DAVID BERTIOLI AND SORAYA LEAL-BERTIOLI, CENTER FOR APPLIED GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES
INDIA, SOUTHE AST ASIA,
CAES Professor David Bertioli is working with Senegalese researchers to introduce the genetic traits of wild peanut into cultivated peanut in west Africa, a strategy that previously produced six new varieties in Senegal with higher yield, more plant mass and larger seeds. At the same time, CAES Senior Research Scientist Soraya Leal-Bertioli is focused on incorporating genetic strengths of ancestor plants to fight groundnut rosette disease (GRD), a peanut nemesis across Africa. The lines developed in the U.S. and Senegal will be tested in Uganda — a hot spot for GRD — and crossed with local lines to produce cultivars with higher resistance to GRD and late leaf spot.
MANPREET SINGH, DEPARTMENT OF POULTRY SCIENCE
INFLUENCE on the WORLD
THE MIDDLE E AST AND SOUTH AMERICA
A professor in the Department of Poultry Science, Manpreet Singh travels across the globe providing food safety-related training both to government food safety agents and to poultry producers and processors in other countries so they can meet the U.S. government’s more stringent regulations for food being imported to the U.S. Singh trains producers and processors on U.S. Department of Agriculture standards and policies and the intricacies of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act. By providing training to government agency professionals in other countries — such as the Export Council of India — Singh educates manufacturers, producers and consultants in each country who can then offer the training to other stakeholders, rather than depending on U.S. representatives of the FDA and USDA.
farmers on topics related to the peanut value chain, and led a student tour to Romania. Urban spent the past three years as program administrator with the Smith Center for International Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, a job that took her to Rwanda nine times in two and a half years to coordinate the efforts of the African Sustainable Agriculture Project, a USAID- and private foundation-funded broiler chicken project for smallholder farmers. This summer, Urban began a doctoral program in Soil and Crop Sciences at Cornell University with a focus in international cropping systems. One day, she’d like to be a professor, splitting her days between teaching, research and extension services. “It’s not necessarily about where you travel that matters,” Urban said. “The best thing about this work is the relationships and the people.” • Allison Salerno
CHINA TODD APPLEGATE, DEPARTMENT OF POULTRY SCIENCE
Responding to consumer and industry trends demanding methods for raising chickens without using antibiotics, Todd Applegate, head of the CAES Department of Poultry Science, travels the world working with researchers to develop new methods for controlling common pathogens in live chickens. In September, Applegate met with researchers at China Agricultural University in Beijing and Sichuan Agricultural University in Chengdu to collaborate on antibiotic-replacement research being conducted in that country to compare challenges, methods, tools and results that have the potential to improve the poultry industry. “The issues we are dealing with are global issues,” Applegate said. “By sharing our research and project design, we can examine the questions we are all asking to come up with better approaches to shared challenges.” • Compiled by Maria M. Lameiras
SALUDOS A ESPAÑA The daughter of a grain merchandiser, Ella Bickley grew up in Macon, Georgia. This past summer, the agricultural communications major spent two months in northern Spain, taking classes and interning for a governmental marketing firm promoting Spanish wine. Bickley chose the Aragon region of Spain specifically because it attracts so few American tourists. “I wanted to be challenged to speak the language and I didn’t want to be surrounded by Americans all the time,” said Bickley, who lived with a host family who spoke only Spanish. “This internship opened my eyes to the possibilities of careers outside of the United States. I think that it would be hard to move that far from my friends and family, but at the same time, this summer was such an incredible experience. I learned so much in such a short amount of time.” • Allison Salerno
FALL 2019
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