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A Montana State University scientist who is striving to overcome a widespread problem for U.S. farmers – herbicide-resistant weeds – has won a national award for his achievements so far. Prashant Jha, an associate professor at the Southern Agricultural Research Center in the College of Agriculture and the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, was named Outstanding Early Career Weed Scientist during the Weed Science Society of America's 2018 annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia. The soc...
Work is beginning this summer to establish a regional laboratory at Montana State University for diagnosing insects, diseases and weeds in pulse crops. Chickpea, dry pea and lentil growers should be able to send samples to the lab this fall, said MSU Extension Plant Pathologist Mary Burrows, who is directing the project. Space previously occupied by the MSU Extension Water Quality program will be remodeled and turned into a "clean" laboratory this summer. Burrows hopes to hire a lab supervisor/s...
Red and green traps attract more sweetpotato weevils than other colors, and a Montana State University researcher who made that discovery wants to know if Montana insects react the same way. Gadi V.P. Reddy, superintendent and entomologist/ecologist at MSU's Western Triangle Agricultural Research Center at Conrad, said the lessons he learned in Guam and published in the Jan. 2 issue of the Annals of the Entomological Society of America will be tested on some of the major pests that destroy...
Scientists discovered some 70 years ago that they could fight wheat stem sawfly by growing a new type of wheat. The wheat had a solid stem instead of a hollow one, making it harder for females to lay eggs and leaving less room for larvae to grow. Montana wheat farmers still benefit from that breakthrough, and Montana State University now has a new grant that could add weapons to their arsenal, said MSU wheat breeder Luther Talbert. With a five-year $500,000 grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Talbert and his c...
Earlier this year, Laura Brutscher helped young Montanans become "honey bee investigators" during a summer camp at Montana State University. The MSU graduate student has now received a major fellowship to expand her own honey bee investigations. The Project Apis m.-Costco Fellowship will give Brutscher $50,000 a year for three years to research honey bees and the pathogens that infect them. Her mentors as she continues studying the role of microbes in honey bee colony health and how they relate...
Searching for the longhorn beetles of Montana has transformed Charles Hart into a night stalker who pursues his prey with nets, traps and a crowbar. The 33,000 mile quest over three summers has also turned the Montana State University graduate student into a published author and demonstrated that undergraduate research can foster success, said MSU entomologist Michael Ivie. Hart was an MSU undergraduate in biology when he joined the Montana Wood-Boring Insect Survey, a joint effort of the...
Montana State University students who drive draft horses for a hobby know their animals. George, for one, is the cat that lives at the Miller Pavilion where students gather for their weekly practice. George is supposed to catch mice, but he prefers sandwiches and occasionally slips into backpacks to find them. Omen and Juniper are the Blue Heelers that wait outside the pavilion when their owner is inside. Brandy and Star are the Belgian horses that members of the MSU Driving Team say make them...
Laura Burkle and her colleagues captured 2,778 bees while retracing the muddy steps of a scientist who studied the interactions between bees and flowering plants more than a century ago. Occasionally stung, but considering herself lucky to have access to the rich historic records that guided her field work, the Montana State University ecologist and her collaborators have now published their results in the prestigious journal, “Science.” “It’s exciting,” Burkle said as the Feb. 28 publicati...
A former Montana State University student has discovered the rarest ladybug in the United States, according to MSU entomologist Michael Ivie. Described in the journal “Systemic Entomology,” the new ladybug was crawling across a sand dune in southwest Montana when it dropped into a trap set by entomology grad student Ross Winton. The ladybug was so small that Winton said he originally thought he had found the body part of an ant. Then he thought the insect was missing its head. He wasn’t even...
A microscopic mite and the disease it carries, wheat streak mosaic, are destroying wheat fields throughout the western Great Plains. Now Montana State University faculty and students are fighting back through a new collaboration that involves the Agricultural Research Service and six universities in Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture recently awarded a five-year, $3.4 million grant to be shared by the seven institutions, starting in January 2013. MSU’s portion is $800,000, b...
A Labrador that’s trained to find cadavers, and a Border collie plucked from a Bozeman animal shelter are now helping rid Montana of noxious weeds. Demonstrating her abilities on a frosty fall morning, Wibaux the Labrador scrambled up a Montana mountain and soon detected the scent of Dyer’s woad over the smell of hikers, pets, deer, shrubs and other plants. Shaking with excitement but true to her training, Wibaux circled the weed, barked continually and finally sat down until her handler ver...
A female moth sitting on a goal post could attract a male moth on the other end of a football field. And even if she switched her scent over time, the male could still find her because of a mutation to a single gene in his antenna. A team of researchers led by Montana State University entomologist Kevin Wanner identified that gene after seeing how it adapted to even the slightest change in the chemicals female moths emit to attract males. The scientists explained their findings in the Aug. 13...
Montana State University students traveled thousands of miles, dug hundreds of holes and sorted through truckloads of dirt to trap worms this summer. The messy life and long hours of a worm wrangler help pay their way through college, but they also benefit an MSU graduate student who is conducting several studies involving a growing enemy of Montana’s grain, said undergraduates Branden Brelsford, Bozeman, and Emily Rohwer, Forest Grove, OR. Wireworms, the tiny white larvae that turn into c...
A Montana State University researcher who analyzed 100 years of data has found a significant link between extreme Montana weather and the ocean temperatures near Peru. Montanans who want to know what to expect from the weather should look to the Pacific Ocean in the fall or maybe find a way to chat with some Peruvian fishermen, according to Joseph Caprio, MSU’s Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences professor emeritus and former Montana State climatologist. If the average s...
Heifers being prepared for breeding don’t have to eat like pigs, stuffing themselves at all-you-can-eat feed bunks with unlimited refills, according to scientists at a Montana State University experiment station. Researchers at the Fort Keogh Livestock and Range Research Laboratory, Miles City, conducted a two-year study that showed that heifers can safely eat 20% less during the seven months between weaning and breeding. They won’t suffer from reduced rations, and producers save $21 per ani...
