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

March-April 2005 • Vol. 31, No. 2

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

Department faculty attended the Southern Agricultural Economics Association annual meetings in Little Rock Feb. 6-9. Michael Popp, Patrick Manning, Larry Purcell and Jeffery Edwards presented the poster titled “Maturity Group Effects on Optimal Soybean Seeding Rates and Reseeding Thresholds”; Paul Scott Poag and MichaelPopp presented the poster “Profitability of Soybean Seed Treatments”; and the second place winner of the poster paper competition was  “The Impact of Agriculture on the Arkansas Economy” by Jennie Popp, Gina Vickery, H.L. Goodwin and Wayne Miller.

Several faculty members were invited to present papers at the SAEA meetings. Janie Simms Hipp and Harriet “Hattie” Francis presented “The Legal Environment Facing Economic Agents in Production: A Twenty-Year Retrospective of Legal Trends.” “Location of Production and Consolidation in the Processing Industry: The Case of Poultry” was presented by H.L. Goodwin. Eric Wailes gave two papers: “Biotechnology and International Competitiveness: Implications for Southern U.S. Agriculture” and “Concepts, Issues, and Analysis of Biotechnology on International Competitiveness.”

Dr. Wailes and Alvaro Durand Morat hosted the organized symposium “Potential Impacts of DR-CAFTA and AFTA: The Case of Rice” at the SAEA meetings. Selected papers were also presented: “The SS-AAEA Quizbowl: Success in and Out of the Classroom in the South” and “Value of Environmental Amenities,” by Jennie Popp; “Whole Farm Economics Evaluation of No-Till Rice Production in Arkansas,” by K. Bradley Watkins, Jason L. Hill, Merle M. Anders and Tony E. Windham; “Consumer Preference and Willingness to Pay Studies,” by Kenneth Young; “Examining Fed Cattle Choice-Select Discount,” by Robert Hogan, Jr.; “Economics of Transporting Poultry Litter from Northwest Arkansas to Eastern Arkansas Croplands,” by Drs. Young, Wailes and Goodwin and Rita Carreira; and “Current Nutrition/Labeling/Food Safety Legislation and Litigation” by Dr. Hipp.

Dr. Wailes traveled to Brazil and Argentina from August 25–September 3; he then attended the World Rice Research Conference in Tokyo November 4-8, and the FAO/UN Workshop in Rome November 20-28. He attended the FAPRI Baseline Preview Sessions for the USDA and Congress December 13-15 in Washington, DC. Dr. Wailes also attended the FAPRI Baseline Conference in Columbia, Mo., January 16-21 with Jayson Beckman.

Dr. Goodwin participated in a National Task Force on “The Future of Livestock” in Washington, DC, December 9-11.

Mark Cochran and DianaDanforth traveled to New Orleans to attend the Beltwide Cotton Conference and to provide COTMAN demonstrations.

Andrew McKenzie participated in the White Commercial Grain Merchandising Conference in St. Louis January 13-15.

Agricultural Communication Services

The Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences announced two Silver Awards (second place) to be presented at the ACE International Meeting, June 1, in San Antonio. The projects were an interactive CD titled, “Center of Excellence for Poultry Science Interactive Tour,” by Karen Eskew and Aaron Bartlett, and the annual “Soybeans Today” publication on projects funded by the Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board, in the direct mail category, by Jennifer Vickery, Elizabeth Fortune, Howell Medders, Fred Miller, Julie Thompson and Lamar James.

Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Lalit Verma was invited to make a keynote presentation titled “Food and Bioprocess Engineering: A Key Element of Biological Engineering” at the international conference on “Emerging Technologies in Agricultural and Food Engineering” December 14-17 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.  He was also invited to present and discuss biological engineering programs at the Amity School of Biotechnology Engineering in New Delhi January 3-4.

IndrajeetChaubey, D. Sahoo,Brian Haggard, Marty Matlock, T.A. Costello and K.L. White coauthored “Integrated assessment of BMPs, nutrient transport, and water quality in an agriculturally dominated stream,” presented at the First International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology hosted by the American Academy of Sciences in New Orleans. Drs. Chaubey, White and Haggard also coauthored “Coupling of CE QUAL-W2 and SWAT to simulate watershed reservoir management,” presented at the conference.

Dr. Chaubey attended the USDA-CSREES National Water Quality Conference February 6-10 and presented the talk “Development of a fields scale methodology to identify runoff source areas in a pasture dominated watershed.” He presented a poster at the conference, as well: “Development of an integrated water quality-water management program in the Arkansas Delta.” Dr. Chaubey also served on the review panel of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program February 11–13.

Dennis Gardisser was an invited speaker at the Michigan Agri-Business Association's 72nd Annual Winter Conference and Trade Show held on January 10-12, in Lansing. He conducted two sessions regarding spray drift mitigation. The emphasis was on drift control and rust & aphid application efficiency and efficacy. Dr. Gardisser was also an invited speaker at the 2nd Annual Mississippi Agricultural Aviation Association/Southeast Aerocultural Fair Convention in Biloxi February 3–5.  His presentation was “Spray Drift Reduction – On Target Delivery Tools” and application operating tips.  While in attendance, he was presented with the Lee Abide Award.  The Lee Abide Award, which is not necessarily given every year, is the highest award issued by the association.  The purpose of the award is to recognize and honor a person who has made outstanding contributions to agricultural aviation, over and above that normally expected and over a period of time long enough to have established himself as a leader in a field or fields directly affecting the well being and welfare of the agricultural flying industry and of the Mississippi Agricultural Aviation Association.

Jayarani Kandaswami attended the SiCON-Sensor for Industry Conference organized by IEEE at Houston and presented her research work titled “Chemometric modeling of fat, cholesterol and caloric content in fresh and cooked ground beef with NIR reflectance spectroscopy.”

Mahendra Kavdia presented “Model for Nitric Oxide and Superoxide Interactions in the Microcirculation” at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Fall Meeting in Philadelphia in October.

Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences

Bumpers College faculty and graduate students gave volunteer presentations

Bill Hendrix, a PhD student, was awarded 2nd place at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences January 4-7 in New Orleans in the Cotton Improvement Conference contest for student oral research presentations for his paper, "Osmotic-shock-induced gene expression in cotton roots," with co-authors Dr. Stewart and T.A. Wilkins.

Other volunteer papers presented at the Cotton Conference were: CarlosAvila, James McD. Stewart and R.T. Robbins coauthored “Transfer of reniform nematode resistance from diploid cotton species to tetraploid cultivated cotton.” Dr. Stewart, along with J. Frelichowski, M. Ulloa, A.E. Percival and R.G. Cantrell, presented “Germplasm evaluation of cotton accessions from the U.S. Cotton Germplasm Collection, USDA-ARS (Gossypium hirsutum L. landraces of Mexico).” S.M. Higbie, Dr.Stewart, T.A. Wilkins and J. Zhang gave "Utilization of an interspecific hybrid between Gossypium hirsutum and G. hirsutum race yucatanense for salt tolerance studies," and S.M. Higbie, T.M. Sterling,Dr. Stewart, and J.-F. Zhang coauthored  "Physiological response and genetic diversity of tetraploid cotton to salt stress."

Derrick Oosterhuis gave three invited presentations at the International Symposium on Strategies for Sustainable Cotton Production in Dharwad, India, November 23-25.  The titles of his presentations were: "Enhancement of cotton growth and yield with imidacloprid," "Increased protein, endotoxin, insect mortality and yield with Atonik" and "Optimum blends for higher yarn quality and lower cost." He also gave a presentation to Bayer CropScience India in Mumbai on November 30 entitled "Effects of environmental stress on cotton plant growth."

Entomology

Fiona L. Goggin organized an international symposium on "Molecular Analyses of Host Plant Resistance to Insect Herbivores" at the Entomological Society of America's National Meeting in November in Salt Lake City, and gave an invited talk entitled "Induced Resistance to Aphid Infestation in Tomato."

Food Science

Justin Morris was inducted into the Arkansas Horticulture Hall of Fame for 2005 in recognition for Outstanding Service to the Arkansas State Horticulture Society at the 24th Annual Horticulture Industries Show January 14-15 in Fort Smith.

Several Bumpers College faculty and staff members were coauthors of research presented at the 2005 Rootstock Symposium in Osage Beach, Mo., February 5. Justin Morris, G.L. Main and Keith Striegler authored “Rootstock effects on Sunbelt productivity and fruit composition,” and, along with C.B. Lake, coauthored “Effect of rootstock on fruit composition, yield, growth, and vine nutritional status of Cabernet franc.”

Horticulture

David Hensley, department head, received the Leadership and Administration Award at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Horticultural Science Southern Region in Little Rock.  Hensley's performance as a leader and communicator and his effective promotion of horticulture in Arkansas were cited as reasons for the award.

Plant Pathology

Tameka Bailey and Yinong Yang attended the 2nd International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics in Tucson November 15-17 and presented a paper titled "A stress responsive MAP kinase mediates abscisic acid and ethylene signal interaction in rice plants." Dr. Yang also presented a poster, co-authored with Xiangjun Zhou and Chuansheng Mei, titled "A rice EIN2-like gene mediates ethylene and abscisic acid crosstalk and inversely regulates disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance." Dr. Yang also attended the Plant and Animal Genome XIII meeting in San Diego January 15-19 and gave an invited talk on "Defense pathways and signal interactions involved in rice blast resistance."

Poultry Science

Drew Parker, president of the poultry science club, was named the Poultry Science "Student of the Year" by the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association, while attending the International Poultry Exposition in Atlanta in January.

David Chapman was an invited speaker at the Atlantic Poultry Conference in Nova Scotia, Canada February 18.

Keith Bramwell is giving a talk on egg cooling during the breeder session at the Annual Spring Symposium hosted by the Poultry Federation at the Northwest Arkansas Convention Center in Springdale April 26-27. Susan Watkins is in charge of organizing and coordinating the Annual Spring Symposium program. Watkins is also speaking during the turkey session on “Three simple tools for optimizing your summer ventilation program.”

Dan Donoghue coordinated an invited presentation by Dr. J. Stan Bailey of the USDA/ARS on "Current Issues with Salmonella in Poultry," March 14th at the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science.

Geraldine Huff and William Huff were invited presenters at The International Debate Conference for the Feed & Food Chain, "Antimicrobial Growth Promoters: Worldwide Ban on the Horizon," on Jan. 31 - Feb. 1,  Noordwijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. She presented a paper on "Nutritional Strategies For Reducing Reliance On Antibiotics  In Poultry Production." He presented a paper entitled "Bacteriophage: A Safe and Natural Alternative to Antimicrobial Growth Promoters." 

William Huff, who is Second Vice President of the Southern Poultry Science Society, served as the program chairman for the 2005 annual meeting in Atlanta in January.

Geraldine Huff gave an invited talk on turkey osteomyelitis complex at the Michigan Poultry Symposium, Grand Rapids, MI, Feb. 17th, and at the Midwest Poultry Federation Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, March 16.

Frank Jones organized and hosted the International Short Course on Modern Poultry Production in March. This event takes place twice a year at the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science and boasts participants from around the world.

Narayan Rath was invited to present seminar on "Avian growth plate development" for the Department of Zoology, Benaras Hindu University, India, Feb. 1-4.  He also attended the annual meeting of the Society for Reproductive Biology and Comparative Endocrinology, Santiniketan, India, Feb. 6-9.  Gave talk entitled, "Regulation of avian growth plate development." Rath was also invited to present a talk titled, "Ovotransferrin, an avian acute phase protein and its immunomodulatory potential" in the 5th International Conference on Acute Phase proteins, in Dublin, Ireland, in March.

Memo Tellez was notified that he will receive the highest recognition in Mexico for his career research work during the last 15 years from the Mexican national poultry science association (ANECA) in June of this year.

Jerry Wooley was given the Specialist Performance Award by the Arkansas Association of Cooperative Extension Specialists. This award is given to an Extension Specialist for recognition of outstanding performance on a single, difficult assignment.

Savannah Henderson and Ashley Swaffar were invited to attend the Aviagen Short Course in Talledega, Alabama, this summer. This is a nationally competitive short course and students must apply and be accepted in order to attend.

Carol Ojano-Dirain received the Alltech Student Manuscript Award for her paper on mitochondrial function in broilers with low and high feed efficiency during the Southern Poultry Science Society's Annual Meeting in Atlanta in January. Master's student Krishna Hamal from Nepal, won an Outstanding Research Presentation Award for his paper on maternal antibody transfer to offspring in broilers at the same meeting.