Cornell releases two new raspberry varieties [Cornell Chronicle 4/30/2012] – Double Gold and Crimson Night from Courtney Weber‘s berry breeding program offer small-scale growers and home gardeners showy, flavorful raspberries on vigorous, disease resistant plants.
With agroforestry, woodlands can also yield crops such as mushrooms, leeks – [Associated Press 4/24/2012] – The combination of those products with timber “is a real winner,” said Kenneth Mudge, an associate professor of ornamental horticulture at Cornell University. “It’s a good way to get some early returns while waiting for your trees to grow large enough to be processed into lumber.”
Community Gathers for Opening of Educational Garden [Cornell Daily Sun 4/27/2012] – “Members of the Cornell community gathered outside the Plant Science building Thursday for the opening of Cornell Garden-Based Learning’s first demonstration garden — a project aimed at teaching students how to grow and care for vegetable crops.” More info on the vegetable variety trial gardens.
American Society for Enology and Viticulture scholarships– Two Cornell graduate students – Amanda Sims (horticulture, Lakso Lab) and Paola Barba Burgos (plant breeding, Reisch Lab) were selected as national scholarship winners by the American Society for Enology and Viticulture.
Alan Taylor was invited to give a talk at the Global SCI Seed Science Symposium in Basel, Switzerland on May 9, 2012. His presentation is on the movement of chemicals into seeds.
550,000 people in one greenhouse? [Cornell IT news 4/20/2012] – The titan arum webcam set up by CIT at Ken Post Lab greenhouses had more than 550,000 video plays over 4 days. “For those keeping count,” says Andy Page (CIT’s Video Collaboration Services), “that’s somewhere around 33,000 hours’ worth of actual viewing, which is about 3.8 years’ worth of time spent if being watched by just a single person.”
The next shiitake? Farmers into fungi can reap rewards [Farm and Dairy 4/17/2012] – Cornell agroforestry expert Ken Mudge thinks the exotic fungus Hericium erinaceus (lion’s mane mushroom) — cultivated by the Chinese for its medicinal benefits — could follow the lead of shiitake mushrooms and become a hit with New York farmers and foodies.