Agri News, MN
11-21-06
Iowa news and notes
Nonnecke receives ag teaching award
AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State University faculty member Gail Nonnecke has
received the annual USDA Food and Agricultural Sciences Excellence in
Teaching Award.
Nonnecke, a horticulture professor, is one of only two people to receive the
national award, which includes all the food and agricultural disciplines.
The award is based on teaching quality, philosophy, methodology and service to
the profession and students as well as professional growth.
ISU helping to sequence soybean genome
AMES, Iowa -- A group of USDA-Agricultural Research Service researchers in
Iowa State University's agronomy department are sequencing the soybean
genome to discover the similarities and differences with its relatives in the
legume family.
Working in collaboration with the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute,
Randy Shoemaker, Steven Cannon and their colleagues hope comparisons of
the DNA in related plants can help researchers understand how agronomic traits
evolved and, in turn, aid plant breeders in creating improved crop varieties.
"This information will be especially useful in helping plant breeders target oil and
protein quality, disease resistance and other valuable traits,'' said Cannon. "This
information can speed up the entire breeding process. For example, breeders
could evaluate seedlings rather than waiting for the trait to be visible in mature
plants.''
ISU plays hand in EPA emissions study
AMES, Iowa -- Agricultural engineers from Iowa State University and the
University of Kentucky are more than halfway through collecting air emissions
data from two commercial broiler houses in western Kentucky in a project
proposed to be used as part of a national air emissions monitoring study.
The quality assurance project plan was approved by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency in September. Battelle Labs and the EPA also completed a
technical systems audit of the monitoring project.
Approval of the project plan and completion of the audit are important milestones
toward the proposed use of the data to represent air emissions from
southeastern broiler systems in the EPA's air emissions monitoring study.