Cranberry growers know the symptoms well: hard, dark-colored bumps on stems, brown leaves and dried-up fruit. The disease, cranberry stem gall, causes major damage to crops and shrugs off treatment with fungicide. However, a UW-Madison plant scientist’s latest research suggests that the key to understanding the disease may lie in the previously unexplored combination of bacteria in the soil and environmental factors.

While summer and county fairs are still a few months away, Wisconsin dairy cattle judges need to be thinking about renewing or obtaining their Wisconsin Purebred Dairy Cattle Association judging certification. PDCA has scheduled its annual judges training for April 30 at the Vernon County Fairgrounds in Viroqua.

Do you know of a farmer or rancher who truly is outstanding in the field, on the range or at the farmers market? Do you […]

Prospective dairy farmers have until April 1 to apply for an innovative program, now entering its tenth year, to help them establish their own grass-based dairy farms in Wisconsin.

Elmer H. Marth, emeritus professor of food science, bacteriology, and food microbiology and toxicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has received the Laureate Award from the National Cheese Institute. He was honored for his lifelong dedication to studying and teaching cheese safety.

The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invites prospective students, including high school juniors and seniors, and their parents to preview what the Farm and Industry Short Course has to offer.

The milk-price roller coaster will flatten out a bit for Wisconsin dairy farmers in 2004, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison market analysts. Milk prices should average 50 cents to 70 cents per hundredweight higher than in 2003, but highs will be lower and lows will be higher. Wisconsin’s net farm income should total $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in 2004 if higher milk prices prevail. That’s up from $950 million in 2003 and just $640 million in 2002, when milk prices plummeted, say agricultural economists at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

The Michael Fields Agricultural Institute will hold its annual Advanced Organic Vegetable Production Workshop Feb. 4-7 at East Troy, Wis. This workshop is designed to help experienced fresh market vegetable growers make the transition to organic production, expand their existing organic operations, or start a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) enterprise.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $10 million to a team of researchers, headed by UW-Madison geneticist John Doebley, to study the molecular and functional diversity of the maize (corn) genome. The five-year Plant Genome Research Program grant will fund research at six institutions: UW-Madison, Cornell University, University of California-Irvine, North Carolina State University, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Cold Spring Harbor Lab. The grant runs through December 2008.

At this time of year, most people are aware that some holiday plants, such as mistletoe and poinsettia, can be toxic. In addition, wintertime is the season for poisonings from a variety of toxins, especially in rural settings, says Donna Lotzer, poison education coordinator at the UW Hospital Poison Prevention and Education Center.