Science In Your Shopping Cart

These days, we are all more conscious of pesticide spraying, especially growers who rely on this method for keeping pests off their crops. ARS scientists have developed a revolutionary laser-guided sprayer to apply precise amounts of pesticide to their crops, cutting down significantly on the amount of pesticide sprayed onto fruits and vegetables.

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ARS researchers Nancy Keim and Wally Yokoyama are looking to turn wine waste – mainly pomace or what the researchers call marcs – into healthy food products that end up in our shopping carts.

Keim is studying the health benefits of combinations of chardonnay grape pomace and chardonnay grape extract.  As expected, the enriched flour is high in fiber and has a lot of bioactive material, which means it will react favorably w...

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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ARS researcher Bradley King, a research agricultural engineer at ARS’s Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research lab in Kimberly, ID, is utilizing AI technology to help wine growers determine the best times to water their vineyards.  King and his colleagues developed a validated, automated model that uses artificial intelligence to remotely calculate the daily crop water stress index so wine growers know when to water their ...

The U.S. imports around $5 billion in cocoa and chocolate products annually, and we produce millions of pounds of chocolate for consumers. The health benefits of dark chocolate are well known, mainly it has more antioxidants than milk chocolate because it contains more cacao solids. But dark chocolate can be brittle and taste bitter.  What if we could make milk chocolate as healthy as dark chocolate, without sacrificing ta...

Hydration is so important to our bodies during exercise, perhaps more important than the exercise itself. Not properly hydrating during athletic competitions or every day exercising – even walking – can have damaging effects on our bodies. Of course, there are the physical effects, such as fatigue, exhaustion, and heat stroke. But there are also psychological factors that you may not be aware of. Learn more about how hydra...

ARS researcher Lance Cadle-Davidson, a research plant pathologist at ARS’s Grape Genetics Research Unit in the finger lakes region in Geneva, NY, is helping protect wine vineyards that produce European style wines in the U.S.  Cadle-Davidson and his team have created an automated process utilizing high resolution cameras with illumination to see fungal disease easily from LED lighting with artificial intelligence to quanti...

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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Wouldn’t it be great if the oils and margarines you cook with were actually healthy for you and still enhanced the flavor of your foods? Researchers at ARS’s Functional Foods Research Unit in Peoria, Illinois, are mixing common cooking oils with natural waxes to create oleogels – which you can say is the secret sauce behind a healthier cooking oil.

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