A Message from Dr. Bajwa

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you enjoyed the most beautiful fall weather I had seen in Bozeman. So far this month, we have had plenty of celebrations. Early October we honored homecoming week with a few alumni foundation awards. Congratulations to all our award winners, Rik Miller (PSPP ’83) for Alumni Achievement Award, Dr. Clayton Marlow for Honorary Alumni Award, Dr. Joe Atwood for Distinguished Faculty Award and Emi Smith for Distinguished Staff Award. It is a great honor to work with such great faculty, staff, students and alumni.

I am excited to announce a transformative gift of $10 million to the College of Agriculture and ag-related programs from an anonymous donor. The gift includes $5 million to establish an endowed chair in precision agriculture, $3 million to support 4-H Youth Development, $1 million to ag student scholarships, and $1 million for the Dan Scott Ranch Management Program. My sincere gratitude goes to the donors for a gift that will support research, teaching, our students in our college and have a lasting impact on Montana agriculture.

Celebrate Ag was held Oct. 20-21. This is our annual celebration of the college and the legacy of agriculture in Montana. Although we do not have the full history of this event, we do have some facts on record.

  • Montana Wheat and Barley Committee has been supporting the event for over 20 years.
  • The weekend was called Ag Appreciation Day until 2011.
  • The earliest record we have of the Outstanding Ag Leader Award is in 1995. Bob and Kathy Lee, Chuck and Stephanie Merja, Dean and Hope Folkvord, Larry and Molly Descheemaeker, and Rick and Mary Sampsen were listed as award winners. This year, Jay Bodner was honored as the Outstanding Ag Leader.

As part of this year’s celebration, we held the Agricultural Economic Outlook conference on Friday and our Celebrate Ag breakfast on Saturday with a poster slam for our students. The Bobcat vs. Weber State football game was dedicated to Celebrate Ag. And we crowned Taylor Kennedy, a graduate student in LRES, the winner of our “Science as Art” competition for students. There is a photo and description of Taylor’s art at ag.montana.edu/celebrateag/scienceasart.html.

I thank the faculty, staff, students and alumni who joined us last week for upholding the wonderful tradition of celebrating agriculture and our college. Kudos to Susan Fraser and the Celebrate Ag organizing team who did an amazing job of putting together an impressive event.

Sincerely,

Sreekala Bajwa

Upcoming and recent events

  • Gear Up for the First College Pitch Competition: The College of Agriculture and the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station will host a research pitch competition open to all College faculty at the all-faculty meeting on Jan. 11, 2023. There will be two $10,000 awards. Come with your idea for a $10 million grant to your agency of choice: USDA, NSF or NIH. Faculty will submit an abstract, objectives, and a list of potential funding sources via InfoReady by Jan. 2, 2023. Selected PIs will be notified by Jan. 6 that they are invited to submit their proposal to the pitch competition. The lead PI will have three minutes and one infographic (PowerPoint slide) to sell their idea to a panel of experts. The criteria for judging can be found on the website.  For more information contact Mary Burrows or Rebecca Falks. 
  • Miller Stock Pavilion Snippet: The November nightly MSU MAES and Department of Animal and Range Sciences Miller Stock Pavilion snippet will be held 6 to 8 p.m. on Nov. 8 and presented by Dr. Stacie Boswell. All MSU students and the Greater Bozeman Community are invited to attend this free event. This hands-on presentation will focus on prepping your horse for veterinarian care. Just bring yourself and comfortable shoes to wear around horses. MSU will provide horses and equipment.
  • Ranching Seminar Series Announced: The 2022-23 Issues in Ranching Seminar Series schedule has been announced. The first seminar, "Agriculture Labor, Immigration, and Innovation" will be held on Nov. 1 in ABB 134 and via Webex. For the full schedule and more information visit animalrange.montana.edu/danscott/danscott-seminars.html. 

New Grants

  • Michael Ivie, "Wild Bees of Montana Supplement: Accelerating Discovery, Expanding Capacity, Outreach and Impact." Montana Department of Ag, $630,000.
  • Jasmine Neupane and Gaurav Jha, both grant co-leads, and Paul Nugent, Nina Zidack and Zach Miller ​​​​​​​received a specialty crop block grant (MDA/USDA) to develop a water management network in specialty crops in Montana. The grant is worth $402,273.
  • LRES graduate students Zane Ashford, Lilly Sencenbaugh and Emma Kubinski and their respective PIs have won SARE grad student research grants. 

Awards and Recognition

  • Marsha Goetting and her team received the Western Region Distinguished Team award during the Epsilon Sigma Phi National Conference in September. The award was for the virtual MontGuide Mondays presented during the COVID pandemic.  MSU Extension team members include Mat Walter, Lewis and Clark County; Kimberly Richardson, Ravalli County; and Jane Wolery, Teton County and now Montana 4-H Foundation Director.

Recent Publications

  • Kevin Berry, Alexander James, Brock Smith, Brett Watson. 2022. Geography, Geology, and Regional Economic Development. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. doi: 10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102715
  • Daniel I.Rees, Brock Smith. 2022. Terror attacks and election outcomes in Europe, 1970–2017. Economics Letters. doi: 10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110770 
  • Mendu, L., Mauricio, U., Paxton, P., Monoclava C.S., Jennifer, C., and Mendu, V. 2022. Lignin and cellulose content in root of different cultivars associated with different levels of Fusarium wilt race 4 (FOV4) resistance-response. Journal of Agri. and Food Research.
  • Mendu, L., Cobos, C., Tengey, T.T., Commey, L., Balasubramanian, V. K., Williams, L. D., Dhillon, K. K., Sharma, D., Pandey, M.K., Falalou, H. Varshney, R.K., Sudini, H.K., Burow, M.D., and Mendu, V.* 2022. Seed coat mediated resistance against Aspergillus flavus infection in peanut. Plant gene, 32, 100381, doi: 10.1016/j.plgene.2022.100381
  • Shumayla., Mendu, V., Singh, K. and Upadhyay, S.K. 2022. Insight into the Roles of Proline-Rich Extensin-like Receptor Protein Kinases of Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Life, 2022, 12(7), 941. doi: 10.3390/life12070941​​​​​​​
  • Hill, N., Meyers, C., Li, Nan, Doerfert, D. and Mendu, V. 2022. How does the public discuss gene-editing in agriculture? An analysis of Twitter content. Advancements in Agricultural Development, 3(2), 31–47. doi: 10.37433/aad.v3i2.187
  • Hill, N., Meyers, C., Li, Nan, Doerfert, D. and Mendu, V. 2022. Persuasive Effects of Metaphors Regarding Gene-Editing in Agriculture. Journal of Applied Communications, Vol. 106: Iss. 1. doi: 10.4148/1051-0834.2416
  • Paul B. Hegedus, Bruce D. Maxwell and Taro Mieno. 2022. Assessing performance of empirical models for forecasting crop responses to variable fertilizer rates using on-farm precision experimentation. Precision Agriculture. doi: 10.1007/s11119-022-09968-2

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