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Summer 2024

Agriculture

Summer 2010

The best berries

These are not your ordinary grocery store strawberries.

They are nothing like those California berries, bred for size, long truck rides, and shelf-life, locked in plastic clamshells under the florescent lights of the produce section.

The berries of Washington are juicy, fragile, flavor-packed fruit. Because Northwest berries are mostly grown for processing, their texture and flavor are paramount, says Patrick Moore, WSU’s strawberry breeder.

And what grows best here are typically berries bred for this environment. Hood, an Oregon variety, is one of the most widely-grown in the region. It has large, dark red fruit and a clean, sweet taste. And like the rich, … » More …

Summer 2010

Interview with Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan has been a leading voice in the re-evaluation of how we eat and farm. The author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, the book selected for this year’s Common Reading, Pollan visited campus in January to talk with the students who had been discussing his book and present a lecture on “The Sun-Food Agenda.” Washington State Magazine’s Tim Steury interviewed him by phone prior to his visit. The following is an edited version of their conversation:

WSM: There’s been a real sea change in how we think about food in this country. I wonder if you could address what … » More …

Fall 2008

Video: A new biofuel crop for Washington farmers?

Meet the WSU Researcher: Michael Neff

Part 2: A new biofuel crop for Washington farmers?

Washington State University botanist Michael Neff discusses how to transform camelina as a possible biofuel crop in Washington.

Neff’s lab works on camelina, an oilseed used for lamps from the Iron Age that can grow on marginal farmland and not compete with food crops.

Neff shows how his work uses transgenic seeds to make camelina a better fuel crop, complete with rose-colored glasses and green LEDs to see which seeds have been changed.

Read more about Neff’s work in “Seeing red (and far-red).”

Watch » More …

Fall 2008

Video: What Plants See…Changes How They Grow

Meet the WSU Researcher: Michael Neff

Part 1: What Plants See…Changes How They Grow

Washington State University botanist Michael Neff studies the way plants sense light and plants around them, and change their growth patterns accordingly. Plants use photoreceptors sensitive to far-red light to determine their proximity to other plants. These photoreceptors are different from infrared receptors used for photosynthesis.

“What I’ve been interested in forever is how plants use light as a source of information,” says Neff. “Plants have photoreceptors that are completely independent of photosynthesis and chloroplasts, that read their environment and say, ‘I am in full sunlight, I’m in the shade of … » More …

Spring 2010

Brian Carter ’06—On the same garden path

Brian Carter ’06 is a natural resource specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but he often uses a shorter description.

“I’m a curator,” he says, while offering up the Latin name for a tree at Seattle’s Ballard Locks. “I make sure your grandchildren will see the same garden you do, just in a different life span.”

Carter is talking about the life span of trees and shrubs in the Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Garden next to the locks that link lakes Union and Washington to Puget Sound. But he could also be referring to the life span … » More …

Spring 2010

Finally, a Washington apple

A Washington apple? you say. You might respond, correctly, that Washington and apples are almost synonymous. After all, we produce more than half of the nation’s eating apples. Visit a market in Mexico, Thailand, Houston, or Saudi Arabia, and there, you will find Washington apples.

Still prominent among the selection is the iconic Red Delicious. Up through the 1980s, it represented more than three-quarters of Washington production. But now, other varieties, the sweet Gala, the tart Granny Smith, the intensely sweet-tart Pink Lady, are steadily usurping the Red’s status.

But neither in the era of the Red’s dominance nor in this new age of increasing … » More …

Winter 2009

Cultivated thought

Cultivated thought :: Near the end of an otherwise lackluster speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in September 1859, Abraham Lincoln suddenly shifted gears heading into his peroration.

Having compared two conflicting theories of labor, he continued, “This leads to the further reflection, that no other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought, as agriculture.”

Although my son would likely question the intellectual appeal of spreading manure, Lincoln’s observation resonates, at least in moments when the laborer/scholar is not exhausted.

Lincoln went on to suggest what fields might provide food for agricultural contemplation. … » More …