Science & Technology

Smoke from wildfires can alter grapes and affect the taste and sensory experience of wine, threatening California’s $88 billion industry as it faces an increase in fires on the horizon. 

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and U.S. Department of Agriculture spent this summer applying a calcium spray to grapes to see if the treatment can protect the fruit from smoke exposure.

Slippery, drippy goop makes Ralstonia bacteria devastating killers of plants, causing rapid wilting in tomato, potato and a wide range of other crops, according to new research. The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes from an unusual collaboration between plant pathologists and engineers at the University of California, Davis. 

When pistachio hulls split before the nuts are harvested, insects and fungi can get inside, damaging the nut, costing farmers money and contaminating the nuts. About 4% of the overall crop experiences hull split, but some cultivars can split as much as 40% under certain conditions. 

California’s wildfire seasons are becoming more intense, and the state’s public bank of seeds to help replant and reforest lands after blazes is understocked by thousands of pounds. 

A new research project out of University of California, Davis, aims to help solve that problem by using decades of data from historical cone collection records to model when cones in coniferous trees from wild stands will ripen. 

A new federally funded research project at the University of California, Davis, endeavors to extract valuable components for magnets, lasers and other modern technologies from an unlikely source: acidic wastewater from mines and industrial processes. 

Ecological medicine is a new approach to health science that draws on a very old idea: connecting with each other, with animals and plants, and with the natural world fosters health and well-being for people and the planet. 

“Everything you suspected was good for you -- fresh air, trees, animal companions, purpose, reciprocity -- turns out to have peer-reviewed backing,” said Rebecca Calisi Rodríguez, associate professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior and director of the Green Care Lab at the University of California, Davis.

About 400 years ago, a cross between cabernet franc and sauvignon blanc gave birth to cabernet sauvignon. Today, cabernet sauvignon is the world’s most-planted wine grape, dominating vineyards from Napa to Bordeaux. New research from the University of California, Davis, reveals that the grape still carries a kind of gene memory of its parents.

“Here, Jeffy, Jeffy!” 

Hugh Safford is calling out into the woods for a tree. That’s normal enough for a forest ecologist, but the tree he’s searching for — the Jeffrey pine — was not, until recently, expected to live anywhere near here.   

A team of researchers from University of California, Davis, spent the summer at elementary schools across the state measuring tree canopies and just how hot playgrounds, basketball courts, soccer fields and other outdoor spaces can get.

Tree canopies at California schools cover only about 4-6% of the average campus, meaning student breaks and outside activities are often under the glaring sun for the roughly 5.8 million K-12 public school students in California.