Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

A newsletter for faculty, staff and students

January-February 2005 • Vol. 31, No. 1

People and Events

Departments, Centers, Branch Stations, other units and individuals may submit items to Amalie Holland, AGCS, AGRI 110 (ahollan@uark.edu). Eligible items include recent unit events, coming events, invited presentations, awards, foreign trips, election to leadership positions, new faculty and staff, retirements, etc. Include jpg photos @72 dpi.

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness

John Nwoha recently joined the department to work with Drs. Ahrendsen and Dixon.  They are working on a project to assess the effectiveness of the Farm Service Agency’s direct farm loan program.  Dr. Nwoha is an AEAB alumnus, receiving his M.S. degree in 1993.  He went on to receive his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois.  Most recently, he was at Louisiana Tech University.  Dr. Nwoha is married to Vivian, and they have four children.

H.L. Goodwin attended the National Poultry Symposium in Memphis Oct. 24-27.

Eric Wailes traveled to Tokyo, Japan on November 4-8 to attended the World Rice Research Conference in Tokyo Nov. 4-8. He participated in the 7AO/UN Workshop Nov. 20-28 and the US Rice Outlook Conference in New Orleans Dec. 5-6.

Janie Hipp attended the International Agri Council Meeting in Hollywood, Fla., Nov. 1-5 and the Native Women in Agriculture Meetings in Las Vegas Dec. 6-10.

Diana Danforth traveled to Tunica to demonstrate COTMAN Software at the COTMAN meetings on November 8-12.

Biological & Agricultural Engineering

Abani Pradhan and Yanbin Li attended the Society of Risk Analysis 2004 Annual Meeting in Palm Springs December 5-8 and presented a paper on Microbial Risk Assessment Simulation for Salmonellatyphimurium in Poultry Processing.

Mahendra Kavdia has been awarded American Heart Association (AHA) National Scientist Development Grant (SDG) for work on "Nitric Oxide Transport in the Microcirculation.”  This is the first SDG grant and the only grant in the last ten years to be awarded to the University of Arkansas by the AHA. The grant will provide funding for four years. The project aims to quantify biochemical interactions of blood and nitric oxide in the microcirculation using experimental and computational modeling approaches. Prof. Kavdia joined the University in October 2003. To learn more about his research visit: http://baeg.uark.edu/BME/faculty.php.

Indrajeet Chaubey and K.L. White gave the presentation titled “Stochastic validation of SWAT model” at the AWRA Annual International Conference in Orlando. Dr. Chaubey was also a coauthor of two other presentations at the conference, one with E. Mutlu1, Marty Matlock, R. Morgan, Brian Haggard, and D.E. Storm titled “NMDESS: A GIS based decision support system for nutrient management,” and another with K.L. White, and Drs. Haggard and Matlock titled “Evaluation of reservoir water quality response to watershed management using computer modeling.” Drs. Chaubey and Haggard attended the Annual International Conference of the ASA/SSSA/CSA in Seattle and presented the poster “Development of the Eucha-Spavinaw phosphorus Index within a court settlement agreement” along with P.B. DeLaune, Mark J. Cochran, T.C. Daniel, and Vijay Garg.

Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences

Vibha Srivastava was invited to serve on the scientific advisory board of Public Intellectual Property Resources for Agriculture (PIPRA)

J. McD. Stewart

J. McD. Stewart received the 2004 Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources, at the annual meeting of the Crop Science Society of America, Oct. 31-Nov. 4. The award, given in recognition of distinctive service to the National Plant Germplasm System, consists of a certificate, an engraved bronze medal, and a $1000 honorarium. He gave an invited presentation at the Award Recipient Address, entitled “A Wild Goose Chase.” Dr. Stewart was invited by USDA, ARS to serve on an outside panel to review and make recommendations concerning the scope and direction of its research program on cotton fiber biotechnology Oct. 4-5 in New Orleans. He also conducted a field survey and germplasm collection effort in Mexico with Mauricio Ulloa Nov. 9-20.  The objective of the USDA sponsored trip was to assess the status and collect seeds of two wild cotton relatives whose habitat and existence appear to be threatened. 

Volunteer poster and paper presentations at the Tri-Society Meeting—American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, Soil Science Society of America— Oct 31-Nov. 4 in Seattle included “Development of molecular markers linked to reniform nematode resistance in cotton,” by J.Mc. Stewart, C. Avila and R.T. Robbins; “Gene expression in cotton roots as a result of osmotic shock,” by Dr. Stewart, B. Hendrix and T.A. Wilkins; and “The wild cotton of south Florida,” by Dr. Stewart, M. Horak and E. Rosenbaum.

Mustafa Morsy, a doctoral student working with James McD. Stewart, was selected as one of three participants in a Trainee Workshop for Structural and Functional Genomics of Crop Plants, November 16-24.  The workshop was sponsored by NSF through the Arizona Genomics Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson.  He also received a travel grant to attend the 2nd International Rice Functional Genomics Conference, Nov. 15-17, 2004 where he presented a paper entitled, “OsLti: a small family of stress-responsive genes in rice encodes for membrane proteins associated with abiotic stress tolerance,” co-authored by B. de los Reyes (Univ. Maine) and Dr. Stewart.

Human Environmental Sciences

As part of a sabbatical, M. Jean Turner spent September 16 to October 3 at Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, as a visiting scholar to their Center for Gerontology.  Dr. Turner studied in-law relationships by conducting focus group sessions and speaking to individuals and focused on the mother- to daughter-in-law relationship. She was also the featured scholar in the UA Aging Studies Center newsletter. Last November, at the Gerontological Society of America, in Washington, D.C., Dr. Turner and Timothy Killian gave the presentation titled “Factors Motivating Daughters and Daughters-in-law to Provide Care:  How do they differ?”

Plant Pathology

Terry Kirkpatrick was invited to address the annual Arkansas Farm Bureau Convention December 1-3. Dr. Kirkpatrick gave two talks: "What is happening with reniform nematodes" and  "Update on the soybean rust situation.”

Ken Korth presented a talk, "Genomic responses of M. truncatula to chewing insect damage," at the Molecular Analyses of Host Plant Resistance to Insect Herbivores Symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Salt Lake City, November 15. Dr. Korth served as co-organizer of the symposium with Fiona Goggin of the Department of Entomology. Dr. Korth also presented an invited seminar entitled "Molecular, genomic, and visual approaches to understanding plant defenses against insects," to the Department of Biology, University of Central Arkansas, Nov. 19 in Conway. 

Poultry Science

Poultry Science Graduate Symposium award winners are pictured with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sullivan, who sponsor travel awards of $150 for each of the winners. Graduate students are (from left) Farrah Madison, Preety Sharma and Padmakumar Pillai.

Winners of the Thomas Sullivan Travel Award for the presentations in the Poultry Science Graduate Students Association Graduate Symposium Jan. 14 were Farrah N. Madison, “The effect of intracerebroventricular injections of arginine vasotocin and orticotropin releasing factor on plasma corticosterone levels in undisturbed chickens,” co-authors A. Jurkevic and W. J. Kuenzel; Padmakumar B.Pillai, “Impact of methionine source and excess choline or betaine on hepatic homocysteine remethylation in broilers during the grower period,” co-authors A. Fanatico, M. E. Blair and J. L. Emmert; and Preety M. Sharma, “UCP Variant and Feed Efficiency of commercial broiler population,” co-authors W. Bottje and R. Okimoto.

Rice Research and Extension Center

Agricultural Research Service scientists who are Division of Agriculture adjunct faculty at the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center made presentations on rice genetics and molecular pathology at the Second International Rice Functional Genomics Symposium in Tucson, November 15-17. J. Neil Rutger, Supervisory Research Geneticist, presented “The future of rice research in the US from a plant breeding perspective,” and Yulin Jia, Research Plant Molecular Pathologist, gave the presentation titled “Molecular mechanisms of durable rice blast resistance.”  Drs. Rutger and Jia also participated in a concurrent conference on a USDA-NRI funded, multi-state and multi-disciplinary coordinated agricultural project on rice (RICECAP).