News from the Media

Clean Energy Extension's research focused on agrivoltaics, or dual-use solar panels, was highlighted in a recent Christian Science Monitor article.

Rich Harper, Extension Professor of urban forestry, was quoted in an article discussing a new state foliage map that helps residents and tourists plan their autumn trips.

UMass Amherst Extension Fruit Team Leader Jon Clements, explaining the history of the EverCrisp apple variety, seen growing at the UMass Cold Spring Orchard. It's a product, in-part, of the Midwest Apple Improvement Association (MAIA) - one of several varieties tested at Cold Spring and available for Massachusetts orchards to grow.

Massachusetts has more than 80 pick-your-own apple farms. But warming weather is hurting apple and fruit crops across New England.

Al Rose, co-owner of Red Apple Farm, and Jon Clements, an educator with the Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment at UMass, talk about this year's apple season and how they're thinking about climate change's impact on future crops.

Tawny Simisky, CAFE's Extension Entomologist specializing in woody plant entomology, was quoted in the Greenfield Recorder article 'Fall coincides with increase in yellowjacket interactions, experts advise.'

Tawny Simisky, entomologist, UMass Extension's Landscape, Nursery and Urban Forestry Program, provides an update on the emergence of cicada broods XIII and XIX, and the messaging that pest management professionals and landscape professionals can share about these periodical visitors.

GCC prof Brian Adams w/ UMass Entomologist Tawny Simisky: good & bad local bugs

Around this time of year, cranberries are a traditional and cherished addition to the holiday table—andUMass researchers are working to ensure that these beloved burgundy gems will thrive for generations to come.

Dwayne Breger, extension professor of Environmental Conservation and director of the UMass Clean Energy Extension, is quoted in an article on locating solar farms in forests. He says the field of solar energy has evolved from grassroots installations to installations backed by corporations. “As the market has now unveiled itself in fury, in the 2000s and 2020s and so forth, not just in Massachusetts but around the country, once again capitalism has taken over and we’ve got the big players that are just crowding out everyone else,” Breger said.

A team of sustainability scientists, led by senior author Ana Quiñónez Camarillo and co-author, Timothy Randhir, have developed a community-based framework to help assess and respond to ecological threats. The framework is based on the local perception of threats, consequences, and solutions (TCS) which are easier to understand than "extremely theoretical scientific frameworks," Randhir says. “One of the biggest issues facing international sustainability efforts is that smaller,​ less economically developed ​countries often don’t have the resources to conduct nuanced, in-depth surveys of local people and the local environment in the threatened area,” says Quiñónez Camarillo. 

New UMass Amherst research is the first to precisely map how plant nurseries exacerbate the climate-driven spread of 80% of plant species. Bethany Bradley, professor of environmental conservation and senior author of two recently published papers, says one of the major hurdles in addressing the threat of invasive species is determining when and where a species crosses the line from being non-native to invasive. 

Susan Scheufele, production agriculture leader at UMass Extension, says warmer and wetter weather is creating a false spring. Farmers “might start to see more bacterial diseases or diseases that we think of as more southern or mid-Atlantic diseases,” she says.

Jon Clements, Extension Fruit Educator, is quoted in a story on Maine’s worst apple harvest in over a decade. “Crop insurance is a safety net. It’ll never make up for having a good crop,” Clements says. “And like any other type of insurance, it’s not mandatory. Some growers just don’t buy crop insurance.”

The UMass Cranberry Station is essential in supporting the commonwealth's top food crop. Despite challenges, like fruit rot, early frost, and record rainfall, Massachusetts farmers grew 200 million pounds of cranberries last year. The research facility in Wareham provides invaluable research to growers, helping them overcome such challenges. The station is critically important to the cranberry industry,” says John Mason, president of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association.

Alissa Nolden, food science, is quoted on research related to “Paxlovid mouth,” a metallic aftertaste that can be caused by the COVID-19 antiviral drug. The research finds that the drug activates one of the tongue’s bitter taste receptors. Nolden calls the study “a good first step,” but hopes to see further research supporting the findings.

An article examining billionaire Elon Musk’s environmental record cites research by Jared Starr, environmental conservation, which found that Americans who are in the top 10% of earners are responsible for 40% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. “Musk is a complicated figure. On one hand, he’s played a critical role in popularising EV and battery storage with Tesla. On the other, he’s flying space tourists on missions that create a huge amount of pollution. Private jets also use a lot of fossil fuel, so he would himself be in the super-emitter category," Starr explains. 

A collaborative research team led by UMass Amherst revealed that rotifers, a kind of microscopic zooplankton common in both fresh and ocean water, can chew apart microplastics, breaking them down into even smaller--and potentially more dangerous--nanoplastics. “Humans produce enormous amounts of plastics, and yet we don’t have an effective way of recycling them,” says Baoshan Xing, Distinguished Professor of environmental and soil chemistry.