Blog

Weed vs. Crop Differentiation Using Crop Marking Systems

Project Update - February 2018

HannahJoy Pheasant

During the past year I conducted three field trials in lettuce and gathered data from five tomato field trials. The three lettuce trials used physical plant markers. Three of the tomato trials had physical markers while two had topical markers. I collected weed density counts before and after cultivation, plant stand counts, time to hand-weed after mechanical cultivation, and marketable yields.

Erin Havens Jastro Research Award Project Summary

I used the Jastro Research Award to help fund a collaboration with  RIFA, fellow UC Davis students Kellen Parrish and Kenji Tomari, and a Guatemalan non-profit organization called the Asociación de Comunidades Campesinas Indiginas para el Desarollo Integral de Petén (Association of Indigenous Campesino Communities for the Integrated Development of Peten, or ACDIP), between June-August 2017 in Peten, Guatemala.

Julia Wentzel’s Practicum in Beekeeping Course at UC Davis

Though IAD students tend to travel to other parts of the world for their research, my project has kept me very close to home: I have been developing curriculum for a Practicum in Beekeeping course that was offered here at UC Davis during Fall Quarter 2018. With support from Jastro, I was able to purchase the equipment and resources I needed to attend trainings and gain the experience needed to effectively design the course.

Dana Armstrong in Sierra Leone

From late July to early November 2018, I had the privilege of traveling to Bo, Sierra Leone to assess the feasibility of ethanol cookstoves as a clean-cooking alternative in households. Ethanol made from cassava root had long been a dream of UC Davis Humphry fellow and Sierra Leonean native Martin Kailie, with whom I worked to execute this study.

Katie von der Lieth Travels to Brazil

Rates of deforestation in the Amazon increased in 2016 for the first time in almost a decade. The Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world but human activity like cattle ranching, illegal logging, and large-scale monoculture soy and corn production have been driving deforestation.