Research and Outreach
Sample Research and Extension Programs
The School of Plant, Environmental, and Soil Sciences encompasses a wide range of research and outreach projects. The projects highlighted below are a brief glance at the exciting work LSU faculty are conducting.
Louisiana Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Professional Development Program (SARE PDP)
SARE’s Professional Development Program offers training, grants, and resources to enhance agricultural professionals' knowledge and skills in sustainability. The program includes two main components: regional competitive grants for creating training materials and outreach projects, and a network of part-time state coordinators who host workshops and field days and provide travel scholarships to share sustainable practices and research. For more information, follow the Louisiana SARE Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaSARE
In the year 2024, Louisiana SARE PDP was involved in a variety of activities ranging from a Cut Flower Workshop taught by retired horticulture agent, Denyse Cummins, to bringing a group of county agents and mentor farmers to the Carolina Stewardship Conference in Durham, NC. Additionally, LA SARE collaborated with Louisiana Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (LGLCI) and Local Cooling Farms to put on a compost workshop, where attendees learned how to make compost, how to source composting materials and general business planning for compost production. Each attendee received a composting handbook and a 1cu ft bag of Local Cooling compost. Finally, LA SARE donated two limited liability signs to two farmers during the Agritourism Workshop organized by county agents Jessie Hoover and Mary Helen Feguson.
Seeds to Success: The Louisiana Farm to School Program
The LSU AgCenter’s farm-to-school program was established in 2016 with U.S. Department of Agriculture funding from the Louisiana Department of Education. Farm-to-school programs increase student access to healthy, locally grown products, link schools and farmers, and increase student awareness of the importance of agricultural activities through engaging learning opportunities. The nationwide movement termed “Farm to School” encompasses three pillars: education, procurement, and school gardens.
Seeds to Success strives to enrich the connection communities have with fresh, healthy food and local food producers by changing food purchasing and education practices at schools and preschools. Seeds to Success acts as an umbrella for all the programs Louisiana Farm to School has to offer and beyond. The program educates students about fruits, vegetables and other regional products, such as crawfish. It also helps link farmers with school districts in their areas so children can eat locally grown produce.
Grow Louisiana Beginning Farmer Training Program
Grow Louisiana is a year-long program that trains a cohort of farmers in horticulture and business skills, aiming to develop more farm-to-table operations here in our state. The 2024 cohort consisted of 15 participants from various regions of Louisiana. This year, in addition to the 12 in-person presentations, the program brought participants to tour two successful vegetable farmers in Louisiana, as well as hosted two farmer networking events. Of the presentations, the cohort of farmers heard from vegetable farmers, livestock producers, LSU and MSU AgCenter agents, and Daniel Parson of the Oxford College Farm at Emory University. For more information about the Grow Louisiana Program, email cmotsenbocker@agcenter.lsu.edu.
Hands-on training in beef cattle forage
The LSU AgCenter offers many educational programs for beef cattle producers, including meetings, field days and podcasts. More recently, in-depth programs for beginning, semi-experienced and experienced cattle producers have been offered. These programs involve several days of instruction, and involve traditional classroom sessions and some field activities for producers to get some “hands-on” training. Each program has a forage component, and we discuss such topics as adapted forage species, forage fertilization, hay production, weed control and other topics.
Environmental Literacy
Dr. Maud Walsh is committed to improving environmental literacy through K-12 educational outreach. She has led hands-on environmental activities at schools, community events and summer programs in partnership with Louisiana 4-H, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the Big Buddy program, and other organizations. Many outreach activities, such as at Baton Rouge Magnet High School STEM Day and shown in the photo, involve students in Dr. Walsh’s Environmental Management Systems service-learning classes at LSU. Dr. Walsh has conducted numerous workshops for K-12 science teachers, including most recently one designed to encourage middle- and high-school teachers to integrate agriculture-related concepts into basic science classes.
Evaluation of USDA industrial hemp germplasm in Louisiana
In collaboration with USDA ARS Geneva, we are evaluating 35 open-sourced hemp cultivars in Louisiana for their adaptability. These cultivars are evaluated in randomized block design in three replications. Based on the data collected, we can select the cultivars performing better in our conditions and use them to start our hemp fiber and grain breeding program. The cultivars will be used as parents to make controlled crosses with complaint cultivars and the populations will be evaluated in multiple locations within the state for their yields and resistance to stresses and diseases. The data collected will also be deposited in the national hemp database GRIN global for other researchers and producers to use when selecting varieties for cultivation.
Plant Stress Molecular Biology
Our sugarcane molecular genetics research program makes use of the trait-genes and
markers at the genome scale to develop genomic strategies to complement conventional
breeding efforts toward development of sugarcane varieties with high sucrose content,
disease resistance, cold tolerance, and better ratooning ability. In addition, our
research delves into identifying regulatory genes and associated networks underlying
traits such as water use efficiency in rice, aflatoxin resistant corn etc. to enhance
our understanding of the plant’s responses to the stressors at tissue, organ, cellular
and molecular levels that can be translated to develop varieties with resilience in
the face of the changing climate.
Salt Tolerance Evaluation at the Seedling stage in Rice
The increased frequency and intensity of climate related risks such as biotic and abiotic stresses is negatively impacting productivity of many crops including rice. Since rice will continue to be a major food crop in the foreseeable future, development of high-yielding climate smart rice varieties is critical to fulfil the global food requirement in the future.
In a project funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of USDA, our overall goal is to develop climate resilient rice varieties for improving sustainability of rice farming.
For more information about our research activities, visit the Crop Plants Genetics Laboratory Website.
