at which water impurities are processed and also in microbial communities that process them between the mitigated and pristine wetlands. We hope our results will provide scientists and engineers the necessary tools to assess whether an engineered ecosystem is following the correct track, so that actions can be taken to correct a failing system,” she said.

Research Challenge Trust Fund

Elisa D’Angelo

Protecting Plants from Viruses

Peter Nagy speaks with a decided accent. And he should. The plant virologist is from Hungary. He arrived at the UK College of Agriculture two years ago via the University of Massachusetts, where he completed post-doctorate training.
Nagy’s work involves plant viruses and even with an accent, he can mesmerize you with the details of their lives and their mistakes.

Mistakes? Yes, indeed.
In fact, viral mistakes are Nagy’s stock in trade as a plant virologist.
The idea goes something like this. Viruses invade their host— for Nagy this is a plant, but animals can be hosts, too, as we all know. The virus sets up housekeeping and starts copying itself at a frenetic pace.

Just think about when you have a virus, such as a cold. When the virus has made enough copies of itself, you start to feel sick, and as the number of copies gets larger and larger, you feel worse and worse. But because the virus is making copies of itself so fast, it makes mistakes— not just little meaningless ones but serious mistakes that can lead to its own self-destruction. Those self-destructing mistakes— and how they can be promoted and used to protect plants from viral harm— are the subject of Nagy’s research.

Now the specifics. Viruses, which are much too small to be seen without the use of special microscopes, come in a variety of sizes and shapes and structures. (Several hundred thousand of them could fit into the period at the end of this sentence.) Further compounding their mystique is the fact that some copy themselves using DNA, like animals, and some replicate using only RNA, because that’s all they contain.

RNA-type viruses are the most abundant types; those that cause the human cold, encephalitis, and flu are all examples of RNA viruses. RNA viruses make many more mistakes in replicating than do the DNA types. That’s why it seems that each year the world is warned of a new flu or new cold, with names such as Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, Swine flu and the like— they are mutations of earlier versions.

Nagy’s research is focused on how to cause the RNA-viruses to make mistakes more often. Without help they make mistakes in replication one out of 10 times, which means a great number of mistakes considering they can make millions of copies of themselves in a day.

More specifically, it is during the copying that bits and pieces of the genetic code are written backward— or with letters left out— so to speak. These mistakes sometimes become parasites that attack the virus (which also is a parasite) from which they came. Now, that’s gratitude for you.

Nagy is researching ways to understand this process and force the viruses to make mistakes happen more quickly and more often so that molecular parasites developed from the virus can out-compete (and minimize or eliminate) the parent virus before it has killed or debilitated the plant.

In his laboratory, Nagy has been able to cause mistakes in a virus that is widely found— and destructive— in wild tobacco and tomato. These “mistakes” compete with the original virus and weaken its ability to destroy the plant, but it doesn’t live very well even with the virus having been weakened.

Nagy has genetically modified these “mistake” viruses, so that they can out-compete the parent virus so well that they can eliminate the parent virus from the plant. And because the modified “mistake” virus causes no harm to the plant, the plant thrives.

How does the new, molecular parasite work? Nagy rubs a bit of the new, genetically modified “mistake”virus on a leaf of wild tobacco, previously infected with the “parent” virus. The new parasite out-competes its parent virus and the plant recovers.

Nagy is enthusiastic that his technique can be refined and used to help farmers protect their crops. “Conceivably, farmers could spray crops with genetically modified ‘mistake’ viruses to protect their crops. But more likely, skilled plant breeders will be able to breed into seed the ‘mistake’ virus so that the plant will be protected from the time it germinates,” he said.

How does the scientist with so much enthusiasm stop thinking about his research when he goes home? He doesn’t.
“I tell my 9-year-old about the value and power of science and how we can protect plants, animals, and humans,” Nagy said.

Proteins That Tell Genes What to Do

Peter Nagy

Think about what you ate yesterday. Try to name something you ate that doesn’t have any connection with seeds, either directly or indirectly. You probably can’t.

That’s why plant scientist Sharyn Perry’s very basic research has such importance. Her goal is to find out how plant cells “know” how to develop into seed tissue that eventually grows into a new plant or is eaten for food for humans or other animals, some of which in turn are consumed by people.
It’s really molecular biology with an agronomic purpose. She’s investigating things that you can’t see with a naked eye that are both complex and simple at the same time. They’re complex because she can’t see what’s really happening at the molecular level; they’re simple because the process is likely straightforward enough once she understands it.

Her goal is to understand better something called AGL-15, which is shorthand for Agamous-like 15, a protein that is involved in gene expression. AGL-15 sets in motion what scientists call transcription machinery— enzymes that glide up or down the DNA and turn genes on or off. If the gene is turned on, it is expressed and the plant develops a certain way; if it is turned off, it’s not expressed and the plant develops quite differently. As such, then, AGL-15 is necessary for switching on or switching off genes that eventually lead cells to develop into seed.

How can a researcher investigate things that she can’t really see? That’s complicated.
Perry first mechanically pulverizes plant embryos of Arabidopsis, a weed of the mustard family. The resulting dust is treated with an antibody developed from rabbits, which binds to AGL-15, which is bound to the DNA. Tiny beads that are so small that you’d have to have many of them to be able to detect them are added to the mixture, where they bind to the antibody. Then, after the mixture is whirled a bit in the centrifuge, the beads— now with the antibody, DNA, and protein together clinging to them— are removed and heated. Heating separates the DNA pieces from the protein. The “cleaned” DNA is replicated (so that she has more of it to work with) and then compared with the known Arabidopsis genome map to see exactly where the AGL-15 was positioned. (Even though Arabidopsis is a weed, researchers have determined its entire 5-chromosome genome map.) By comparing the DNA fragments with the known genome map, she will be able to ascertain just which genes are turned on or turned off by AGL-15.

Already, her research has isolated genes that have passed many of the tests to show that they are regulated by AGL-15, but many more tests are needed to fully understand how the regulated genes function in seed development.
“Finding out what genes AGL-15 regulates will help us understand how this particular protein functions during plant development. Because this protein is a member of a protein family believed to be involved in critical development decisions of fungi and animals, as well as plants, I am hopeful this research can help our understanding of the entire cell differentiation process in many organisms,” Perry said.

Sharyn Perry

Precise Maps, More Precise Farming

Soil scientist Tom Mueller is refining techniques that Cro-Magnon hunters developed about 35,000 years ago: making maps of productivity. The early hunters used bits of charcoal to draw on cave walls pictures of animals they hunted along with track lines and tallies to show the animals’ migration routes, presumably to help the hunters become more successful on their next hunt.
But instead of a lump of charcoal, Mueller uses high technology equipment, some of it situated several miles in the sky, to make productivity maps. And instead of noting the migration of wild animals, Mueller’s focus is yield potential in fields. Mueller is using cutting-edge technology to improve the precision of farming.
“Somebody once said that precision farming allows farmers to do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. Mapping where a field’s fertility is good and where it could benefit from fertilizer helps farmers improve yields while cutting costs,” he said.

And while farmers have been using the technologies of precision agriculture for a few years now, it could be even more precise. And that’s exactly what Mueller’s research is doing. He is using space-age machines and concepts, including global positioning systems (that locate exactly where the tractor is in the field), yield monitors (that record how much grain is harvested within a few square feet of the field), and geographic information systems (that record and map key field factors), as well as soil sensors and remote sensing devices to improve the information farmers have from which to make decisions.

Some of Mueller’s work has shown that the electrical conductivity of soils is related to topsoil depth and depth of fragipan (a hard layer in soils that reduces root growth). Measuring how well a field’s soil conducts electricity gives some indication of yield potential. And registering a field’s conductivity with a global positioning system (GPS) allows farmers to make precise decisions about particular parts of a field. However, electric conductivity varies over time, depending on environmental conditions such as soil moisture.

To understand better whether this variability is important, Mueller checked soil conductivity within fields several times over the course of a year. Using a special device that sent an electrical charge from one coulter (which looks a great deal like a circular knife you use to cut pizza) to another coulter, both of which were slicing through the soil, he measured soil conductivity at the same points at different times during the summer. The amount of electricity that the second coulter picked up was compared with the amount sent to determine the soil’s conductivity.

Although the electrical conductivity values at every point changed throughout the growing season, the pattern within the field remained relatively constant, suggesting that farmers using electrical conductivity as part of their precision agriculture strategy may want to take into consideration that values at any point are contingent upon soil moisture and other factors that vary throughout the season.

Tom Mueller

Small Towns, Big Hearts:

Professional Graduates Return to Rural Roots

By Randy Weckman

For more than a century, the UK College of Agriculture’s reputation for excellence has been built on educating young people to become farmers and agribusiness leaders. Recently, it has added to its prestige a reputation for preparing students well for professional school— doctors, lawyers, and dentists, many of whom return to rural Kentucky to practice their professions. We highlight three of these former ag students who are making their marks in professional practices in rural Kentucky.

It’s a long way from Hartford, Kentucky to the nearest opera, but for
Dr. Leticia “Tiche” Tucker, M.D., a back yard cricket symphony accompanied by a
firefly light show is really more enjoyable than going to the opera anyway. And she can savor the cricket songs every summer night by just stepping outside her back door.

Dr. Tucker (College of Agriculture 1990-1994, ag biotech) is among a growing number of College of Agriculture students who are using their undergraduate educations and experience as springboards to professional school before returning to rural Kentucky to ply their trades. Dr. Tucker will begin her career in Hartford, a small town in Ohio County, in August.

For Dr. Tucker, the science aspects of the ag biotechnology program helped her score high on the medical school entrance examinations. (Dr. Tucker admits she still hasn’t finished her B.S. degree— she entered medical school shy just a few undergraduate courses.) She was accepted into Ross University Medical School and trained in New York City where she completed her M.D. degree before starting her residency in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But she learned more than just science in the College of Agriculture. She learned life skills that will allow her to become a successful small-town doc.

“Because of my agriculture background, I was more well rounded and practical about approaches to patients and colleagues than my classmates who came from other backgrounds. And I was the only one in my class who could talk about rural life comfortably without being condescending,” she said.

In addition, she said, working with animals through Block and Bridle paid off in a quirky sort of way. “I find my animal husbandry skills very helpful when I’m trying to look into toddlers’ ears, especially when they want no part of it.”

Why a rural practice, when it’s well recognized that rural physicians work more hours per week for less money? A rural practice’s rewards in lifestyle are more important than the monetary rewards for people like Dr. Tucker.

“I chose a rural practice because the values of the rural people are my values. I love Kentuckians and no other place in the world than Kentucky would do,” the Shelby County native said.

“Increasingly our College of Agriculture is being recognized as a place to study science. We’ve always been known for preparing well our students who go on to veterinary school, but now students are finding our College is excellent for preparing students for medical and pharmacy schools,” said Joe Davis, the College’s associate dean for instruction.

The increasing number of students entering medical school programs directly from the undergraduate program is a compelling witness to the college’s preparation in the sciences, because medical schools have recently preferred slightly older students to fresh graduates. The fact that the College’s new grads can compete for medical school seats attests to the strength of their academic preparation, as well as the students’ maturity.

Medicine

Leticia Tucker

In addition to preparing future rural doctors well— and many do return to rural areas— the College also has a reputation for preparing students to become attorneys. And the practice of rural and small-town law requires special skills. It’s not like Perry Mason at all and College of Agriculture students seem particularly adept at working in small towns.

Small-town lawyers often work alone, or in small firms. Because of this, they must be general practitioners, which includes divorce, estates, criminal defense representation, real estate, and litigation for all manner of court cases. Brian N. Thomas has elected to practice law in a small town. His office, like those of many small-town and rural lawyers, is located on Main Street, across from the Clark County Courthouse in Winchester, Kentucky (population 16,000), about 25 minutes east of Lexington. Winchester is the kind of place where every birth is celebrated and every death is mourned because each event affects somebody you know.

The Winchester native admits he had no intention of attending the UK College of Agriculture; the thought had never crossed his mind when he graduated from high school in 1987. However, the county Extension agent at that time, Paul Deaton, advised him that some scholarship money was offered for qualified students in the College of Agriculture. That convinced Thomas to consider the College. And he’s glad he did.

As an agricultural economics major with an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco scholarship, Thomas learned that the College was a hands-on, learn-as-you-go place. By the second day, he was helping two College of Agriculture faculty members in agricultural economics (Jerry Skees and David Debertin) conduct a survey about farmers’ and the public’s perception of burley tobacco. Because of his involvement with that project, he had the opportunity to present a paper to an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco seminar, an experience that helped him hone his presentation skills, a benefit to a lawyer who really does argue cases in court.
After completing his B.S. degree in agriculture, Thomas attended the University of Louisville Law School, graduating with a Juris Doctor degree in 1994. Once he passed the Kentucky and Indiana bars, Thomas practiced as an attorney in the risk management division of an inland river transportation company in Indiana, a company whose cargo was often agricultural commodities.

After three years, Thomas moved back home to pursue his career in small-town law with the firm of Grant, Rose and Pumphrey in Winchester.
“A small-town practice lets you interact closely with your clients— including lots of people involved in agriculture and agribusiness. You see clients— and clients’ opponents— every day at the grocery store and the like. Small-town law lets you work with a variety of cases from probate to contracts, corporations to litigation. I know that Thomas Wolfe said ‘you can’t go home again.’ Obviously, he never lived in Winchester, Kentucky,” he said.

Thomas said his undergraduate program in agricultural economics prepared him well for life as a small-town attorney. “I use knowledge that I gained and information that I learned as an undergraduate every day. Because many of my clients are farmers or have farm backgrounds, I draw on my College of Agriculture experiences daily,” he said.

Brian Thomas

Law

When Wesley Porter arrived at the University of Kentucky in 1990
as a first-year student, his goal was to earn a degree in animal sciences and perhaps even a doctorate in the field at some later date. As with many people, times change and so do their minds.

After receiving his B.S. degree in 1994, Wes returned home to tiny Gracey, Kentucky (population 92) and farmed for a short time with his parents, Kenneth and Sally Porter, before taking a job with Carl S. Akey, Inc. in Ohio. He worked as a nutrition technician for the swine nutrition consulting company for 18 months before deciding to make a career switch. He toyed with the idea of getting a doctorate in animal sciences, but realized that that career would not get him very close to home, which was one of his life goals. However, a major career switch might allow him to move back closer to Gracey.

“My uncle, Tommy Porter (who’s also a UK ag college graduate) is a dentist in Hopkinsville, so the idea of becoming a dentist was something that I had been exposed to and considered from time to time,” Porter said. It was now time for Porter to make that decision for good.

He applied for a seat at University of Kentucky’s dentistry school in the spring of 1996 for entrance that fall. He was readily accepted and unlike many other students in the class of 2000, he was not required to complete any more classes before he started; his B.S. in animal sciences had provided him with the scientific background required for entrance into dentistry school.
When Porter— now Dr. Porter— finished his dentistry degree, he was ready to go back home.

“I bought an existing practice from a dentist who had been practicing general dentistry for more than 30 years. I see lots of familiar faces as patients and have gained many new ones who’ve decided to change dentists because they knew me and my family,” Porter said. He does admit that some of them chide him for being a dentist, saying that would have expected him to work with cows and not with people’s teeth.

“My agriculture education is invaluable; the people I met in undergraduate school have become lifelong friends. I even met my wife, Lori Thomas, there,” said Porter, who became a father for the first time last year.
And even though Dr. Porter maintains a promising practice in Hopkinsville, he hasn’t given up his ag school roots: he’s still active on the family farm in Gracey, helping with the crops and raising sheep and cattle of his own. u

Wesley Porter

Dentistry

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