Jorge Dubcovsky, distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis, has been named the 2026 World Agriculture Prize Laureate.
Ashley Pearce is trying to help rice farmers decrease fertilizer or increase yield by testing different levels of nitrogen on different varieties in different conditions.
Randi Famula, lab manager of the UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program, earned campus-wide recognition for her high standards in running the facility overseen by breeding program Director Mitchell Feldmann.
Nazmin Akter is testing lower night-time temperatures to harden tomato seedlings ahead of transplanting them into farm fields. She's a Ph.D. student in Laura Cammarisano's Controlled Environment Agriculture Lab.
Doctoral student Marco Castaneda Martinez won the inaugural Betsey Landis Award from the California Native Plant Society, including a $1,500 grant, for research on purple needlegrass, California's state grass.
Louise Ferguson and colleagues in Spain discussed their research on ways to collect pollen from pistachio trees and how to apply it most efficiently for artificial pollination.
Fourth-year undergrad Sharada Karthik won first place at the recent MANRRS conference for explaining how techniques such as CRISPR can contribute to food security.
Undergrad Jackeline Limon won a $5,000 grant from Breathe California to take soil samples from 15 Yolo County locations and measure bits of plastic pollution in them.
Faculty and grad students mentor local high schoolers as part of a national program to share what they have learned with a new generation of scientists.
