Meanwhile, other Oregon State students were at work in equally exotic places around the planet, from Kenya to New Zealand to the countryside of France. They worked on projects as diverse as engineering water systems and experimenting with emulsifiers in ice cream. Here’s a sampling of stories from these intrepid student researchers around the globe.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Pumped Up

Zachary Dunn helps bring clean water to Kenyan farmers.
Read more…

Legacy of a Whale

Marine mammal biologist Renee Albertson never forgot her childhood encounter with a killer whale.
Read more…

The Earth Burps and Burns

Whether Earth’s gaseous emissions bubble up from “mud volcanoes” or seep out of the ocean floor, WeiLi Hong has his monitoring ear to the ground.
Read more…

The Milky Way

Rachel Miller puts French ice cream to the taste and texture test.
Read more…

Horns of Africa

In Yachats, where Dylan McDowell grew up, wildlife meant seals, whales and sandpipers. A new assemblage greets him in Zimbabwe and Tanzania.Read more…

Fisher of Rivers

Haley Ohms has monitored salmon runs in Alaska followed fish in Oregon and California. Where else to go next but Hokkaido?Read more…

Dolphin Defender

Rebecca Hamner tracked the world’s smallest and most endangered dolphins in the waters off New Zealand.Read more…

Labor of Love

Giving birth shouldn’t create a public health crisis.Read more…

Sea Urchin

Ireland’s first marine reserve caught the fancy of Caitlyn Clark.Read more…

Wheat near Pendleton, Oregon (Photo: Lynn Ketchum, Oregon State Extension and Experiment Station Communications)

It is arguably the plant that made the West. Pioneers brought wheat in practically every wagon on the Oregon Trail. It fed farm families in the Willamette Valley and miners in the John Day and California gold-rush towns. It was currency and foreign exchange.

As the nation grew, scientists developed dryland and irrigated growing techniques. They learned to control competition from weeds and to manage soils. And they bred new varieties that enabled farmers to keep up with demand. The partnership between scientists and farmers — envisioned by the creators of the land grant university system — has more than doubled yields, held diseases at bay and generated revenue for Northwest economies.

Starting with the Morrill Act of 1862, the impact has been worldwide. Here are some of the milestones for Oregon wheat.

George Harth outfit threshing wheat on Howard Pearcy Place, 1910. Garth-Scott steamer and J. I. Case separator (Ray Pearcy Collection)

1833: First receipt
Robert Ball records the first sale of wheat in the Willamette Valley.

1845: Good as gold
Wheat is used as legal tender to pay off debts in the Oregon Territory. Wheat export begins with shipments from Astoria to the East Coast via Hawaii.

1860s: River of grain
Wheat is a major commodity on Willamette River steamboats.

1861: Disaster
Heavy rains destroy flour mills along the Willamette River. Swelling grains burst warehouses.

Farmers used a team of 14 draft animals to harvest wheat. (Photo courtesy of OSU University Archives)

1862: Peoples’ universities
Abraham Lincoln signs the Morrill Act to establish land grant universities focused on the agricultural, mechanical and military arts.

1867: Best of show
Oregon flour is reported to be the highest-priced and best flour on the New York market.

1883: Connected by rail
The Union Pacific Railroad punches through the Columbia Gorge, reaching Portland and signaling the start of increased wheat production in Eastern Oregon.

1887: A statewide experiment station
Passage of the Hatch Act provides federal funds for ongoing agricultural research. Early efforts focus on a 35-acre farm near Corvallis.

1893: Sowers and reapers
Umatilla County produces 4.5 million bushels of wheat.

1901: Research network
The State Legislature appropriates $10,000 to establish the first agricultural experiment station in northeast Oregon.

1910: Better wheat
Oregon Agricultural College opens the Sherman County Agricultural Experiment Station with a focus on wheat variety selection.

1926: A league of their own
Farmers establish the Eastern Oregon Wheat Growers League in response to low prices and a catastrophic freeze in 1924. The league is the first association of wheat growers in the country.

Wilson Foote

1947: Fees by the bushel
The State Legislature authorizes formation of the Oregon Wheat Commission funded by per-bushel fees assessed to growers.

1948: Breeding champions
Oregon State University begins its wheat-breeding program under the direction of Wilson Foote.

Warren Kronstad

1961: Legendary hire
Wilson Foote moves into administration, and Warren Kronstad, Foote’s former graduate student, directs the wheat-breeding program.

1967: Foreign investment
OSU contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development to improve wheat production in Turkey. By 1980, increased yields and production efficiencies had generated an estimated $750 million for the Turkish economy.

Wheat research plots (Photo: Lynn Ketchum, Oregon State Extension and Experiment Station Communications)

1975: Global impact
OSU’s Eastern Oregon research in dryland wheat production techniques is key to a USAID training program for agricultural scientists in developing countries. Warren Kronstad maintains relationships with about 200 programs.

1978: Top variety
OSU releases Stephens, a variety that quickly becomes one of the most successful in the Northwest. By 1980, Stephens is planted on more than 80 percent of Oregon’s soft winter wheat acreage and is the dominant variety in Washington and Idaho. It is estimated to have increased wheat revenues about $25 million per year between 1981 and 1984.

1998: Next generation
James Peterson arrives at OSU as the Kronstad Wheat Research Endowed Chair to direct the wheat-breeding program.

Jim Peterson led Oregon State's wheat breeding program for 12 years. (Photo: Bob Henderson)

2001: Bang for the buck
OSU Crop and Soil Science researchers developed a new nitrogen mineralization test to help wheat growers reduce fertilizer applications and save money.

2003: Herbicide resistant
Clearfield wheat, a variety released by OSU in cooperation with the German chemical company BASF, becomes Oregon’s most widely planted variety. It tolerates applications of an herbicide that is effective on downy brome and other persistent weeds.

2010: Revenues for research
Clearfield wheat royalties to Oregon State top $1 million, providing additional support for wheat research.

Wheat elevators at the Port of Portland, the nation's largest wheat export facility. (Photo: Tom Gentle)

2011: New leader
Robert Zemetra arrives at OSU as Kronstad Wheat Research Endowed Chair.

2011: Setting the bar
Farmers produce a record-breaking 80.5 million bushels, earning $521 million in farmgate revenues. Yield per acre (81 bushels) was double that achieved in 1977.

Sources:

Mike Flowers, Dept. of Crop and Soil Science, OSU Extension Service

Department of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University, Origin and Evolution 1907-1990, by Arnold P. Appleby

100 Years of Progress: The Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station, Oregon State University, 1888-1988, 1990

_________________________________

Read Kernel Chemistry, a story about wheat research from genetics to baking innovations, published by Oregon’s Agricultural Progress magazine, 2009.

Millions depend on crops such as maize and rice, but production could fall in a warmer world. Oregon State University economist John Antle and an international network of colleagues are looking at the options for farmers in Africa, South Asia and North America.

In the Vihiga district of western Kenya, farms average little more than an acre. Corn is the dominant crop and source of sustenance, but most households run short six to 10 months of the year. They supplement with beans, groundnuts, bananas and vegetables and make money by selling milk, if they are lucky enough to own a cow. Throughout the country, corn production is declining, and researchers are urgently searching for drought-tolerant varieties to meet the needs of a growing population. For people already on the edge, adapting to climate change is a life-and-death matter.

In fact, scientists say, projections of a warmer, drier climate in East Africa could cut food production as it is currently practiced on 82 percent of the farms in Vihiga. This rural area doesn’t have far to fall. More than half of its farm households already earn less than $1 per person per day.

John Antle sees a better future for the people of Vihiga. By shifting from corn to more drought-tolerant crops such as sweet potatoes, farmers could offset much if not all of the negative impacts of climate change. Moreover, since sweet potatoes are high in vitamin A and the vines make good livestock fodder, they could improve nutrition for their families, feed their cattle and maintain milk production.

For the Oregon State University professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AREc), Vihiga demonstrates the need for climate-change adaptation policies. “Until now, adaptation has been politically incorrect in the climate world,” he says. “We see more and more evidence that real changes are happening, and we had better start thinking more about adapting.”

With a grant from the German international development agency GTZ, Antle and a research team from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and international research centers are evaluating the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the potential benefits of alternative cropping systems in East Africa. The simulation models that Antle and collaborators have developed over the past two decades are now being used by researchers globally to assess impacts of climate and other environmental changes in agriculture.

In the Great Plains and Midwest, he and co-author Susan Capalbo, head of AREc, have used these tools to study the potential for cropland to store carbon under conservation and reduced tillage systems. They are partnering with colleagues at OSU, Washington State, the University of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to evaluate wheat in the Pacific Northwest under a changing climate (see “Against the Grain“).

Global Food Supplies

“For about a 150 years, the real price of wheat has gone down,” Antle says, even as global population has risen. “So why is that? Because supply has gone up faster than demand. That is the Green Revolution story, the scientific revolution that began after World War II and allowed agriculture to expand production. So the big question is, Are we now at a turning point where that’s no longer going to be true?”

Two factors — increasing demand from larger, more affluent populations; flattening growth in food supplies, as the Green Revolution bumps into production limits — are contributing to higher food prices. In the short term, he adds, there is still plenty of arable land available, and farmers can shift crops from fiber and fuel to food. But rising incomes in developing countries are already adding to demand and are likely to continue to do so well into the future.

He points to China, which, despite increasing incomes for a portion of its people, still has massive poverty. “People think that China is now this rich country. That’s wrong. There’s a small proportion of people in China who are well-off now, but if you get away from the coast, there are still a billion really, really poor people. That’s true for India and sub-Saharan Africa too.”

Those countries will continue to transition to a higher standard of living, he says. “For a long time, people have said, when the rest of the world tries to have a lifestyle like ours, we’ll be in trouble. Well, that’s what’s happening.”

On top of that, climate change poses an additional threat. Somalia and other parts of East Africa are already in their 16th year of drought. In Kenya, which hosts refugees fleeing violence and famine in Somalia, crop failures are common, and the country has to import corn to meet growing demand.

In their research, Antle and his colleagues combined available data on farm production in two Kenyan districts — Vihiga and Machakos — with the results of two climate models to estimate how new sweet potato varieties, milk, livestock and drought-tolerant corn might maintain food production and farm incomes in the future. Most previous studies of climate adaptation apply to large regions, such as whole countries. Their study was one of the first to compare the potential consequences of several climate change adaptation strategies for agriculture with this much detail.

“We’re trying to understand these systems, what characteristics make them work better or worse and what kinds of crop-breeding activities would work with changes in climate,” says Antle.

Food historian Ken Albala, University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, demonstrated how to make pasta from raw wheat (including how to grind it into flour) as well as how to make pasta sauce using only tomatoes, olive oil and locally-grown spices. (Photo: Patrick Giblin)

I admit it. I’m an armchair chef. I enjoy perusing heavily illustrated cookbooks. I fantasize about delicious dishes, with names like “Gnocchi Gratin with Gorgonzola Dolce.” But when it comes time to make dinner, I’m stumped. I’m usually too intimidated by actual recipes with expensive ingredients and complicated techniques to cook up a meal from scratch.

I’ve had a recent change of heart. In November, I attended a week’s worth of lectures given by Ken Albala, a historian of food science at the University of the Pacific and this year’s Horning Visiting Scholar at OSU. He’s fascinated by the culture that surrounds food: how it is grown, cooked and shared. This celebrated historian has studied food traditions in cultures from ancient Rome to modern day New York. But he’s especially concerned by Americans and their indifference to food.

As Albala explained to us, Americans have grown increasingly reliant on convenience foods over the past century. “The proliferation of convenience foods,” he worries, “has left an entire hapless generation bereft of basic cooking skill sets.” Most of my friends stuff their cupboards with top ramen, cake mixes, and granola bars. Indeed, we don’t know how to cook. How will we learn?

Toss Out the Cookbooks

This creative academic thinks he has the answer. Albala is no idle cook; he’s a culinary crusader. He wants Americans to reclaim their kitchens and to master the art of cooking. He proposes a revolutionary plan to restore our confidence: throw out our cookbooks and start cooking.

Getting started with ingredients for Beans and Greens Soup. (Photo: Ingrid Ockert)

And, after listening to Albala, I was inspired to tie on an apron myself, fling open my cupboard doors and take back my kitchen. So I did. I challenged myself to cook up a pot of soup and to have some fun.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I was actually unsure about how to begin to make soup. Did I need to buy packaged chicken stock? Should I purchase a specific jar of spice? So, to get an idea, I consulted Albala’s excellent guide to cooking, The Lost Art of Real Cooking. This award winning author has written many entertaining and informative books on cooking, including Food and Faith, The Lost Art of Real Cooking; Eating Right in the Renaissance; and, my personal favorite, Pancake: A Global History.

But, interestingly, The Lost Art of Real Cooking doesn’t provide any recipes. And the only pictures are pen and ink sketches of ingredients. Surprisingly, it is written just like any other non-fiction book, complete with chapters. Albala and co-author Rosanna Nafziger provide cooking instructions in full paragraphs, not cooking cliff notes. As these rebellious cooks explain in their introduction: “This book is an effort to loosen up. Cooking is not a science. And dictating strict recipes really teaches aspiring cooks very little, apart for a slavish obedience to directions… We invite readers to wander off on their own in the kitchen, be creative and inventive, even spontaneous.”

Modern cookbooks, Albala claims, actually discourage us from cooking. They teach us to disregard our instincts about cooking and to rely on the judgments of published chefs and bakers.

Frozen Chicken

Indeed, when I’ve cooked with recipes in the past, I’ve found myself spending more time in grocery stores searching for precise ingredients and less time in my own kitchen. A total reliance on recipes has taught me total obedience but little else. I once tried baking frozen chicken in an oven heated at 145° Fahrenheit. Unbeknownst to me, the manufacture had misprinted the cooking directions on the package. Still, I was honestly surprised when, two hours later, the chicken was still an icy pink.

Albala believes that the best way for people to learn how to cook is, for the most part, to ignore cookbooks. He dares his audience to venture into their kitchens with good ingredients, a general idea of what to do, and adding a dash of common sense.

Starting a Soup

Ingrid Ockert (Photo courtesy of Ingrid Ockert)

So, to begin my cooking adventure, I selected “Beans and Greens Soup,” a simple, delicious soup that called for beans, carrots, celery, onions and greens. While I cut the celery, diced the carrots and caramelized the onions at the bottom of the pot, I read over the description. There were no impossible ingredients, no established cooking time, just plain, clear instructions. I felt liberated.

Indeed, as I began to get into preparing the soup, I started to relax. I stopped reading the recipe. I trusted my own instincts. I tossed in a few handfuls of carrots and celery and added a can of beans. Soon, orange chunks of carrots swirled together with green strands of celery and bright crimson beans to create a mosaic of flavor. Inspecting the green broth, I realized that I didn’t have any greens. So I decided to be creative and poured in some frozen corn. Sweet saffron kernels of corn bobbed between the copper carrots and burgundy beans. As the broth simmered, I tasted the colorful concoction. Not too bad.

Surprisingly, I had enjoyed the process of preparing the food: chopping the vegetables, throwing them into the pot, and stirring them until they softened. I felt like an ancient alchemist, combining strange ingredients together to create a powerful potion. Like many Americans, I have been conditioned to dread actual cooking and to try to do as little of it as possible. The average American, Albala said in his lecture, spends only 32 minutes a day preparing food and cleaning up after meals. “Most Americans,” he surmises, “ view cooking as some sort of odious chore, to be finished as quickly as possible.”

Trusting the Chef

But, as I discovered, cooking is too much fun to be a chore. As I stirred the pot, the smell of corn and carrots sweetened the air. I breathed in the delicious aroma. I thought back to Albala’s lecture. “Cooking is satisfying,” he had explained. “It’s what makes us human. Taking your creative energy and letting it flow through something and letting it sustain us is one of most valuable things you can do for yourself and for others.”

Almost ready to eat. (Photo: Ingrid Ockert)

At one point, I wasn’t sure how to spice the soup, but I was starting to trust my own judgment. Albala’s book suggested oregano, but I decided to go with a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of cilantro. I didn’t agonize and trusted my instincts.

A half an hour later, I had a steaming pot of sweet bean soup. I was surprised with how easy the process had been. Most importantly, I had learned how enjoyable cooking can be. I was starting to agree with Albala. Maybe cooking from scratch wasn’t so hard. Indeed, as the historian had enthusiastically explained during his lecture, “I think cooking from scratch, and especially without recipes, without the fear that you’re going to fail, or impress people… I think that the more people get into the kitchen and have fun, the better food will taste in general, the more connected people will be to their food, the more willing they will be to spend time in the kitchen and to share their food.”

After a bowl of my soup, I was converted. I had prepared a delectable dish with some basic guidelines. I discovered that it is possible to cook great food without the help of overbearing cookbooks. I learned that cooking doesn’t need to be stressful. There’s no need to cry when you can’t find the perfect ingredient. Being a creative cook is fun. Besides, I learned a little about trusting myself.

Culinary liberation! (Photo: Ingrid Ockert)

So, Ken Albala, thank you for opening my eyes to great food. You’ve inspired me to take back my kitchen and feed myself. The next item on the menu, fresh bread. I encourage you, my reader, to take heed of a historian’s rallying cry. To paraphrase Karl Marx, “Cooks of the World, unite ! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Additional Links

Ken Albala hosts an excellent blog, Ken Albala’s Food Rant, which chronicles his own cooking adventures. He posts tempting recipes as well as his delightful musings on the history of food. Recently, he traveled to Milan to search out some fresh ingredients for an Italian Paneton.

To listen to Albala discuss his thoughts on food production, check out “Why We Don’t Cook,” a speech available through TEDx. Albala also talked about “The Lost Art of Real Cooking” recently on the Radio Heritage Network.

Beginning bakers and cooks have access to many cooking resources through Oregon State University. Interested in learning how to make healthy and tasty dishes? Check out Iris Brand’s Sustainable Cooking page. Brand, a senior in nutrition with a dietetics option, shares recipes for gluten, nut, and dairy free meals to promote whole, nutritious, and sustainable foods. Want to make strawberry jam just like Grandma? Oregon State University’s Extension Services, which recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary, provides detailed instructions on canning and preserving.

On Mustard Seed Farms in the northern Willamette Valley, farmer Dave Brown switched over to organic methods after making a personal commitment to healthier eating. (Photo by Jan Sonnenmair)

“The organic movement has evolved from a fringe element associated with a lost generation to a core business strategy of the world’s largest corporations.”

–Reuters News Service, September 2008

When California-based Amy’s Kitchen opened a plant in Southern Oregon in 2006, the Oregon Department of Agriculture called it “a large feather in Oregon’s organic cap.” The nation’s largest producer of organic frozen foods, from complete meals to pizza, now employs about 700 full-time workers in White City. Its success is a sign that, over the last decade, organics have morphed from counterculture to mainstream.

Whether you’ve tossed a box of Amy’s enchiladas into your shopping cart, picked up salad greens from Gathering Together Farms at the local farmers market or purchased organic milk in the Fred Meyer natural foods aisle, you’re part of this fastest growing segment of American agriculture. For many Americans, anxiety about pesticide residues in their meals and contaminants in their environment prompts them to pay more at the checkout to protect their family and their planet. Until the recent economic slump, consumer sales were galloping ahead at 20 percent a year, according to the Organic Trade Association, reaching nearly $17 billion in 2006.

In Oregon, organics have taken off even faster. Between 2007 and 2008, certified organic acreage across the state shot up nearly 40 percent (from 83,000 to 115,000 acres), according to Oregon Tilth. Although that’s a fraction of the state’s 16.4 million agricultural acres, Oregon ranks eighth nationwide for number of certified organic farms. And the impact of the new ethic doesn’t stop there. Many conventional growers, too, are adopting sustainable practices to meet regulatory standards or to appeal to niche consumer markets.

True to its land grant roots, Oregon State University has a history of bringing advanced science and technologies to agriculture. Now, to help growers compete in the organic and natural foods industries, scientists are working hand-in-hand with farmers and ranchers — cranberry growers on the Pacific coast, cattle ranchers on the Zumwalt Prairie, vineyard managers near Portland, wheat farmers in the Klamath Basin — to boost yields, bolster nutrition and compound profits while eliminating chemicals that can disrupt ecosystems and threaten human health. OSU’s organic agriculture program includes 29 researchers developing methods in fruit, vegetable, dairy and livestock production.

Organic growers range from small farm to corporate. Terra takes you to a vegetable acreage in the northern Willamette Valley and a pear orchard in Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley to meet researchers working with what some are calling the “ecological farmer.” On Dave Brown’s Mustard Seed Farms and Harry & David’s Bear Creek Orchards, crops are being raised where nature intersects science.

Pheromone-scented traps help entomologist Richard Hilton and pear-orchard managers monitor how many codling moths are in the neighborhood. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Color of Earth

Dave Brown’s fields burst with color 10 months a year. From the cool greens of spring lettuce through the warm golds of winter squash, his organic farm sprouts a rainbow of nutrients. He owes the brilliance of his royal-purple broccoli and flame-orange cauliflower to the russet soils of his farm in St. Paul just north of Salem. If he can enhance the life-giving properties of that rich Willamette Valley earth, his vegetables will be bigger and brighter — and so will his business.

That’s why he’s part of an ongoing OSU study to investigate a key building block of plant growth: nitrogen.

“These studies are giving me concrete data I can work with,” says Brown, sitting at the kitchen table of 80-acre Mustard Seed Farms one drizzly day in April. “I know what’s going on in my soils.”

Framed and Bagged

West of the farmhouse a battered pickup bumps along a dirt road, jostling OSU Extension agent Nick Andrews and his assistant, Kristin Pool, en route to a study site funded by the USDA and Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. The muck-booted pair piles out and grabs armloads of gear: four-foot-square metal frames, brown paper bags, harvest knives and the obligatory rainwear. Now into their fourth year studying nitrogen in the valley, Andrews and Pool have become fixtures on Brown’s acreage.

Andrews waves his arm toward a field dotted with little red flags. “In this plot we’re growing common vetch,” he says. “Over here is a mixture of vetch and cereal rye, and over there is still more vetch, this time mixed with phacelia.” The experimental plots are “cover crops” — soil-building plants typically grown over the winter and tilled into the earth come spring. They contribute to bigger pumpkins, tastier squash, more bountiful broccoli and more nutritious cauliflower by boosting soil fertility and structure.

Wading into the dewy, knee-deep vetch, Andrews and Pool place a metal frame over a patch of plants and then, kneeling under a pewter sky, begin carefully cutting away all stalks, leaves and flowers growing inside the square. Four samples from each plot will go back to the lab at OSU’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora for analysis.

Benefits of Cover Crops

Farmers use grasses and broadleaf plants as cover crops, but legumes are of keen interest because of their

An OSU study to help farmers estimate nitrogen contributions from cover crops will boost yields of organic vegetables. (Photo: Jan Sonnenmair)

special ability, in tandem with root-dwelling microbes, to take gaseous nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a plant-available form. Scientists call this process nitrogen “fixing.” When tilled into the soil before spring planting, these nitrogen-rich crops boost productivity naturally, letting farmers save money on nitrogen fertilizers and reduce groundwater contamination. The emerald canopies, flowers of yellow, lavender and indigo, and bacteria-nurturing root nodules offer other plusses, too: pollen and nectar for bees and butterflies; habitat for ground beetles, spiders and other beneficial insects; nutrients for earthworms and microbes; suppression of weeds and control of erosion.

But just how much nitrogen vetch and other legumes (members of the pea and bean families) contribute to the soils has long been a question for farmers. “Nitrogen contributions from cover crops vary widely,” Andrews explains. “Last year, one 26-inch tall cover crop of oats and vetch supplied only 10 pounds of plant-available nitrogen per acre, but a nearby 20-inch crop with more vetch supplied 60 pounds of available nitrogen. That’s a huge difference. Growers need a simple science-based method to account for this nitrogen supply.”

That’s what the OSU study aims to do: give growers new tools for estimating nitrogen availability from cover crops. In all, the researchers are monitoring 32 plots at each of five northern Willamette Valley farms to see how well various legumes perform in diverse soil types and farming methods. Soil cores taken early-on were frozen and their nitrogen content analyzed for baseline data. Then cover crops in 20-foot by 80-foot plots were planted. After fixing nitrogen all winter, the live plants were sampled and shipped off to the lab. Then a tractor blended the remaining nitrogen-loaded plants back into the earth to become “green manure.”

Nitrate levels and vegetable crop yields will be compared against those of untreated control plots, and cumulative effects will be measured over time. Meanwhile, in OSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Science, Associate Professor Dan Sullivan and graduate student RonJon Datta are measuring the amount and timing of plant-available nitrogen released from cover crops. They are identifying “reliable predictors of plant-available nitrogen in the field.”

“Our goal,” says Andrews, “is to be able to quantify the plant-available nitrogen so farmers can, with confidence, reduce nitrogen fertilizer based on the value of the cover crop.”

After last year’s findings suggested cutting back on chicken manure for certain low-nitrogen crops, Brown got eye-popping results. “I had the most beautiful winter squash I’ve ever had,” he reports. “Big plants, big fruit.”

Andrews explains the phenomenon this way: “Some crops will suck up a lot more nitrogen than others. Sweet corn, broccoli and cauliflower are very heavy feeders. Squash, on the other hand, is a modest feeder so it doesn’t need all that manure. Too much nitrogen has actually been shown to decrease squash yield. That’s because over-fertilized plants will keep growing leaves and stems rather than fruit.”

Faith of the Seed

For Dave Brown, going organic was the culmination of a personal journey. As a longtime conventional grower who relied on chemicals to enrich soils, control weeds and kill bugs, he got interested in nutrition in the late-1980s. Synthetic insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers started to seem jarringly out of sync with his new health-conscious lifestyle. “My wife Nancy and I decided that if we lived that way personally, we should grow our crops that way, too,” he says.

So he switched to fish fertilizer. Next he junked the chemicals. Organic certification followed three years later.

Taking something small — a tiny seed, a type of vegetable, an acre of land — and maximizing its potential is what Brown is all about. He pushes the envelope on everything.

“I’m not satisfied with white cauliflower — I have to grow purple and orange and green, also,” he says. “I don’t just do red beets, I do Chioggia and gold, too. A lot of people will grow acorn squash and butternut, maybe some Kabocha and a little Delicata. But I grow 19 or 20 kinds of squash.

“If you’re gonna grow ‘em, grow ‘em all — as long as you have a market.”

Finding a market for his organic produce hasn’t cost him one sleepless night. Business is brisk. Brown sells most of his produce to Organically Grown Company, the Northwest’s largest organic wholesaler. From his modest farm on Portland’s urban fringe, his vegetables might wind up at a big chain (Whole Foods, New Seasons, Fred Meyer, Albertson’s) or they might land in a community co-op, a mom-and-pop grocery, an elegant restaurant or a funky cafe. Surpluses go to the food bank.

A deeply spiritual man (he named his farm after the Biblical parable of the mustard seed), Brown sees no contradiction in his embrace of science. To him, enhancing God’s handiwork through hard data and agricultural research just makes sense.

“I’m a numbers person,” he says. “I like to analyze things.”

Southern Oregon owes its thriving pear industry to a 100-year partnership among growers and OSU scientists. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Moth Squad

In Southern Oregon, the name Harry & David evokes a down-home setting. The company’s famous pears do originate in the bucolic reaches of Oregon’s Rogue Valley. But their trademark, Royal Riviera, tells a truer story. These regal fruits, gentled in jiggle-proof boxes, travel everywhere in the U.S. and Canada by jet and semi. Once-humble Harry & David, headquartered in Medford, is a $400 million corporation owned by the Wasserstein Group of New York City.

In this mountainous country, pears are very big business.

At Bear Creek Orchards, a Harry & David subsidiary, tens of thousands of trees in postcard-perfect symmetry grace acre upon acre of prime orchard land in Jackson County, producing not only gourmet Comice but also Bosc, Bartlett and D’Anjou for a handful of large growers and a dozen or so smaller ones. The region’s $30 million annual crop supplies one-tenth of the pears that wind up in America’s lunchboxes and salad bowls.

Rogue Valley pears, unblemished by bugs or blight, owe their perfection to a century-long partnership among growers and OSU researchers. Together, they have worked to outwit insects, fend off fungi and foil diseases that can decimate crops and destroy livelihoods. Science and technology have become indispensable allies for an industry driven by the vagaries of weather and other exigencies of nature.

New threats can emerge, quite literally, overnight.

Chief among the threats is the codling moth — a small, drab-winged pest that seems harmless until you see the ugly wormhole bored by its larva. In the old days, growers fought the moth with lead arsenate, a stomach poison. Then came the broad-spectrum pesticides — first DDT, followed by other neurotoxins such as the organophosphates, carbamates and pyrethroids — which killed everything that crawled and flew, the good bugs along with the bad. As a result, ecosystems tipped off-kilter. New pests popped up. The cycle of eradication began again.

OSU helped growers get off the overkill treadmill by introducing “integrated pest management” — using a mixture of nature-friendly tactics to keep insects in check. Thanks to research at OSU, other land grant universities and the Agricultural Research Service, Rogue Valley growers now spray host-specific viruses that target only the codling moth. And they rely heavily on pheromones — sex scents — that confuse male moths and disrupt reproduction. Exploiting nature’s own processes not only makes a lighter footprint on the Earth, it benefits the bottom line.

“You want it to be sustainable, but also profitable,” says lead entomologist Richard Hilton. “Growers are saving $100 to $150 an acre by going to a soft system. It’s significant.”

Rumors of Mites

Codling moths, along with other bugs in the “pear pest complex” — spider mites, pear psylla, San Jose scale, pear rust mites — provide regular fodder for the bimonthly brown-bags hosted by the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center in Central Point. One noon-hour in May, OSU scientists are sitting around a long table with a spirited cross-section of industry folks: Mega-orchard managers with clipboards and briefcases from Bear Creek, Naumes (one of the nation’s largest pear growers), Associated Fruit, and the Church of Latter-Day Saints. A small landowner in red suspenders. A couple of “field men” (chemical company consultants). A packinghouse rep. A visiting entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Two horticulturists — one from Harry & David and the other from Suterra, a Bend-based manufacturer of pheromone monitoring and control systems — round out the group.

OSU’s 10-decade legacy of industry cooperation shows in the easy synergy among these sun-burnished men and women. Hilton, raising his voice to cut through the chatter, displays a graph pinpointing peak egg-laying and larvae-hatch days. Quickly, the banter segues to shop talk. The group parries over “bio-fix” dates derived from two competing weather models. They trade info on the latest trap designs and bio-lures. They debate labeling on sprays with formidable names (Intrepid, Assail, Centaur). They weigh in on mite management. They invoke a litany of lesser pests (blister mites, stink bugs, Oriental fruit moths, leaf rollers). An innovative transparent trap that lures moths with acetic acid and pear ester — two natural chemical compounds given off naturally by ripening fruit — gets a lot of interest. That’s because these volatile compounds lure the female moths as well as the males. A USDA patent on the design is pending.

Data fly around the room like mate-seeking moths.

As the meeting breaks up, a mysterious green worm is passed to Hilton in a test tube. “We found this in the Dugan orchard when we were scouting for OBLR (oblique-banded leaf roller),” says Kathleen McNamara, pest control adviser for Harry & David’s 28 orchards. “Can you identify it for us?” The orchardists cluster around to peer at this potential new pest.

One more worry to take back to work.

Between brown-bags, the group stays in touch over the Net instead of, as in days gone by, over the fence. E-mail lists and OSU’s interactive “pest-alert page” give growers and researchers a place to post time-sensitive messages and data to maintain their competitive edge. The mystery worm, for instance, turned out to be a pyramidal fruitworm, a “fairly minor pest,” Hilton assured the growers in a posting shortly after the brown-bag.

A Cartridge in a Pear Tree

Southern Oregon owes its thriving pear industry to a 100-year partnership among growers and OSU scientists. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

If you walk the rows of Bear Creek’s organic orchard east of Central Point, plump pears destined for gourmet gift boxes and grocery store bins aren’t the only objects hanging in the cool boughs. Look closely, and you’ll see the fruits of science and technology, as well.

Matt Borman walks beneath a bower of boughs so green they seem like something out of a touched-up photo. Stopping at Row CFI-100, the Bear Creek hort technology manager reaches into the branches and takes down an orange plastic trap shaped like a tiny pup-tent. One moth and a soldier beetle are stuck on the sticky base.

“We hang one every seven acres to lure moths with pheromones and pear ester,” Borman explains. “Our scouts check the traps once a week, and enter the numbers in a database. Along with GIS mapping and microclimate weather monitoring, we can keep tabs on moth populations and decide whether and when to spray.” As one of a mere smattering of certified organic orchards in the valley, this 34-acre plot is sprayed with a biologically based insecticide, the granulovirus pathogen (CpVG), a natural enemy of the codling moth, and with a natural clay-based product called Surround, which drives other pests from the orchard.

“We’re learning things in our organic blocks that are bleeding into our conventional blocks,” says Borman. “We’re always trying to match the site with the most sustainable and soft system we can. We’re looking for that perfect balance between effectiveness and environmental friendliness.”

Borman then points high into the tree to reveal the most dazzling of novel moth technologies — the Suterra “puffer.” When a researcher at the University of California created the first puffer from a bathroom deodorizer dispenser in the 1980s, he couldn’t have imagined where his invention would lead. The device has evolved with the revolution in electronics. In the guts of today’s battery-operated model — which looks like a nesting house for birds — a miniature computer runs software designed to trigger bursts of pheromones from an aerosol cartridge, precisely timed with biological cycles.

Here’s how it works: As moths start to emerge, but before they mate, the puffers — placed in one tree per acre — begin burping out female pheromones every 15 minutes at night when the insects are active. The male moth picks up the scent and flutters off to find the faux female. He gets confused. He flies here, he flies there. He wastes time. Meanwhile, the window for fertilization is closing. If the phony seduction can fool the male for three or four days, the females’ odds of laying fertile eggs drop steeply.

Nature Bats Last

In the Rogue Valley’s pear orchards, new science constantly drives innovation. Solutions shift as knowledge grows and as nature adapts. European growers, for instance, are scrambling to fight a new strain of codling moth resistant to overused viral sprays in Germany. Despite ever-better methods for managing pests, nature remains — will always remain — one step ahead of human ingenuity. As Richard Hilton observes, “We will never fully understand the life of an insect.”

Nitrogen got you puzzled? Learn how to estimate nitrogen from cover crops here.

To support organic agriculture research at OSU, contact the Oregon State University Foundation.

Often getting up before sunrise to attack the hills rimming Corvallis, Professor Melinda Manore has overcome injuries from a skiing mishap and a car accident in her quest to stay active. Exercise, she says, keeps her mentally and physically fit. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

The mixed messages blare at every grocery checkout: supermodels smiling seductively from magazines that push chocolate-cake recipes and weight-loss tips on the same page. No wonder millions of American females struggle with food and body image, laments OSU Professor Melinda Manore.

The health of women across the age and activity spectrums — from teenage Olympic athletes to middle-aged pre-diabetics to elderly arthritis sufferers — is at the heart of Manore’s research in the dual sciences of nutrition and exercise. The broad question that drives her is, “How can we be healthy women and be happy with our bodies?” For answers, she looks at levels both micro and macro: chemical (micronutrients, hormones), physical (bone density, metabolic efficiency), motivational (lifestyle changes, food choices), even societal (family habits, media messages).

“Thirty years ago, if you saw a glamorous woman on a magazine cover, it was a head shot,” she says. “Now, it’s full-body — with nothing on. These young girls see these photos and think they should look like that, too.”

When she began her career a quarter-century ago, only a handful of researchers were investigating the linkages between eating and exercising. Back then, the two fields were rarely paired. So in 1984, the year she earned her Ph.D. in nutrition at OSU with a minor in exercise science, she was at the forefront of a movement. As obesity and diabetes galloped across America over the next couple of decades, the need for more research became acute. Investigating the interactions of food and movement has, at last, come into its own as a discipline.

“There’s been this whole turnaround,” she says. “Finally, we’ve gotten together.”

Besides coauthoring four top-selling textbooks, publishing 100-plus papers and articles in refereed journals, and holding the associate editorship of the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health and Fitness Journal from 1998 to 2006, Manore works with Oregon Health and Science University’s Department of Medicine through an OSU-OHSU research exchange.

Good Vibrations

Manore’s studies span vastly different demographics: from elite speed skaters to self-professed couch potatoes; from limber gymnasts to stiff-limbed grandmothers; from athletes with eating disorders to Hispanics with diabetes.

Some of her most notable research is in the “female athlete triad” — how the synergy of sports, hormones and bone growth affects the health of girls and women. The 2002 Winter Olympics were, for Manore and one of her graduate students — Nanna Meyer, a former racer on the Swiss National Ski Team — a rare chance to study this all-important triad in top winter sport athletes. Meyer headed to Salt Lake City, legendary for its dry powder, to compare the bone densities of skiers, bobsledders and skaters against those of ordinary college women. It turned out that all the athletes who rocket down icy mountains at breakneck speeds — whether on skis, boards or sleds — had denser bones than the control subjects.

This first-ever bone study among winter athletes — a collaboration among Manore, Meyer and University of Utah researcher Janet Shaw — suggests that winter sports provide beneficial “loading patterns:” physical forces that stress the skeleton in ways that promote mineral growth. These bone-loading patterns include “mechanical loading” (impact from jumping or pounding) and “vibration loading” (stress from vibrating).

The sliding sports (luge, bobsleigh, skeleton) topped all events for whole-body bone density, the data revealed. It might seem improbable that a luger could build a better set of bones than a speed skater. One rips down the ice, toes-first, while lying flat on her back. The other attacks the ice on her feet, pumping and gliding, pumping and gliding. But the research team wasn’t all that surprised.

“Recent work on animals,” the researchers wrote in the September 2004 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, “has shown that vibration loading, imposing low-magnitude, high-frequency mechanical signals, can increase bone formation.” The Utah Olympics study, along with ongoing studies in OSU’s Biomechanics Laboratory, have added important human-subject evidence to the research base on skeletal vibration.

Hormones are the third prong of the triad. That’s because when young women’s diets are dangerously low in calories, menstruation can stop. “Hormone production goes flat, just as if the women were starving,” Manore explains. “You see this all the time in third-world countries; when there’s not enough food, the women stop menstruating. It’s a protective effect so they don’t get pregnant, because they can’t sustain a child if there’s no food.”

This hormonal shutdown can, along with poor energy and dietary nutrient intakes, suppress bone growth. In developed countries like the U.S., food abundance is a greater problem than shortage. Here, the girls and women most vulnerable to “ammenorhea” (no periods) are typically those who take extreme measures to shed pounds: strenuous dieters, disordered eaters, gymnasts, dancers and other athletes driven to extreme thinness. Over five or six years, a young woman can end up with “bones that look like an old woman’s,” reports Manore, who served on the International Olympic Committee for Gymnastics from 1996 to 2000. “So now, you have a 20-year-old with a hip fracture — or worse. It’s an issue for coaches; it’s an issue for parents. When a girl gets into eating disorders, I’m sorry, but you can lose her.”

Some protection against skeletal damage is provided by intense, bone-loading exercise, the Utah study suggests. In the short term, denser bones mean fewer fractures. In the long term, they fend off postmenopausal osteoporosis.

Getting enough of the B-vitamins, which are important for energy metabolism and blood formation, is another pitfall for women. Healthy levels of vitamin B-6 and riboflavin — essential nutrients found in the so-called “B-complex” — can succumb to the quest for a svelte physique. As with the female triad, athletes who shun calories are at risk, as are those who avoid meat or dairy foods, Manore and former doctoral student Kathleen Woolf reported in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism in October 2006. For her doctoral research Woolf, who is now at Arizona State University, examined the B-vitamin status and requirements of older active women with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that compounds the risk of B-vitamin deficiency in later years.

The deep complexity of the exercise/nutrition/health dynamic was highlighted yet again in a 2006 OSU study centered on a compound unfamiliar to most Americans: homocysteine. Its cousin, cholesterol, has become a household word. Fretting over one’s ratio of LDL-cholesterol to HDL-cholesterol is practically a national pastime. Yet few Americans are versed in homocysteine, even though the compound was discovered decades ago, and scientists have long since linked high levels to cardiovascular disease.

Scientists are still unraveling homocysteine’s secrets. Manore and her Ph.D. student Lanae Joubert have found that blood levels vary in surprising ways. For example, it appears that some types of exercise, especially high-intensity exercise like running a marathon, increase blood levels of homocysteine, while others do not. Joubert’s research was designed to decipher how physical activity and diet interact to alter blood homocysteine levels. She wanted to find out, too, if individuals who exercise hard need more B-vitamins, which help to keep blood homocysteine low.

“Being physically active does not necessarily equate to a healthier nutritional status,” the OSU researchers warn in the international journal. Active individuals may, they caution, lack essential nutrients right along with sedentary people — a deficit that “may influence homocysteine levels independent of the amount, intensity or type of exercise.”

Zealot for Health

Watching people make unhealthy lifestyle choices clearly pains Manore. From her previous office in Milam Hall, she had a direct view of the elevator. “I cannot tell you how many people, including students, used that elevator instead of walking up the stairs,” she reports. “I wanted to put up a big sign: ‘for disabled and delivery only.’ Or, because it was a really creaky old elevator, ‘use at your own risk.’”

As she tells this story, the frustration in her voice leaves no doubt: For her, healthy living goes deeper than professional interest. Hard work, whole foods and fresh air are in her blood. She was raised on a farm in the shadow of the Rockies. Getting up with the roosters to help gather eggs in the 5,000-chicken barn was her task as far back as she can remember. On the family’s Montana acreage, the lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep and the clucking of hens were the sounds of self-sufficiency. “Where I grew up, you raised your own food, you baked your own bread, you churned your own butter,” she says. “You didn’t go to the store. You didn’t eat out. Everything you did for activity — skiing, hiking, riding horses, gardening — was outdoors.”

Manore’s salt-of-the-earth Montana girlhood is intact even today. Her salad bowls and pasta platters brim with the tomatoes, peppers and basil she grows in her Corvallis garden. Her kitchen is a lab, of sorts, where she experiments with maximizing the fiber content in her home-baked muffins and with cooking dishes that typically veer in creative (but always nutritious) directions. And she panics when the grainy breads baked weekly by her husband are getting low. Her approach toward commercial bread — toward any processed food, in fact — is to leave it in the supermarket along with those airbrushed magazine covers. She’s careful, however, to avoid sounding extreme.

“I’m not the food police,” she insists. “I like chocolate and desserts, just like anyone else. I just think you need to eat them in moderation.”

Making healthy choices doesn’t need to mean self-deprivation and sacrifice, Manore argues. Rather, those choices can become preferences. You might find that you prefer the grilled chicken on whole wheat instead of the double-stack cheeseburger. You might enjoy a hike in the forest over a trek through the mall. “Instead of forcing you to give up your favorite things,” she says, “a healthy lifestyle can become your favorite thing.”

Bridging the gap between scientists and the public — between laboratories and living rooms, kitchens, playgrounds, malls, parks, workplaces — is Manore’s main focus these days. With her doctoral students, she is studying ordinary people facing ordinary problems: middle-aged moms who care for young children and elder parents but forget to care for themselves; Hispanic pre-diabetics in need of culturally appropriate interventions; active 40-something women whose nutrient status is poor despite regular exercise; elderly arthritis sufferers, some active, some not.

“The question is, How do you change your lifestyle for the rest of your life?” Manore says. “You don’t have to become a marathon runner. You just have to start moving more and making better food selections.”

• Melinda Manore’s Web page
• Department of Nutrition and Exercise Sciences
• College of Health and Human Sciences
• OSU Extension Nutrition Education Program
• OSU Foundation
• International Olympic Committee
• U.S. Department of Agriculture
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Poor athletic performance may be linked to vitamin B deficiency (OSU news release 11-15-06)