John Brunnquell of Port Washington, Wis. and Cindy Baumgartner of Plainfield, Wis. have been elected president and vice-president of the Wisconsin Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Association for 1999-2000. Brunnquell earned a B.S. in 1986 and M.S. in 1996 from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is president of Egg Innovations, a specialty egg marketing group. Baumgartner is a farmer and 1979 CALS graduate. With her husband, she is involved in a business, Pest Pros, a crop protection/scouting firm.

Richard M. Amasino, a plant molecular biologist in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named the recipient of the 1999 Alexander von Humboldt Award. Amasino will receive the award at a ceremony Oct. 28 in Madison, Wis.

For a second year, the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will help soybean growers monitor their fields for the soybean cyst nematode.

Food chemists John Lucey and Leslie Plhak have joined the Department of Food Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

For more than a decade now, Wisconsin’s dairy farmers have seen and heard a great deal about the trend toward larger operations. Some farmers want no part of a major expansion. Others look at their old barns and wonder if there’s a reasonable way to move to a larger operation without spinning out of control financially.

Four tours will highlight the latest in crops and soils research at Agronomy Field Day, Thursday, Sept. 16 at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Arlington Agricultural Research Station.

Baldwin, professor emeritus of bacteriology and former dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, helped discover bacteria that improved crop yields. A World War I veteran, he held several top posts at the University of Wisconsin during a career on campus that spanned four decades.

Larry Satter, a dairy nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the USDA Dairy Forage Research Center, has received the 1999 Award of Honor from the American Dairy Science Association. The award, which is the highest honor given by the ADSA, recognized Satter’s exceptional and long-term contributions to the group.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers will tackle some of the challenges facing the alternative red-meat industry in the upper Midwest. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, in collaboration with the Meat Science Laboratory at the UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, has received a grant to study ways to improve marketing and processing in this rapidly growing industry.

University of Wisconsin-Extension/Madison specialists are helping schools adapt a strategy farmers use to control weeds and bugs with a minimal amount of chemicals.