Latest News

April 9, 2018

An innovation that could have a huge impact on water quality problems in the United States, a system capable of removing almost all phosphorus from stored livestock manure, was developed by a team of researchers from Penn State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.

April 4, 2018

Manipulating the temperature and the length of time under which cocoa beans are roasted can simultaneously preserve and even boost the potency of some bioactive and antioxidant compounds while protecting desired sensory aspects of chocolate, according to Penn State researchers.

April 2, 2018

A mobile app designed by Penn State researchers to help farmers and others diagnose crop diseases has earned recognition from one of the world's tech giants. PlantVillage, developed by a team led by David Hughes, associate professor of entomology and biology, was the subject of a keynote video presented at Google's TensorFlow Development Summit 2018, held March 30 in Mountain View, California.

April 1, 2018

Researcher, author and educator Kevin McGowan will recount the results of his 30-year study of more than 2,500 individual crows -- including their home and family life, flock life, and crow-human interactions -- at 5 p.m. on April 4 in 112 Forest Resources Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

April 1, 2018

Research in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences aims to fortify foods people frequently eat — eggs and chicken — with heart-healthy, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.

March 29, 2018

Leading the worldwide effort to get a better handle on methane emissions from animals, an international consortium of researchers devised more accurate models to estimate the amount of the potent greenhouse gas produced by dairy cattle.

March 28, 2018

Investing in public education may boost upward economic mobility — and ease income inequality, something that is becoming a big concern for economists and policymakers in the United States.

March 27, 2018

The Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State, in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Davis; the University of Minnesota; and Dickinson College will receive more than $2 million from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research and the United States Department of Agriculture to translate basic research into online decision support tools to help beekeepers and land managers maintain and expand populations of managed and wild bees.

March 23, 2018

Jason Kaye, professor of soil biogeochemistry, is the recipient of the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences' 2017 Alex and Jessie C. Black Award for Excellence in Research.

March 23, 2018

Kathleen Sexsmith, assistant professor of rural sociology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is the recipient of the college's 2017 Roy C. Buck Faculty Award, which recognizes the best article accepted or published by a refereed scholarly journal in the social sciences within the past two years.

March 19, 2018

Working with mushroom growers and residents in southern Chester County, Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences is ramping up ongoing research efforts to alleviate mushroom phorid fly infestations in southeastern Pennsylvania.

March 15, 2018

Valentine's Day may have passed for this year, but if you're in love with sweet, firm, antioxidant-rich — and award-winning — tomatoes that will perform well in your garden this season, you're in luck, thanks to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. "Valentine," a new variety of grape tomato that germinated in the breeding program of plant scientist Majid Foolad, now is available commercially after nearly two decades in development.

March 13, 2018

Millions of Americans will celebrate the St. Patrick's Day holiday this month with a "traditional" meal of corned beef and cabbage — but most won't pause to consider what makes the meat so distinctive or how it ended up being a tradition.

March 13, 2018

Carpenter ants infected with a specialized parasitic fungus are not subjected to aggression or isolation from their nest mates, and they continue to share in the colony's food resources until they leave the nest for the last time to die, according to a study led by Penn State researchers.

March 7, 2018

A good way to describe ramps, it has been said, is to note what they are not. Ramps are not leeks, nor are they scallions or shallots. Ramps look like scallions, but they're smaller and have one or two broad, flat leaves.

February 27, 2018

NSF Day, on Feb. 28 at the Nittany Lion Inn, will feature several events aimed at providing resources and support for faculty interested in strengthening their research grant applications and forwarding their research careers.

February 26, 2018

Access to wood fuels for cooking must be considered when formulating policy to deal with food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, according to researchers who advocate expanding the effort to improve wood-fuel systems and make them more sustainable.

February 13, 2018

Estrogens in treated wastewater that find their way into temporary wetlands known as vernal pools persist for weeks or even months, according to researchers, who suggest that persistence may have implications for these critical aquatic habitats.

February 1, 2018

Agroforestry could play an important role in mitigating climate change because it sequesters more atmospheric carbon in plant parts and soil than conventional farming, according to Penn State researchers.

January 29, 2018

To meet increasing consumer demand for heritage-breed turkeys to be the centerpiece of holiday and other meals, researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences are studying methods producers can use to raise the historical birds.

January 25, 2018

In the big woods of Pennsylvania's Northern Tier, the home range of the average white-tailed deer is more than twice as large as that of a deer in urban or agricultural areas of the state. Penn State researcher Duane Diefenbach documented that phenomenon early on in his work, but it did not occur to him it might be representative of many different mammal species around the globe.

January 24, 2018

While the overprescribing of opioid-based painkillers may be the main driver of the increased abuse of opioids in rural America, it may be more complex than that. Economists say that other factors, including declining farm income, extreme weather and other natural disasters, may affect a crisis that is killing thousands of citizens and costing the country billions of dollars.

January 18, 2018

Bean plants that suppress secondary root growth in favor of boosting primary root growth forage greater soil volume to acquire phosphorus, according to Penn State researchers, who say their recent findings have implications for plant breeders and improving crop productivity in nutrient-poor soils.

January 8, 2018

Manuel Llinás, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Jason Rasgon, professor of entomology and disease epidemiology, have participated in the formulation of an updated research agenda for global malaria elimination and eradication.

January 4, 2018

Penn State's new data center gives researchers the ability to tackle complex questions that range from detecting subatomic particles, to understanding how planets form, to anticipating how natural disasters and more gradual changes in natural systems will affect human systems such as water supply and food production.

December 14, 2017

Food safety practices that Americans take for granted — washing hands with soap, refrigeration, and not cutting raw meat and vegetables on the same surface without disinfection — are not widely practiced in other places around the world, and researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences want to change that.

December 11, 2017

Limiting a much-needed resource could pit pathogens against one another and prevent the emergence of drug resistance, say researchers.

December 11, 2017

Using a network of up to 60 citizen scientists, a team of Penn State researchers will assess the levels of endocrine-disrupting compounds in the Susquehanna River next year, and in turn empower those volunteers to become part of the solution to water-quality problems related to emerging contaminants.

December 4, 2017

The Center for Security Research and Education at Penn State invites University faculty and researchers to apply to its new grant program to support security-related scholarship and educational programs at Penn State.