Science In Your Shopping Cart

ARS researchers have been instrumental in developing cereal crops and enhancing food for the American people.

In this season of Science in Your Shopping Cart, we’re taking a trip down the cereal crop aisle, where we’ll dive into the challenges of growing popular cereal crops, explore the growing popularity of ancient grains, and taste a rice that’s fit for an emperor.

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ARS Research Geneticist, Dr. Dolores Mornhinweg at the Peanut and Small Grains Research Unit in Stillwater, OK is developing new Barley crop lines that are resistant to pests such as the Russian Wheat Aphid.

Barley is an important part of the U.S. economy, bringing in over a billions dollars in crop value.  The Russian Wheat Aphid is a major pest to barley production in the U.S.

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ARS research leader Shahryar Kianian and his colleagues at ARS’s Cereal Disease Lab in St. Paul, MN are leaning on the art of negotiation to help oat producers deal with a deadly disease, called Crowned Rust. 

Listen and learn how ARS is protecting oats, some of the healthiest grains you can put in your body. They are a great source of fiber, and they contain lots of vitamins and minerals, as well as antioxidants.

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Ancient grains refers to a category of grains – particularly pseudo-cereals – that possess a very unique health benefit that provide essential nutritional requirements for our health.  ARS Research Leader, Dr. Sean Liu at the Functional Foods Research Unit in Peoria, Illinois is researching ways to make ancient grains more nutritional, and he wants to make them more attractive to consumers.
 
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Corn is grown all over our planet and is an important crop in all parts of our lives.  ARS Research Entomologist, Xinzhi Ni at ARS’s Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit in Tifton, Georgia is looking at how corn plants get stressed, and how those stressors invite diseases and pathogens to proliferate inside the crop. Ni is hopeful their work will benefit future entomologists and breeders to find solutions to these pere...

Wheat is a big crop in the United States.  Stripe rust is one of the most important diseases for wheat.  ARS Research Plant Pathlogist, Xianming Chen and researchers with ARS’s Wheat Health, Genetics, and Quality Research Unit in Pullman Washington are testing and developing new varieties of wheat that are resistant to the crop’s major disease threats, including stripe rust.

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Honey bees and their pollinating cousins are essential to human life. Without honey bees, we cannot grow a lot of the food we love. Honey bees have been around for millions of years, but they face many challenges in today’s environment, and their populations ebb and flow.

So how do bees fit into this podcast, Science in Your Shopping Cart? Well, if it wasn’t for honey bees and their pollinator friends, there would a lot le...

Humans have been breeding honey bees for centuries to help them adapt to new environments, and with technology improving at a rapid pace, breeders may now have the tools to build a perfect bee. Join us at the Honey Bee Lab in Baton Rouge, LA, where bee experts discuss the challenging and exciting art of bee breeding.

Find out how you can help honey bees by clicking on the extension service link below.

https://extension.org/f...

ARS research entomologist Dr. Shawn Steffan works in cranberry country, USA – aka Madison, WI. Here, bees are vital to cranberry production, so keeping them healthy and happy are crucial. Steffan is studying the relationship between bees, their microbiome, and the environment in which they live and work. Listen how building a perfect symbiosis may be the key to long-term health of honey bees.

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Join us at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where we talk with ARS researcher Matthew Buffington, who explains how a deadly predator to the honey bee recently arrived in the U.S.  Is the Norther Giant Hornet still a threat to our precious honey bee population? Listen to find out.

Find out how you can help honey bees by clicking on the extension service link below.

https://extension.org/find-coopera...

How many different types of bees can you think of?  Bumble bees, honey bees, mason bees. There’s actually a lot more bee diversity than you think, a lot more. Find out about the different types of bees and their need for diversity for survival, with Dr. Diana Cox-Foster, research leader at the Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research Unit in Logan, UT.

Find out how you can help honey bees by clicking on ...

Pesticides are an important tool for managing hungry and destructive insects and invasive species. But there is little known how pesticides affect the bees that pollinate our crops. ARS researcher Dr. Julia Fine discusses how exposure to different pesticides may affect honey bee behaviors.

Find out how you can help honey bees by clicking on the extension service link below.

https://extension.org/find-cooperative-extension-in...

Being the queen bee may have its perks, but there’s a lot of stress to the job. Sure, you have worker bees bringing you food, grooming you, and caring for your babies. But you are responsible for the livelihood of your children – not just 3 or 4 or 5 babies but tens of thousands. That can put tremendous stress on anyone, queen bees included.  ARS researcher, Mohamed Alburaki explains what it is like to be the queen bee.

Fin...

The varroa mite is one of the biggest threats to honey bees around the world. Essentially, it’s a modern honey bee plague. Varroa is an invasive species that originated in Asia.  Learn what ARS researchers are doing to protect honey bees from varroa mites. 

Click on the link below to get a step-by-step set of instructions to perform the test for amitraz resistance in Varroa destructor in honey bee colonies.

https://youtu.be...

Today, bees and other pollinators are facing many pressing issues, either directly related or amplified by extreme weather conditions and new weather patterns. And the big question is, can they adapt to these ever evolving conditions? Listen in and find out.

Find out how you can help honey bees by clicking on the extension service link below.

https://extension.org/find-cooperative-extension-in-your-state/

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Take a trip with us to ARS’s Invasive Species and Pollinator Health Unit in Albany, CA, where researchers are looking at long-term factors affecting bee health and colony survival.  They want to better understand how factors such as nutrition, pesticides, extreme weather, and natural events impact colony performance and sustainability over multiple seasons.

Find out how you can help honey bees by clicking on the extension s...