News

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Southern beekeepers have an experienced ally joining the ranks of researchers and specialists at Mississippi State University.

Shade is an asset during summer’s triple-digit temperatures, but you may find a shady spot in the landscape that needs some color.

If you have shade that is more dark than inviting, consider growing caladium. Caladium should be at the top of your list of shade-loving plants.

Caladiums are tropical foliage plants, native to the Amazon basin of Brazil. These plants are also right at home in our Mississippi gardens and landscapes. They are perfect for planting in front of the green background of foundation shrubs.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Landowners debating the timing for their next timber sale should send trees to the market sooner, rather than later.

Southern pine beetle threat…

Prevention program helps landowners

MISSISSIPPI STATE – A Southern pine beetle prevention program is available to forest landowners to encourage the thinning of timber stands to promote healthier, more insect-resistant trees.

JACKSON – Hunting and fishing have always been popular in Mississippi, but landowners are now adding wildlife watching, horseback riding and other agricultural entertainment businesses, such as pumpkin patches and bed and breakfasts, to the mix.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Reading was not required to build a robot at Mississippi State University’s Cloverbud Camp, but teamwork, persistence and willingness to follow directions helped all of the pieces fit into place.

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Fun with Food brought 32 young people in third through sixth grades to Mississippi State University for a week of hands-on learning about food and cooking skills.

Offered June 18-22 by MSU’s Department of Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion, the class brought together 10 boys and 22 girls for a 40-hour week filled with new food experiences. Sylvia Byrd, professor of nutrition, organized the program and has led it for the past five years.

Computers can lead patients and their doctors to valuable health information, but the Internet should not replace medical relationships when it comes to accurate diagnoses and treatments.

Friends and acquaintances have often confided to me their recent diagnoses of incurable exotic diseases. Before my brain can determine if this illness requires multiple casseroles and dessert or just a trip to a fast-food restaurant, they reveal that they have not seen a doctor yet.

“I looked it up on the Internet, and I have all the symptoms,” he or she will tell me.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Some of Mississippi’s top youth will be touring the state in the 2012 4-H Cooperative Business Leadership Conference.

First-place winners in the senior level of competition at this year’s 4-H Congress, state awareness team members and state 4-H Council officers will participate in the conference and bus tour July 17-20. They will begin and end at Mississippi State University, stopping along the way in Mayhew, Meridian, Jackson, Greenville, Scott and Greenwood.

VERONA -- Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Cindy Hyde-Smith will be the keynote speaker at the North Mississippi Research and Extension Center Agronomic Row Crops Field Day Aug. 9.

The commissioner will speak at the Magnolia Conference Center in the Lee County Agri-Center on Highway 145 South. After more than a decade in the state senate, Hyde-Smith made history last November when she became the first woman elected as Mississippi’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – A long-time rice breeder is turning his rubber boots over to the next generation of researchers.

Dwight Kanter, a research professor with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, retired on July 1. Tim Walker assumed Kanter’s duties.

The black-eyed Susan is one of the most popular flowers in Mississippi and a favorite with almost every gardener. Even people who don’t know their flowers can often identify the black-eyed Susan.

The flowers are bright yellows to gold, each with a dark button cone in the center. In some selections, the centers of the petals are red, orange or maroon.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – As summer temperatures soar into the triple digits, Mississippi’s sweet watermelon crop is satisfying both growers and consumers.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – A popular summer camp will serve double the number of children this year as the Mississippi State University Extension Service launches its Summer of Innovation.

The Extension Center for Technology Outreach, formerly known as Computer Applications and Services, received funding from NASA for the Summer of Innovation program for the second time. This series of camps is designed to inspire young people to engage in science, technology, engineering and math projects and to learn the fundamentals of rocketry.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – The Mississippi State University Extension Service is helping those who want to sell processed foods at Mississippi-certified farmers’ markets get the training they need.

The General Farmers’ Market Food Safety Training two-hour workshop will be offered on these dates:

MISSISSIPPI STATE – A variety of grass developed at Mississippi State University is getting its moment in the sun as a biofuel ingredient, thanks to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture announcement.

Freedom giant miscanthus, developed by Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station researcher Brian Baldwin and his colleagues, was selected as the crop of choice for one of two new Biomass Crop Assistance Program projects. BCAP funds help offset the expenses of planting renewable energy crops that can require several years to mature to the point of harvest.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Wild pigs may be a boon to hunters, but to many of the nation’s landowners, they are a nuisance, an economic and environmental liability, and a disease hazard.

Farmers and landowners can arm themselves with information from a new website dedicated to providing research-based, useful solutions for feral hogs that damage their crops and property. The site, http://extension.org/feral_hogs, lists resources ranging from the history and biology of feral hogs to designs for corral traps.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – In response to the growing problem of too few doctors to serve the population, 14 years ago Mississippi State University created a plan to motivate bright high schoolers to give medicine a closer look.

MSU launched Rural Medical Scholars in 1998 for the single purpose of directing more of the state’s best and highest-performing students into medical careers. That means the 20 high school students currently in the five-week program have spent the summer seriously considering a future in medicine.

JACKSON – Mississippians can see footage of the West’s wildfires nearly every day, but many could be surprised to learn that their own state averages more than 600 wildfires a year. With urban sprawl infringing on the state’s forests, the fire risk is growing.

“Wildfires don’t get much attention here because we aren’t impacted like people who live in the West,” said Bob Brzuszek, associate professor of landscape architecture at Mississippi State University. “Our climate is more humid, we have a great fire service, and our wildfires tend to happen in more rural areas.”

MISSISSIPPI STATE – A Mississippi State University doctoral student’s research on a life-threatening, food-borne pathogen was honored at a recent international conference.

Dong-Ryeoul Bae, a researcher at MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine in the Department of Basic Science, submitted a poster presentation about his research on Listeria to the American Society for Microbiology. It earned an Outstanding Student Poster award at the organization’s June meeting in San Francisco.

A native of the tropical regions of the Caribbean and Central and South America, the Duranta is sure to generate interest in your landscape.

Duranta is commonly called pigeon berry, and it has an arching growth habit with bluish flowers. It produces golden fruit that can feed our feathered friends.

The native plant can reach small-tree status, growing up to 25 feet tall. That’s too large for many of our Mississippi gardens and landscapes.