If You’re Happy and You Know It, Strut Around

In recent years many non-farmers have discovered that raising chickens can be a very rewarding hobby and also has many benefits, including providing fresh eggs and nutrient-rich fertilizer for your garden. Some people even enjoy them as outdoor pets! As a matter of fact, you may even know of some friends, or neighbors who are raising chickens in their backyard and wondered if you could do the same thing.

It turns out that keeping your backyard chickens happy can be a challenge, even for the “old hand” owner. Raising healthy chickens requires planning, attention to detail, and fastidiousness when it comes to completing daily chores. So, before buying some chickens of your own, check out a few tips. 

A Halloween Mystery – A Globe-trotting Weed and the Queen of the Gypsies

Quick, when you think of Halloween what usually comes to mind? Ghosts, black cats, mysterious graveyards? Too creepy? Well, it turns out that graveyards (also known as cemeteries) can be a pretty cool place… if you’re a scientist. In fact, one cemetery in Mississippi helped scientists figure out the globe-trotting journey of a restless plant.

You see graveyards can be a good place to scout for plant species, which is what Mississippi State University graduate student Lucas Majure was doing when he found an unknown sedge (a type of weed). He asked ARS botanist Charles Bryson, who keeps an eye out for new and potentially invasive plants, to help identify the mystery plant.

After several months of searching, Dr. Bryson was able to confirm that the plant was blue sedge, Carex breviculmis, a native of Asia and Australia and previously unknown in North America. So how did this strange weed end up in Mississippi?

Read "A Mississippi Graveyard - The Perfect Place for a Plant Mystery" to learn more.

Should Plant-Based Meats Be Cooked?

Guidelines for properly cooking meats are well documented, but what about for plant-based products? Unfortunately, there is little information available on the time and temperature combinations required to safely cook and eat certain plant-based foods. Consumers generally, and correctly, consider burgers to be raw and to require cooking prior to consumption. However, many view plant-based burgers as not raw because they contain plant material, and some plants can be eaten raw.

“Many consumers believe that plant-based foods are minimally processed, more healthful, and nutritionally superior to otherwise similar animal-based counterparts,” said John Luchansky, lead scientist at the ARS Eastern Regional Research Center’s (ERRC) Food Safety and Intervention Technologies Research unit in Wyndmoor, PA. “In reality, plant-based meats are ultra-processed and contain numerous food-grade chemicals as ingredients.”

“Plants often harbor high levels of foodborne pathogens and, as such, plant-based burgers should be considered and handled just like for example, raw ground beef,” said Luchansky’s research partner Anna Porto-Fett, microbiologist at ERRC.

Read more here.

Insect Fight Club: Stink Bug vs. Samurai Wasp

A tiny parasitic wasp called the Trissolcus japonicus, also known as the samurai wasp, may be the solution to the major economic damage to fruit, vegetable, and field crops perpetrated by the invasive brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys).

Natural enemies to the stink bug back in their native Asia, samurai wasps love to detect and follow unique chemical trails left behind by these bugs to parasitize their eggs.  According to ARS scientists, this strong preference makes the samurai wasp an ideal way to naturally suppress brown marmorated stink bug populations here in the U.S. as well.

Want to learn more? Read "To Deal With The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, ARS Scientists Bring In Its Arch Enemy." 

This Bee Lives Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Have you ever paid a visit to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Park in Utah? If so, you may be intrigued  to learn about a fuzzy gray bee that carves its nest into chunks of sandstone!

One day several years ago, Utah State University graduate student Michael Orr was working in the park when he spied some bees's nests made in a column of sandstone rock. With a sweep net in hand, Michael scaled a sandstone rock cliff to capture some specimens of the bees and then consulted with ARS scientist Terry Griswold to devise a plan to learn more about the about the strange but tenacious bee. Find out what he discovered.

Taking a Holistic Approach to Food Safety

ARS researchers spend a lot of time finding ways to ensure our fruits, vegetables, and meats are safe from bacteria, pathogens, and diseases. However, one issue with food safety occurs during the food packaging phase

“Post-processing contamination is a major contributor to foodborne illness outbreaks,” said Sudarsan Mukhopadhyay, an ARS chemical engineer in Wyndmoor, PA. “Once packaged in bags, treatment options are very limited.”

ARS scientists are taking a holistic approach to tackle this problem.

“The aim of this project was to increase antimicrobial efficacy while minimizing loss of quality by combining individual treatments and technologies,” said ARS food technologist Xuetong Fan. “It is better to apply treatment combinations simultaneously, rather than sequentially, so that they can be easily adopted by the industry.”

See how researchers are using puled light as part of their approach toward combating food pathogens and diseases.

Check out "For Safety’s Sake, Treat Plant-Based Meat Just Like the Real Thing".

Test your knowledge of late summer fruits and vegetables at your local farm or farmers market. Pair up with an adult, and search for each food on the list below.

How many can you find? Print this page, take it with you and circle the foods you find. 

• Bell peppers
• Blackberries
• Corn
• Green beans
• Okra
• Peaches
• Summer squash
• Tomatillos
• Tomatoes
• Watermelon
• Zucchini

Hanging Out and Taking Selfies: Takoda Becomes a Teenager

At the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington D.C., 2022 has been a new nesting season for the bald eagle pair Mr. President and his mate, LOTUS, (Lady of The United States) who make their home in a tree at the Arboretum. Back in March, the bald eagle couple welcomed a new eaglet Takoda, also known as DC9. This spring Takoda became a fledgling, or in human terms a young adult eagle, which means he no longer spends his days in the nest with mom and dad. Instead, this summer has been an opportunity for Takoda to spend his days under his parents' watchful eyes practicing some much-needed skills—landing and maneuvering through the air—in preparation for the next phase of his life when he'll be on his own.

Learn more about Takoda and check out this camera to watch Takoda and his parents.