News

Two University of California, Davis, researchers have won prestigious national and international honors in recognition of their work using genomics to address livestock health and crop resilience in the wake of a changing climate.

High-severity wildfire is increasing in Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascade forests and has been burning at unprecedented rates compared to the years before Euro-American settlement, according to a study from the Safford Lab at the University of California, Davis, and its collaborators. Those rates have especially shot up over the past decade. 

On behalf of Dean Helene Dillard, who is taking much deserved time away from campus, happy new year to all our students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners who tirelessly work to make the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences a unique place of excellence for learning, research and community engagement.

We start this year with the promise of a fortified snowpack and welcome rain that we hope recharges groundwater and brings some relief to the prolonged drought. The new year also brings positivity and progress to campus.

Spring is the sweet spot for breeding songbirds in California’s Central Valley – not too hot, not too wet. But climate change models indicate the region will experience more rainfall during the breeding season, and days of extreme heat are expected to increase. Both changes threaten the reproductive success of songbirds, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. 

It’s rare to leave a lecture, field survey or casual conversation with John Eadie without a smile or a chuckle. The University of California, Davis professor is known for his sense of humor, enthusiasm and vast knowledge about ecology and wildlife conservation. It’s what students and colleagues admire most about him.

Life turned remote during the COVID-19 pandemic. People worked, learned to cook, chatted with loved ones and completed countless other tasks via video.

Some cats even visited the virtual veterinarian as part of research out of University of California, Davis.

A team of researchers measured how cats reacted to in-clinic appointments versus those conducted by webcam to evaluate if telemedicine could increase access to care for an estimated 45.3 million feline-friendly households in the United States.

An international team has succeeded in propagating a commercial hybrid rice strain as a clone through seeds with 95 percent efficiency. This could lower the cost of hybrid rice seed, making high-yielding, disease resistant rice strains available to low-income farmers worldwide. The work was published Dec. 27 in Nature Communications. 

UC Davis researchers are providing more insight into how grape skins and seeds, which usually go to waste during the making of chardonnay wine, may be a valuable and healthful ingredient in new food products.

A review paper published by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry outlines how chardonnay marc can serve as a model for developing plant-based natural product food ingredients, and perhaps make upcycling agricultural byproducts relevant to other post-harvest processing scenarios.

Laughter bounces off the tile floor in the Davis Senior Center as small groups of UC Davis students huddle with older adults around laptops. They are working together to price flights to visit family, write emails or buy medicine online.

“Let’s see what happens when I do this,” said Christine Adams, of Davis, as she pecks at a key on her laptop. “OK, now how do I pick an emoji using the keyboard?”

At the end of the year, I like to reflect on all our college has accomplished and give thanks for the dedication and hard work of our faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends who keep the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences a place of excellence. Please scroll down to enjoy our year in review video and photographs of some of the college’s highlights from this past year. I wish you and yours a joyous holiday season and a wonderful year ahead.