Dr. Kirk Pomper, principal investigator of horticulture, and Sheri Crabtree, co-investigator of horticulture, both in theLand Grant Program’s Community Research Service will receive the 2008 Shepard Award for the best research paper of the year published in the Journal of the American Pomological Society. Pomper and Crabtree will receive the award at the society’s annual meeting July 26 in St. Louis. Pomper and Crabtree will share the award with colleagues at Clemson University and the University of Kentucky. The research paper, “The Kentucky Pawpaw Regional Variety Trial,” can be viewed on the KSU Pawpaw Web site.
The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) fruit has fresh market and processing appeal. The fruit has a flavor that is similar to a combination of banana, mango and pineapple. Pomper has been a KSU researcher for 11 years, working mainly with pawpaw, and has 38 referred journal articles, obtained over $2,400,000 in funding on competitive grants and has taught biotechnology courses as an adjunct professor. Crabtree has been a KSU researcher for nine years, published over 20 articles and abstracts and been interviewed by National Public Radio about pawpaw growing. For more information about growing pawpaw, contact Dr. Pomper at kirk.pomper@kysu.edu.
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Dr. James Tidwell, coordinator and chair of the Division of Aquaculture, has agreed to chair a national review panel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service that will examine prospective five-year project plans for research in aquaculture production. The review panel evaluates research plans by ARS research teams across the United States that explore production technologies as well as processing, water quality, nutrition, use of by-products, rearing strategy and bioremediation. The review team headed by Dr. Tidwell includes university scientists and private industry representatives from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, Louisiana and Texas. The process will culminate with a two-day meeting of the review team at the ARS headquarters in Beltsville, Md.
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Dr. Narayanan Rajendran, associate biology professor, received a 2009 Indo-U.S. International Professorship from the American Society for Microbiology. This international professorship encourages partnerships between the United States and India and will enable Rajendran to teach a course on agricultural microbes bioinformatics this summer in India at the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum, where he also will serve as the keynote speaker at the opening ceremony.