A Potato's Eye on Idaho Agriculture

From USDA:

Posted by Vince Matthews, Idaho State Statistician, National Agricultural Statistics Service, on December 11, 2014 at 11:00 AM

Idaho potatoes – the phrase rolls off the tongue easily because Idaho leads the country in growing potatoes. Check back next week as we spotlight another state and the results of the 2012 Census of Agriculture.

The Census of Agriculture is the most complete account of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them. Every Thursday USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service will highlight new Census data and the power of the information to shape the future of American agriculture.

When it comes to potatoes, Idaho is #1. Results of the 2012 Census of Agriculture confirmed it. According to the census, Idaho farmers led the United States in acres of potatoes harvested, at 345,217 acres. And believe it or not, this was done by only 794 farms. On these farms, 58 percent of the potato harvested acres were for the fresh market and 42 percent were for processing.

Of course, the other parts of our agriculture are no small potatoes either. Overall, in 2012 we had 24,816 farms in our state, and our farmers sold more than $7.8 billion worth of agricultural products. Nearly a third of that amount – $2.3 billion – came from milk sales. Only three states, California, Wisconsin, and New York, had more milk sales than Idaho. Idaho’s Gooding County ranked fourth in the nation for milk cow inventory. The 2012 census counted nearly 179,000 head of milk cows there.

When it comes to crops, barley is one of the biggest commodities grown in Idaho. Nearly a quarter of all U.S. barley came from our growers. In 2012, they produced more than 51 million bushels of this important crop. Nearly 600,000 acres of Idaho farmland were dedicated to barley. We were also one of the top states for winter wheat, with more than 738,000 acres.

We also have plenty of less conventional agriculture, which was captured by the census. For example, 74 farms raised peacocks and peahens in Idaho in 2012. We also had 276 farms that raised llamas and 20 farms that raised bison. This less conventional agriculture was not limited to livestock. In 2012, the census also counted six farms growing boysenberries and 13 farms with currants.

This is just a snapshot of Idaho’s agriculture. Our state has a lot more to offer from both the conventional and the less traditional sides of agriculture. To see more of Idaho’s 2012 Census of Agriculture results, check out www.agcensus.usda.gov.

Researcher with NIFA Roots Earns International Prize

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Scott Elliott, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, on April 25, 2014 at 3:00 PM

Jorge Dubcovsky, professor of plant sciences at University of California–Davis, is co-winner of the 2014 Wolf Prize in agriculture. Photo courtesy of Jorge Dubcovsky

During the month of April we will take a closer look at USDA’s Groundbreaking Research for a Revitalized Rural America, highlighting ways USDA researchers are improving the lives of Americans in ways you might never imagine.  Today we look at USDA support for a researcher striving to improve wheat through developing better disease resistance, nutritional value, and yield.

One of America’s most renowned agricultural researchers, a man who has already collected two of the USDA’s top honors, has now earned international recognition with the Wolf Prize in Agriculture.  The Wolf Foundation began awarding six prizes – agriculture, the arts, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and physics – in 1978 to recognize outstanding scientists and artists for achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among peoples.

Jorge Dubcovsky, a professor of plant sciences at the University of California–Davis and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute–Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator, is sharing the Wolf Prize with Leif Andersson, from Uppsala University in Sweden.  Dubcovsky’s previous awards include USDA’s National Research Initiative Discovery Award and the USDA Secretary’s Honor Award.  Dubcovsky will receive the Wolf Prize June 1 at Knesset Israel (the Israeli Parliament) from Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Dubcovsky is a plant geneticist who works with wheat to improve disease resistance, nutritional value, yield, and adaptability to a changing environment.  Over the years, USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has provided more than $15 million to fund more than 20 of Dubcovsky’s research projects.

“NIFA funding has been the central pillar in the support of my research,” Dubcovsky said.  “These grants support critical crop research and crop improvement and provide valuable resources for the public breeding programs to organize themselves at a national level through Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) grants.”

One of his recent NIFA grants is a $5 million Triticeae CAP (TCAP) project to improve barley and wheat germplasm.  Triticeae is from the family of grasses that includes wheat, barley, and rye.  Wheat products alone account for about 20 percent of calories consumed by humans.

Dubcovsky’s TCAP team used markers to identify the gene variants that control the most desirable of the plant’s traits.  They then created a “Triticeae Toolbox” to provide this information to plant breeders so they can develop improved wheat and barley lines.  Further, the team is developing a national education network to train 29 doctoral candidates in plant breeding.

TCAP also features collaborations with minority-serving institutions to attract new students to the agricultural sciences, which is important to the professor.  “I hope (that the Wolf Prize) will help my program attract brilliant and enthusiastic young researchers,” he said.

As a side benefit, growers of follow-on crops may also profit from Dubcovsky-led wheat research.  According to an article published May 14, 2013, in Crop Science, three bread wheat varieties created by TCAP carry a gene that is resistant to root-knot nematodes (plant-parasitic worms).  The wheat encourages the nematodes to grow, but the worms cannot eat the wheat.  As a result, they starve, do not reproduce, and die out – which allows the next crop to grow in a relatively nematode-free field.

Looking to the future, Dubcovsky – who was born and raised in Argentina and received his bachelors and doctoral degrees in biological sciences from the University of Buenos Aires – is enthusiastic about employing new high-throughput sequencing technologies.  “We will continue pushing hard to complete the sequencing of most wheat genes across our mutant populations,” he said.  “We expect to have a public database where people can search for available mutations and then request the seeds.  We think this will be a fantastic resource to study gene function in wheat.”

Through federal funding and leadership for research, education, and Cooperative Extension programs, NIFA focuses on investing in science and solving critical issues impacting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future.