Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Cover Crop Adoption Factors In The Rio Grande Valley Through A Social-Ecological Perspective, Mackenzie Feldman

Theses and Dissertations

Reducing agriculture’s negative environmental impacts is crucial for mitigating climate change (White, 2021). Cover crops– non-cash crops grown to benefit subsequent cash crops– can slow erosion, improve soil health, enhance water availability, control pests, and increase biodiversity. Despite these benefits, adoption rates remain low, prompting the USDA and other organizations to fund research on increasing their use. Most studies focus on the Midwest and Northeast, and emphasize individual factors over the relationship between structural factors and individual factors that impact farmers’ decisions to adopt cover crops. This USDA-funded study begins to fill this gap by exploring social-ecological factors and how …

Victory Gardens: Helping On The Home Front, A Curriculum Outreach Project, Kelly Hoomes

Master's Theses

The Victory Garden: Helping on the Homefront traveling trunk outreach project links past, present, and future by introducing students to the historical significance of World War II victory gardens and emphasizing the continued relevance today. Partnering with Kennesaw State University’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education (MHHE), the traveling trunk focuses on a fifth-grade audience, aligning with Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies, Health, and Science. The traveling trunk designed as a “museum-in-a-box" includes primary sources, artifacts, and a practical gardening activity that fosters critical thinking and analysis. By encouraging an understanding of the past and the connections to …

The Diverse Effects Of Continual Organic Inputs On Soil Biogeochemical Properties And Microbial Communities In Sandy Ultisols Under Organic Production, Zhine Wang

All Dissertations

The objectives of this study were to understand how continual organic amendment inputs improve Nitrogen (N) cycling, microbial diversity and functional traits. Fully crossed factorial experiments were designed to test four cover crop treatments (cereal rye, hairy vetch, mixture of the rye and vetch, and no cover crop fallow) and two levels of manure compost application (with manure application and blank control) in organic vegetable production from 2020 to 2023. Cover crop biomass, soil chemical and biological properties were analyzed for the distribution and availability of soil labile N (Chapter 2), the abundance of N-cycling genes (Chapter 3), the structure …

Leveraging High-Frequency Water Quality Data And Machine Learning For Monitoring Harmful Algal Blooms, Ibrahim Busari

All Dissertations

Freshwater management is one of the most critical resources on the earth due to the plethora of water use and its limited availability. Increased algae proliferation is one of the significant problems of freshwater bodies that is triggered by nutrient enrichment and enabling conditions such as light and warm temperatures. This algal proliferation is toxic to the ecosystem through their biomass and potential toxin production that can cause hypoxic conditions and is often referred to as Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). Current monitoring approaches include laboratory analysis of water samples to observe algal cells, monitoring of water quality parameters using water …

Relationship Between Host Genomics And Microbiomics In Beef Cattle, Andrew D. Lakamp

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As sequencing technology becomes more affordable and throughput increases, microbiome information is becoming more readily available. For beef cattle selection, microbial information has a variety of uses including being a target for genetic prediction or used as a means to explicitly describe additional phenotypic variability in other traits.

Infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis (IBK), commonly known as pinkeye, is a disease that infects the ocular surface and surrounding tissue which is an animal health and producer economic concern. Vaccinations have shown to have variable effectiveness, while limited genetics studies have suggested that direct genetic selection for resistance would be slow. Therefore, an …

Examining Factors Of Variance In Energy Metabolism Of Dairy Cattle, Addison L. Carroll

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Variation is thought to occur in the use of dietary energy for production in dairy cattle. First, variance can be observed when new methane mitigation strategies are fed resulting in increased H₂ output potentially resulting in downstream effects on estimates of heat production via the Brouwer (1965) equation. Therefore, in chapter 3 a review was created to systematically describe the mathematics and theory behind the Brouwer equation, and rederive a heat production equation to integrate H₂ production. Results indicate heat production using the classical Brouwer equation (1965) relative to the rederived equation resulted in an overestimation of heat …

Impacts Of Annual Forage Management On Grazing Cattle Performance And Carrying Capacity, Shelby Davies Jenkins

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Rapid conversion of historical grasslands to cropland in recent history has led to limited perennial pasture availability and an increase in cost of pasture rent. Annual forages are an alternative grazing source. Many annual forages can grow and accumulate stockpile following summer harvest of wheat. Strip grazing is often suggested to increase grazing efficiency of stockpiled forages. To evaluate this, a stockpiled mixture of annual forages were either strip grazed or grazed continuously in the fall and winter. The mixture contained oats and rapeseed in the first year and a diverse warm season annual mixture in the second. Strip grazing …

Economic Evaluation Of Grazing Steers On Summer Annuals Sod-Seeded Into Warm-Season Perennial Pasture, Ivanelle Meyer, Michael P. Popp, Christine C. Nieman, James L. Mitchell, Kenneth P. Coffey

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objectives

Materials and Methods

Results and Discussion …

Demand For Milk And Milk Products In The Rural Household Of Bangladesh: A Panel Data Analysis, Eshrat Jahan Mahfuza, Mohammad Jahangir Alam, Andrew M. Mckensie

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Faculty Publications and Presentations

Milk is considered an essential source of protein for people of all ages. However, Bangladeshi people, particularly those living in rural areas, tend to consume less milk and milk products than necessary. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the demand for milk and milk products among rural consumers and the factors affecting their consumption habits. The study utilizes balanced panel data from three waves of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey: 2011–12, 2015, and 2018–19, collected by the International Food Policy Research Institute. Both the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) and Fixed Effects Model were employed. The expenditure elasticity for liquid …

Comparison Of Statistical And Machine Learning Genomic Prediction Methods In Plant Breeding: Case Studies In Maize And Soybean, Igor Kuivjogi Fernandes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Plant breeding is essential to increase genetic gain and food production worldwide. This study was conducted to evaluate new ways to use machine learning (ML) to tackle plant breeding challenges, where two ideas were tested — the first chapter focuses on how to combine genetic and environmental data using ML to improve the prediction of maize grain yield in multi-environment trials, while the second chapter centers on how to couple feature selection of molecular markers with ML to enhance prediction of yield in soybean, and, in both cases, ML approaches were compared to well-established statistical methods greatly adopted by the …

Utilization Of Prosur Phr As A Novel Phosphate Alternative In Tumble, Inject, And Tumble Injection Marinated Chicken Breast, Sarah E. Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Poultry is the most widely consumed meat protein worldwide for its health consideration, affordability, and versatility. Historically, the poultry industry has utilized numerous methods to improve meat quality most significantly, marination. Marination is practice commonly used in the industry by imparting various chemical functional ingredients that are known to enhance sensory characteristics such as tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. Various marination methods used in the industry including tumble, injection, and soaking. Ingredients, such as sodium chloride and phosphates are commonly used in the marination process. In recent years the industry has witnessed a shift in consumer preferences to “clean-label”. This trend …

Cognitive Bias, Memory, And Fearfulness Of Red Jungle Fowl And Athens Canadian Random Bred Chickens, Victor Juwon Oyeniran

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Our understanding of how poultry perceive and interpret their environment is essential to enhancing their welfare; over the years, animal welfare science has relied on measures of the behavioral and physiological components of affective states (positive and negative) as welfare indicators. There is an increasing interest in the study of chicken’s affective states using the Judgment bias test (JBT) as a tool for assessing welfare through their responses to ambiguous cues. This study investigates the cognitive performance of two chicken breeds with different evolutionary histories: Red Junglefowl (RJF), the primary ancestor of modern chickens, and Athens Canadian Random Bred (ACRB), …

Evaluation Of Opportunities For The Cultivation Of Heterotrophic Plant Root Organ Cultures As Food: Optimization Of Culture Conditions And Carbohydrate Sources, Fatima Mohammed Alkaabi

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

All agricultural plant production requires investment of water, energy, and land, especially in the Gulf Region, where environmental conditions are not ideally suitable for crop farming. Currently, less than 40 % of agricultural produce constitutes food, which greatly limits the overall feasibility of food production systems worldwide. Crop residues contribute more than half to global agricultural plant production, and food waste and biomass from public parks and gardens further add to the vast pool of non-edible plant material. Existing valorization strategies for such material cannot compensate for the enormous amounts of water, energy, land, and human resources invested in their …

Small Beef-Packer Resilience During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence And Policy Implications, Azzeddine Azzam, Sunil P. Dhoubadel, Binod Khanal

Cornhusker Economics

As part of a larger research project on the economics of beef supply chain resilience to natural disasters, financed in part by a grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, we obtained information from 289 processing plants across the United States about their operations during the peak COVID-19 period of March to June 2020 via a telephone survey. We collected data on plant type (slaughter, processing, both), the dominant livestock processed by the plant (predominantly beef, pork, poultry, and sheep/goat), plant capacity (maximum and typical capacity in slaughter head/day), age of establishment, and, whether the plant ceased, …

Research Verification Is Effective For Extension Programs In Aquaculture, Luke A. Roy, Anita M. Kelly, Terry R. Hanson, Larry Dorman, Matthew Recsetar, Herbert Quintero

Journal of Extension

Extension professionals have used research verification programs to evaluate the effectiveness of research-based management recommendations in several different aquaculture species. In addition to providing a platform on which to examine current best management practices and Extension recommendations from Land Grant Universities, research verification is valuable in identifying gaps for further research. Perhaps the best benefit of research verification programs are the comradery and relationships developed between cooperating commercial producers and Extension personnel that can lay the groundwork to facilitate future collaborative efforts related to technology transfer in the aquaculture industry.

#Porkandpigs: An Online Media Listening Analysis Of Public Perception Of The U.S. Swine Industry, Alexandra E. Fisk, Michael L. Smith, Brian T. Richert, Nicole Olynk Widmar

Department of Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

With the majority of the U.S. swine industry being generally bounded by social licensing, there is a growing need to understand social perspectives to better adapt to consumer demands. Online and social media data are rich datasets that researchers are leveraging to tackle economic and societal challenges. The information that can be gleaned from online media regarding public perceptions makes it an important tool for producers to understand driving topics of interest to the public. This study utilized a prominent online and social media listening and data analytics platform to identify and quantify online and social media mentions related to …

Post-Harvest Processing Practices Of Small-Scale Fisherfolk From Rosario, Cavite, Philippines: Physicochemical And Microbiological Properties Of Tuyo, Abigail Ann Alano Ching, Myrna Benita Zamora Luna, Janice A. Ragaza

Biology Faculty Publications

Dried, salted fish (Sardinella spp.), locally known as tuyo, is a Filipino food staple. Pandawan fisherfolk consider tuyo processing as their main source of livelihood. This study determined the relation of post-harvest practices with the physicochemical and microbiological quality of tuyo. Tuyo processing involves receiving, washing, salting, rinsing, sun-drying, pressing, cooling, and packaging. Although the documented tuyo processing complied with the code of practice, processors needed to follow Good Manufacturing Practices. Moreover, tuyo had lower salt content (7.77-9.08 %NaCl), higher water activity (0.79-0.81), and aerobic plate count (7.82-8.36 log CFU/g) compared to national standards. Its yeast and mold count (3.58-3.66 …

The Costs Of Ecosystem Disturbances, E. Wesley F. Peterson

Cornhusker Economics

Presents an illustration of the interdependencies inherent in natural ecosystems. An ecosystem may be defined as: “… a single environment and every living (biotic) organism and non-living (abiotic) factor that is contained within it or characterizes it. An ecosystem embodies every aspect of a single habitat, including all interactions between its different elements” (Knapp 2020). In such interdependent systems, removal of one or more of the essential “elements” can severely disrupt the functioning of the system and such disruptions can give rise to negative impacts on the environment and human health and well-being.

Rabbit Control: Bait Products, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Biosecurity factsheets

This factsheet is part of the bait and poison directory for vertebrate pests in Western Australia (WA). It provides information on bait, poison, and toxin (bait) products available for use in WA to control rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

For information on how to access bait, poison and toxin (bait) products, training required, animal welfare considerations and legal requirements, refer to the Bait and poison directory for vertebrate pests’ page on the website at dpird.wa.gov.au. Information on bait, poison, and toxin (bait) products available for use in WA for rabbits, is provided below.

Nebline, November/December 2024

NEBLINE Newsletter Archive from Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County

Positive Insights Shared Regarding CHIME: Head Start University Partnership Project, Jaci Fogel

Diabetes Awareness: Small Changes, Big Impact, Kayla Colgrove

Recipe of the Month: Turkey Cranberry Meatballs, Kayla Colgrove

Commercial/ Noncommercial Pesticide License

Love Gardening? Become a Master Gardener!

Garden Guide: Things to Do This Month

Upcoming Green Industry Conferences

Managing the Demands of Water & Wastewater Systems Can Make Gatherings More Enjoyable, Becky Schauerman

It’s Time to Plant Fall Cover Crops, John Nelson

A Quick Guide to Fleas, Kait Chapman

Heart of 4-H Award: Shane Cuttlers and Dena Noe

4-H Specialty Clubs Invite New Members

Nebraska 4-H Fed Steer …

Cane Toad, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Biosecurity factsheets

This factsheet provides information about the identification, biology, impact, and management of the cane toad.

The cane toad (Rhinella marina), or giant toad, is native to central and South America. It has been introduced to many countries, including northern and eastern Australia. The cane toad is a declared pest under the Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Act 2007 (BAM Act) in Western Australia (WA). The Western Australian Organism List (WAOL), available on the website at dpird.wa.gov.au) contains information on the area(s) in which this pest is declared, and the control and keeping categories to which it has been assigned in WA.

Sheep Worm Control In Wa, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock factsheets

Effective, sustainable control of sheep worms involves a combination of planned stock and farm management, monitoring worm burdens using faecal worm egg counts (WEC), strategic timing of drenches and the genetic selection of worm resistant sheep.

Levels of drench resistance of sheep worms in WA are some of the highest in the world and without resistance management action at individual farm level, it will continue to worsen and spread.

Although effective drench options are generally available, many sheep owners are unaware that resistance has reduced the effectiveness of worm control programs, and this can affect profitable sheep production.

Early Weaning Of Lambs In A Poor Season, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock factsheets

The feed requirements of a ewe with a lamb at foot are higher than if the ewe and lambs are fed separately. In a difficult season with short feed supplies, it is better to early-wean lambs from their mothers to lower feed costs and ensure that the ewes regain condition before joining. This issue becomes even more important as the costs of feeds increase.

Ewe's milk provides the main source of nutrition for lambs until about eight weeks of age. Lambs will sample pasture from about two weeks after birth but by eight weeks of age pasture overtakes milk as …

Sheep Lice Spread And Detection, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock factsheets

The most common lice affecting sheep are body lice (Bovicola ovis).

Knowledge of the lice life cycle and relevant features of their biology assist in our understanding of how lice survive and spread.

Better understanding and ability to find and monitor lice populations will improve sheep farmer decision making around eradicating lice.

Knowledge of when an infestation may have occurred, or alternatively that lice was not eradicated at the last shearing, is important information that will assist future treatment decisions.

Managing The Beef Breeder Herd In Southern Western Australia, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock factsheets

Kilograms of beef produced per hectare is a significant driver of profit for a beef business. Cow longevity (length of productive life) plays an important role in achieving a profitable business. A balanced approach to genetic selection and nutritional management are essential factors underpinning the efficiency of the breeding herd.

Guide To Supplementary Feeding And Budgeting, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock factsheets

Supplementary feeding of sheep, with grain, hay or silage is necessary when pastures or stubbles are deficient in energy and protein.

A good supplementary feeding program will ensure sheep utilise as much dry paddock feed as possible as well as provide sufficient supplementary feed for maintenance or growth.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development recommends supplementary or confined paddock feeding to maintain livestock productivity and avoid animal welfare and soil erosion problems.

Fallow And Red Deer: Requirements To Keep, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Animal production and livestock factsheets

This factsheet provides information on the requirements for keeping fallow and red deer species in Western Australia.

Fallow (Dama dama) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) are declared pests under the Biosecurity and Agriculture Management (BAM) Act 2007 in Western Australia (WA).

The department assists in preventing the establishment of deer in the wild. This means a permit is required to keep fallow and red deer in WA. Animals that escape or become feral must be recaptured or destroyed.

Small populations of feral deer occur in WA from escaped captive stock and deliberate release. Deer damage native plants, crops and plantation …

Excavated Tanks (Farm Dams), Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources factsheets

Guidelines and information for planning, legal requirements, design, construction and management of excavated tanks for water storage on farm.

Excavated tanks (farm dams) provide effective water storage wherever surface water run-off can be harvested for livestock, crop spraying, irrigation and domestic use on rural properties.

Excavated tanks for rainfall storage are common in the southern agricultural areas of WA.

Well-designed and constructed dams are farm assets, safe and require little maintenance.

Poor design and construction can lead to poor water harvesting and storage, excessive costs, downstream erosion and risks to property and people.

DPIRD recommends that excavated tanks should be …

Roaded Catchments In Wa, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources factsheets

Roaded catchments are earthwork structures designed to increase the amount of run-off from the catchment above a receiving farm dam.

Roaded catchments are lined with clay and compacted to make a smooth surface that reduces infiltration and increases run-off. Roaded catchments should discharge into a silt trap and then into a dam (excavated earth tank). This combined structure should be fenced to exclude livestock.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development recommends that roaded catchments are part of an integrated water and salinity management program.

The information in this page is only a guide – seek expert advice before …

Natural Revegetation And No Grazing, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources factsheets

The department recommends that any dryland salinity management is part of a whole farm, and preferably a whole catchment, water management plan.

Natural revegetation and no grazing are only recommended for sites that are too saline, waterlogged and/or inundated for other treatments to succeed in the south-west of Western Australia. It is also the preferred option for the lowest possible cost.