Latest News

March 27, 2019

A new report issued today (March 27) shows how U.S. farmers — facing a surge of weather events and disease outbreaks — can increase production and revenues with innovations produced by federally funded agricultural research, including studies performed in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

March 26, 2019

Mark Guiltinan, J. Franklin Styer Professor of Horticultural Botany in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, is the recipient of the 2018 Alex and Jessie C. Black Award for Excellence in Research.

March 26, 2019

A new technique to spin starch fibers using Lego pieces could have future applications for lab-grown "clean" meat, according to a team of food scientists from Penn State and the University of Alabama.

March 26, 2019

Entrepreneurs from across the University will pitch their business ideas and create inventive solutions to common problems through a series of competitions and challenges held during Penn State Startup Week from April 1-5.

March 25, 2019

A system that helps tree-fruit growers avoid frost damage to their crops by using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and ground-based robots, could be on the horizon, thanks to Penn State researchers, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

March 22, 2019

The Appalachian communities that enjoyed persistent economic growth following the 2008 Great Recession have a number of factors in common, according to researchers who analyzed all 420 counties in the Appalachian region. Their findings will help guide future economic development strategies across Appalachia.

March 18, 2019

It's a long way from Shanerburg Run, not far from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to the closest shores of the Chesapeake Bay … about 200 miles. And yet the stream — or more precisely the studies Penn State researchers are conducting on the eastern brook trout it harbors — will be highlighted in a new film about the estuary and its watershed.

March 18, 2019

Warm weather at Penn State’s University Park campus sprouts scenes of flowers in bloom, students playing frisbee on the Old Main lawn and folks strolling around campus as they enjoy Berkey Creamery ice cream.

March 12, 2019

Providing energy for home use, especially for cooking food and heating living spaces, without contributing to climate change demands creativity and perseverance.

March 12, 2019

An extract from the seeds of avocados exhibited anti-inflammatory properties in a laboratory study, according to Penn State researchers, and it represents a potential source for novel anti-inflammatory compounds that could be developed as a functional food ingredient or pharmaceuticals.

March 7, 2019

Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), in collaboration with the Institute for CyberScience (ICS) and the College of Information Sciences and Technology, has awarded over $100,000 in funding to support six new interdisciplinary teams of Penn State researchers whose work is aimed at developing innovative research programs using Twitter data. Faculty from the College of Agricultural Sciences are a part of three of these teams.

March 6, 2019

Consumer preference or aversion to wines made from native grapes — such as Concord, Niagara and Catawba, which are mostly grown in eastern North America — may depend on early exposure to the fruits' sweet, ultra "grapey" taste and aroma, according to researchers who conducted sensory tests with wine drinkers in Pennsylvania and California.

March 1, 2019

Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences has named Jayson Harper, professor of agricultural economics, as interim director of the Fruit Research and Extension Center, effective March 1.

February 27, 2019

Returning to civilian life can be challenging for veterans. While there are many programs and services aimed at helping them readjust, some veterans do not take advantage of these supportive resources. A Penn State-led research team examined factors that are associated with program non-use among veterans who recently left active duty service.

February 26, 2019

Pests and diseases are taking a substantial bite out of the world’s five major food crops — in some cases, up to 40 percent — according to a recently released publication, one of the first to inventory the impact on a global scale.

February 25, 2019

Carabid beetles produce caustic chemicals they spray to defend themselves against predators, and the compound that protects their bodies from these toxic substances shows promise for use in bioengineering or biomedical applications, according to Penn State researchers.

February 22, 2019

Penn State's Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs has named Alexander Hristov, professor of dairy nutrition in the College of Agricultural Sciences, as a distinguished professor. Hristov is an internationally recognized scholar in livestock greenhouse gas mitigation and production and in amino acid nutrition of dairy cows.

February 13, 2019

Of Pennsylvania’s 28 million acres, 17 million are forests. Seventy percent of those forested lands are managed by private landowners, two of whom are Tony and Jeanne Riley of Baltimore, Maryland.

February 13, 2019

Employing advanced genetic-tracing techniques and sharing the data produced in real time could limit the spread of bacteria — Bacillus cereus — which cause foodborne illness, according to researchers who implemented whole-genome sequencing of a pathogen-outbreak investigation.

February 7, 2019

The abilities of various bee species to disperse influences the pattern of their population's genetic structure, which, in turn, can constrain how they respond to environmental change, as reported by an international team of researchers.

February 6, 2019

Widespread adoption by dairy farmers of injecting manure into the soil instead of spreading it on the surface could be crucial to restoring Chesapeake Bay water quality, according to researchers who compared phosphorus runoff from fields treated by both methods. However, they predict it will be difficult to persuade farmers to change practices.

January 29, 2019

When Tomas Lowenstein of Agricola La Reina, a mushroom farm in Miranda, Venezuela, needs spawn, or "seed," to grow his crops, his chosen point of contact isn't around the corner or even in the country. It's more than 2,200 miles away in a laboratory on Penn State's University Park campus.

January 22, 2019

Designating relatively small parcels of land as protected areas for wildlife with no habitat management — which has frequently been done in urban-suburban locales around the world — likely does not benefit declining songbird species, according to a team of researchers who studied a long-protected northeastern virgin forest plot.

January 17, 2019

Changes in the distribution of Pennsylvania's population — largely toward the state's southeastern quadrant — reflect challenges that policymakers need to address to promote and maintain statewide prosperity, suggests a new report compiled by economists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.