Growing Together Nebraska provides food, education across Cornhusker State Monday, November 2, 2020
Harvesting carrots earlier in October at the Ever Green Community Garden in Gering are (from left) Extension Educator Tammie Ostdiek and Extension Master Gardeners Carol Knaub and Tina Luz.
The COVID-19 pandemic of has contributed to increased food insecurity for many Nebraska families. In response, communities have pitched in to help. And some of the donated food is produce that has been grown this year at community gardens around Nebraska, which leverage local volunteers with grant funds from Growing Together Nebraska, part of Nebraska Extension’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) program.

Read full story at Nebraska Today


A deeper dive into EPA’s dicamba re-registration Friday, October 30, 2020
Greg Kruger, weed science extension specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, kneels in a soybean field that recently received a treatment of dicamba. He continues to conduct research on dicamba drift and boom heights.
The Environmental Protection Agency to offer a five-year re-registration for dicamba use for over-the-top applications. Greg Kruger has spent a considerable amount of time with growers, chemical companies and even the EPA to help better understand how dicamba operates. At the research level, he has worked with pesticide registrants to generate the data sets to defend the registration decisions made by EPA.

Full story at FarmProgress


James Schnable recognized for outstanding paper Friday, October 30, 2020
James Schnable
A paper by James Schnable, Agronomy and Horticulture, has been selected as the 2020 Outstanding Paper by The Plant Phenome Journal. The article, “Functional Modeling of Plant Growth Dynamics,” deals with ways to use time series data collected from high throughput phenotyping facilities like the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's automated greenhouses.

Full story at IANR News


Virtual celebration honors 29 department employees’ service to Nebraska Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Nearly 1,000 university employees were honored as part of the 2020 Service Awards. The annual Human Resources event honors employees for their years of service in five-year increments. | University Communication

Chancellor Ronnie Green hosted a university-wide Celebration of Service, honoring nearly 1,000 faculty and staff Oct. 19.

Following COVID-19 protocols for large campus events, it was a virtual celebration. The Celebration of Service website features several videos, including the annual look back in time by Rick Alloway, professor of broadcasting.

Award recipients — which are earned in increments of five years, spanning from 55 to 5 years for the Oct. 19 event — should have received an email from Human Resources explaining how each award will be delivered.

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Pandemic boosts popularity of gardening, ‘Backyard Farmer’ Thursday, October 8, 2020
BYF Garden
As the longtime host of Nebraska’s “Backyard Farmer” gardening show, Kim Todd is used to having a packed schedule and overflowing email inbox. The past six months, however, have been unlike anything she’s seen before.

Read full story at Nebraska Today


A Tribute to Lisa Jasa, CropWatch Editor Since the Beginning Thursday, October 8, 2020
Lisa Jasa receiving award
A short bout with pancreatic cancer resulted in Lisa Jasa being unable to work with CropWatch in 2020, but she continued to follow the information being shared. We lost her this past Monday, September 28th. She will be greatly missed. She leaves behind a legacy with CropWatch, not only through the timely stories released nearly every week for almost 30 years, but in the kindness shown to everyone with whom she interacted and the relationships she built along the way.

Full story at CropWatch


With travel restrictions in place, soil comes to UNL’s Soil Judging Team for this year’s competition Monday, October 5, 2020
Phuong Minh Tu Le makes notes about her soil texture and soil color determinations during an Oct. 2 practice session in advance of the Region 5 Soil Judging Competition. The competition is being held virtually this year. Lana Koepke Johnson, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture
On Oct. 1, a minivan arrived at Hardin Hall on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln East Campus, where the driver dropped off 30 cores of Missouri soil, each contained in a tube measuring about six feet. Normally, the UNL Soil Judging Team would have traveled to the soil, said co-coach Judith Turk, pedologist with the Conservation and Survey Division at the School of Natural Resources. But this year it came to them.

Full story at School fo Natural Resources


All the angles: Automated image processing could aid crop evals Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Pocket Science - James Schnable
Nebraska’s James Schnable and colleagues developed an image-processing framework, Leaf Angle eXtractor, that quantifies leaf angles from time-lapse photography of plants.

Read full story at Nebraska Today


Dunn teaches grass identification in virtual hands-on lab Thursday, September 24, 2020
Cheryl Dunn explains the structures of crested wheatgrass to her Wildland Plants students during class on Zoom. | Photo courtesy of Shaun Dunn
Cheryl Dunn had to completely rethink how she was going to teach Agronomy 442/842 Wildland Plants when she had to move it online this fall. The course is a comprehensive study of plants that are important in natural resource management and involves a heavy emphasis on intensive lab and field study.

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Film exploring food technology, sustainability, diversity & inclusion available to UNL community Thursday, September 24, 2020
Hearts of Glass doocumentary discussion
University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty, students and staff are invited to view the documentary “Hearts of Glass” and participate in a panel discussion with writer, director and producer Jennifer Tennican, employees of Vertical Harvest, and experts from among the UNL faculty.

Full story at IANR News