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Boise biodiesel conference in fall aims to improve air for children
By Barbara J. Smith
Sit in traffic behind a diesel-fueled school bus and chances are you'll understand health concerns for children who ride buses to and from school each day. At Boise workshops on September 15 and 16, UI researchers and educators hope to influence the number of school bus fleets around the United States-including in Idaho-to use the cleaner biodiesel fuel.
School fleet managers will meet at the Centre on the Grove for the Biodiesel Utilization Workshop to share up-to-date information about biodiesel production, availability, and use.
"School buses are one of the largest mass transit programs in the United States," says Jon Van Gerpen, head of UI's Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and workshop chair. "They can help jump-start the use of renewable and healthier biofuels in this country."
Northwest's bus fleets lag behind
In 1997, the Medford, New Jersey, School District was the only one in the nation to run its fleet with the cleaner burning fuel. While the use of biodiesel in school bus fleets is gaining momentum nationally-including in Phoenix and Denver-school transportation districts in the Northwest, including Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming, lag behind in adopting the cleaner, healthier fuel.
According to EPA sources, it is estimated that, in a single year, the average school bus emits as much soot as 114 cars. Every school day, some 440,000 school buses transport more than 24 million children to and from schools and school-related activities. Bussed children average 90 minutes each weekday on a school bus.
In Littleton, Colorado, Jeffrey Kimes, EPA environmental engineer, reports that biodiesel performs just like diesel, but tests show biodiesel-derived from a variety of vegetable oils-is better for human health.
The Boise workshop, funded with a multi-year USDA grant to study market barriers to biodiesel and to educate the public on biodiesel potential, is the second Idaho autumn conference for public vehicle fleets. Van Gerpen's team plans additional workshops annually through 2008.
Find more on the conference at www.biodieseleducation.org.
New green manures reduce nematodes by up to 99%
By Marlene Fritz
New oilseed radishes not yet available in the marketplace should entice more Idaho potato and sugarbeet growers into giving nematode-reducing green-manure crops a try. Saad Hafez, UI nematologist at Parma, says the varieties Defender and Comet slashed the populations of both sugarbeet cyst nematodes and potato-damaging Columbia root-knot nematodes by 95 and 99 percent, respectively, in the greenhouse.
"Their main advantage is that they reduce both of these nematodes," says Hafez. Previously, green-manure crops that discouraged one nematode encouraged the other. In addition, Defender and Comet reach nematode-inhibiting growth stages in six to eight weeks-two weeks earlier than other varieties. That will give growers more opportunities to squeeze them into their rotations after a fall-harvested crop or before a spring-planted crop.
Green-manure crops decrease nematode populations by serving as nonhosts or poor hosts while the crops are growing and by releasing biofumigating chemicals, activating natural enemies, or improving soil condition after the crops are turned under.
The best older varieties of oilseed radish green manures curbed populations of Columbia root-knot nematodes by 50 percent and sugarbeet cyst nematodes by 80 to 90 percent.
This year, Hafez will test Defender and Comet in the field. He hopes they will be available to Idaho growers by 2006.
Contact Hafez at shafez@uidaho.edu.
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Ranch buyers ante up for blue skies
In a study of 100 ranch sales from 1996 to 2002 in the Great Basin of Idaho, eastern Oregon, and northern Nevada, UI Extension Range Economist Neil Rimbey and New Mexico State University colleagues L. Allen Torell and Octavio Ramirez found that ranch income explained only 8 percent of the variation in ranch value and added roughly $6 an acre for most of the 100 ranches sold.
"If you are going to buy a ranch, you would think that the income associated with cows would be pretty important, but it wasn't," says Rimbey.
What boosted values for the Idaho ranches were elevation and scenery. Any ranch above 3,000-foot elevation had a premium value at $1,121 per acre, and "trophy ranch" or recreational and scenic values added $864 an acre.
Contact Rimbey at nrimbey@uidaho.edu. -by Marlene Fritz
UI's Morra led MaryJane into the biodiesel, biopesticide business
By Mary Ann Reese
When MaryJane Butters drives around her organic farm 8 miles east of Moscow, it's often in a coral pink 1981 Mercedes, powered by biodiesel fuel pressed from 22 acres of mustard plants grown at her farm.
Even more important to her organic food and mail-order business is the mustard meal left over after biodiesel oil is pressed. The soil amendment is high in nitrogen and other compounds that deter weeds and pests.
In her book, MaryJane's Ideabook, released in May, Butters credits UI Soil Scientist Matt Morra with getting her started in the mustard plant business.
UI scientist invites Butters to collaborate
She recalls Morra phoning several years ago to ask if she'd "like to collaborate on a project we've been working on for several years. We think the hotness in mustard plants will kill pests like wireworms and deter weeds like thistle, and we need some organic ground to conduct field tests." The Chinese already use mustard plants in their crop rotations because of their pest-control properties, Morra told her.
"I got excited," says Butters, who applied for and won a $50,000 "specialty crop" grant from Gov. Kempthorne's office.
She and Morra planted crops in search of answers to questions including: What pesticide effect does mustard have when the plant is actually growing? What pesticide effect does the mustard meal residue have once diesel oil is pressed from its seed?
Answers are still under investigation. While plants grew, Butters researched and ordered an oil press. She and colleague Mike Forbes attached it to the back of a pickup, so neighboring growers can use it to press their own biodiesel.
Results of the research: MaryJane's Farm grows its own fuel and soil amendment and has a new product to sell. Her beets, strawberries, and lettuce benefit from an organic pesticide. Area growers have a way to get biodiesel for their farm equipment.
Meanwhile, Morra hopes to get mustard meal registered with the Environmental Protection Agency as a biopesticide.
For more information on biopesticides, see soils.ag.uidaho.edu/mmorra/gluc/. For details on Making Your Own Biodiesel workshops, see Pay Dirt Farm School at www.maryjanesfarm.org.
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New tests diagnose diseases without killing salmon or trout
By Marlene Fritz
Animal scientists at the UI's Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station have received a patent on a genetic test that screens salmon and trout for bacterial kidney disease without harvesting fish organs on the chopping block.
The "quantitative polymerase chain reaction" test identifies disease-causing agents in living body fluids-rather than disease antibodies in necropsied organs. Team leader Madison Powell says it delivers diagnoses within 4 hours, rather than 2 to 14 days for today's tests. It is also far more reliable at low levels of infection than current tests.
A second patent is pending for infectious hematopoietic virus, which affects trout and salmon, and a third is being pursued for whirling disease caused by Myxobolus cerebralis. "Eventually, what we would like to have is a whole suite of tests that can be performed very rapidly on both farmed and wild fish," says Powell. "We could take one blood sample and run a whole myriad of tests to see what a fish may or may not have."
Keith Johnson, fish pathologist supervisor at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, says non-lethal QPCR tests of endangered species "would allow us to separate infected from uninfected fish and to plant fish into appropriate lakes."
Contact Powell at mpowell@uidaho.edu.
UI scientist studies virus that causes birth defects
By Bill Loftus
Perhaps one in 50 newborns in the United States each year has been exposed to HCMV, human cytomegalovirus, and as many as 20 percent of them will sustain damage to their hearing, sight, or mental capacity as a result.
I Molecular Biologist Lee Fortunato tracks how the virus, a herpes relative, hijacks the cellular machinery of developing brain cells, using them to reproduce. She focuses on a switch-like protein that determines whether a cell will repair itself or die.
Her work, which received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, shows that the virus struggles in cells without the protein. That finding could reveal more clearly how the HCMV takes control and help efforts to develop a vaccine.
Contact Fortunato at lfort@uidaho.edu
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