Research Projects

Better knowledge of how to beneficially use residuals and reclaimed water is essential for environmental protection, soil quality, crop yield, food safety and human health. From this project, we will generate new and useful information on beneficial use residuals and reclaimed water. We will examine the fate, processes and bioavailability of various contaminants (including antibiotics, nanoparticles, nanoplastics) in soils. Analytical methods for nanoparticles and microplastics will be developed, and these methods are expected to be used widely by students, scientists and professionals. In addition, we will modify biochars to make functional biochars to be used in soil improvement and remediation. Furthermore, we will provide the fundamental and useful data for developing nano-enabled technology for sustainable agricultural production.

1-The issue under investigation in this proposal is important because reproductive performance in beef and dairy cattle is often suboptimal resulting in increased intervals to conception and/or rebreeding failures that collectively reduce farm revenues due to decreased milk production or calf production efficiencies. Therefore, approaches that facilitate conception and increase conception rates will benefit the farmer and the economy in general.

2-The Umass research groups in this grant, Drs. Fissore and Visconti will be focused on two of the three Objectives,

Objective 1: Identify Mechanisms that Regulate Ovarian Function and Oocyte Quality during the Estrous Cycle.

Objective 2: Determine Factors Associated with Fertilization, Embryo Development, and Conceptus-Endometrial Interactions that Dictate Pregnancy Success.

3-Colleagues working in fertilization, embryo development, and fertility in mammalian species including humans, post-docs and graduate students, technicians, undergraduate students, embryologists, and producers.  

4-Oocyte quality is of one the parameters affected in high milk-yield cows. Therefore, examining how specific molecules and mechanisms might be downregulated or inactivated in those animals will improve the quality of the oocytes and their developmental potential such that a higher proportion of the fertilized oocytes and early embryos can progress to implantation and term-pregnancy. A second area is to prepare the sperm for fertilization akin to what happens in the female reproductive tracts. We plan to pre-treat bull sperm prior to adding it to oocytes or females. Recent studies from the Visconti lab show that changing the metabolic status of mouse sperm prior to fertilization can enhance post-fertilization outcomes, including embryo development and implantation success. We will extend these to the bovine sperm and embryos.

Non-point source pollution including excess nutrients, organic particles, fecal coliform bacteria, and additional pathogens is considered high risk at many animal operations, especially equine facilities. A common issue in these animal facilities is overgrazing which is the main cause of mud, resulting in serious threats to the environment as well as to animals and humans.  In addition, most equine facilities are regularly faced with a major challenge related to the large amount of manure produced by animals at the facility. Some of the challenges related to manure include 1) lack of manure storage 2) close proximity of manure pile(s) to nearby water bodies 3) animals' direct access to streams and other bodies of water, 4) undesirable characteristics of horse manure due to exceptionally high C:N ratio which makes the waste unusable for agriculture uses. In Massachusetts, there are estimated to be over 26,000 domesticated horses within the state. There are roughly 50,000 acres of land being used in MA for equine operations, therefore, there are about two horses for every acre of dedicated land- which is one fourth of the current recommended practice. It is estimated on average one 1,000 lb. horse will produce approximately 9 tons of manure. When including bedding, stall waste could be as much as 12 tons per horse per year. Managing this waste properly is a growing challenge for equine facilities, especially at places where land availability is limited, and the horses are kept in small acreage and stalls. Runoff from the stables to high traffic areas, manure piles, and unmanaged and overgrazed pastures are the main contributing factors to environmental degradation. Many horse owners do not have enough resources and background to make significant changes in their current practices including pasture, mud, and nutrient management. This provides opportunity for conducting research on various aspects of pasture management, manure management and provides information to remediate the negative impacts of equines on the environment.

The diverticulated crop organ of the common house fly, which is the major insect vector of numerous human food pathogens (e.g., Escherichia coli) is the major reservoir or storage area for this, and other, important food pathogens. It has also been demonstrated that this is where horizontal transmission of antibiotic resistance to E. coli occurs. Thus, the diverticulated crop organ is an essential component in the transmission cycle between pathogens and human foods/food crops. At the same time, the salivary glands of house fly are directly involved in vectoring pathogens and, are intimately involved in pathogen transmission. Almost nothing is known about the physiological factors involved in the regulation of both crop filling and emptying of the adult house fly. Even more concerning is that we know even less about the effect of various pathogens, either food pathogens or pathogens of the house fly vector, on salivary gland regulation. What effect does the salivary gland hypertrophy virus have on normal crop organ function? A better understanding of how these two essential organ systems are regulated, will give researchers a better picture of how to use this information to explore novel, non-chemical control strategies that can be directed at interfering with the normal regulation of these two organ systems. Ultimately, non-traditional control strategies will be developed that rely on interfering with the function of these two organ systems, both of which are essential to the fly. It is the objective of this project to develop non-traditional control strategies, thus reducing fly resistance to insecticides. Thus, by compromised longevity of the vector, pathogen vectoring, and/or reproductive development of the flies can be interfered with resulting in death, abnormal flight ability, and or reduced fecundity.

Pollination is critical for yield of many crops, but many pollinator species are in decline due to a variety of stressors including pathogens, pesticides, and insufficient food resources. Our work will ask how flowering plants and land use around farms affects the number of bee individuals and species at farms, and how effective bees are at pollinating sunflower crops. We will also determine how diet and floral resources affect bee health and ability to resist disease. Finally, many crops have seeds that are treated with pesticides to improve growth, but these pesticides can be incorporated into pollen and affect bees. We will ask how the amount of water a plant receives affects the concentration of pesticides in pollen, and the consequences for bees. Taken together, this work represents a comprehensive approach to understand some of the factors involved in pollinator decline.

This proposal describes a next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based approach to identify genes that control unisexual flower development in Zea mays (maize). Maize develops separate male flowers in the tassel and female flowers in the ear (Klein etal., 2018). The development of unisexual flowers is important for hybrid crop production - separate tassel and ear flowers allow humans to very easily make controlled crosses (Phillips, 2010).  Many cereal crops related to maize, like rice and wheat, have unisexual flowers, hampering hybrid seed production (Kellogg, 2015). In addition, the same process that leads to the development of maize flowers in the tassel - carpel suppression - also occurs in half of all ear flowers, effectively halving the number of seeds a maize ear could produce (Cheng et al., 1983).  Thus, modifying the genes that control carpel suppression using CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering could allow crop engineers to generate unisexual flowers in other grass crops, and to improve yield in maize (Gao, 2018).

The project will employ established field and laboratory methods to measure litter decomposition, soil organic matter turnover, and nitrogen transformations. These methods could include isotope labeling and recovery, litter decomposition, quantifying soil organic matter, gross nitrification and nitrogen mineralization, potential net nitrification and net nitrogen mineralization, nitrous oxide production, carbon mineralization, and quantifying microbial biomass. These measurements are often collected from both field equipment and laboratory microcosms. The results are analyzed using a variety of tools. Generally, graphing tools are first used to examine trends in the data. The data will then be statistically analyzed using linear mixed models and, potentially, model selection. The statistical output is combined with graphic trends and site background information to interpret data and produce study outcomes. This study will incorporate formal education programs. The research project will be the basis from which to train a graduate student on methods in soil biogeochemistry and incorporation of applied research into graduate study. The field sites and methods will be incorporated into formal laboratory instruction for undergraduates. Involving undergraduates provides both inclusion in primary research and evidence of how research outcomes can be incorporated by farmers. 

Plant diseases cause crop loss, reduce food production and threaten global food security (Savary et al., 2012). Focusing on two distinct pathosystems that cause Fusarium vascular wilts and the Basil downy mildew (BDM), respectively, we propose to establish a pipeline to dissect host-pathogen interactions and provide novel means to develop disease resistant cultivars in order to manage plant diseases that threaten food security.

The relationship between domesticated animals and humans is a close one, and has existed for at least ten thousand years. It is important to understand the immune defenses of many animals, in addition to the immune defenses of humans and mice. The goal of our project is is characterize the genetic diversity of a family of immune receptors in domesticated animals and use this information for selective breeding and the design of better vaccines.

As an important group of crops, legumes are prized for their high protein content, which is thanks to their remarkable ability to make their own nitrogen nutrient through a symbiotic relationship with a particular group of bacteria. We still do not fully understand the legume genes that allow these plants, but not most others, to enter this nitrogen-fixing symbiosis. Evolution through millions of years has turned this relationship into a very elaborate process, requiring hundreds if not thousands of genes from both partners. To speed up the rate of scientific discovery, we developed a genetic method based on the CRISPR/Cas9 technology to examine genes suspected to be involved in this mutualistic interaction. This approach will allow us not only to study one gene at a time, but multiple genes at once if necessary. We will carry out the research on a small legume species easy to manipulate in the laboratory, but the findings will have important implications for important crops, such as soybeans, peas, and peanuts.

We will develop a mathematical model that predicts how farmers (or firms) will make decisions when choosing between two markets. The markets we will study include a wholesale market, where farmer's products are no different from all other farmers, and a farm-to-school market where the farmer's products are differentiated (the farmer is known and the products are known to be locally produced). We will then design economic experiments that could be used to test the model's theoretical results. Plans for the design will focus on determining how farmers will allocate their products among the two markets given different levels of transaction costs and market power. We will also work on the design of a preliminary experiment to determine the social preferences of the "farmers." The choices of these "farmers" will then differ according to their social preferences, the transaction costs they face in marketing their products, and the amount of market power they possess and the school possesses.

A scale insect pest has been outbreaking on cranberries in Massachusetts every year since 2012, and in 2022 it is the most damaging pest of Massachusetts cranberries, affecting a majority of commercial bogs. To manage it, we need to understand basic facts about its biology, but right now we don't even know what to call it: we don't know what species it is.  It looks like the species Diaspidiotus ancylus, Putnam scale, and that is what it has been called in the literature and in presentations to growers.  But taxonomists have long suspected that multiple distinct species may have been erroneously lumped together under the name Diaspidiotus ancylus, and we have recently corroborated this hypothesis using DNA evidence.

                The goals of this project are to figure out: how many species are in this group, which plants each species attacks, how each species is distributed geographically, how they can be told apart from each other, and what their scientific names ought to be.  The group has a complex history, originally having been described as 11 different species, before these were lumped together. To help assess which of those 11 species are valid, and whether additional, yet-unnamed species need to be recognized, we will collect members of this species group and their close relatives from many locations in Massachusetts and around the eastern and midwestern US, including 22 so-called "type" localities, in 13 states, from which these species and their closest relatives were originally described.  We will sequence DNA from 3 different genes and use this in conjunction with previously-collected DNA data and other information to assess where the species boundaries lie. 

                The direct target audience for our research results will be our fellow entomologists, especially those dealing with pests identified as Diaspidiotus ancylus that attack cranberries, blueberries, other orchard crops, and ornamentals.  This study will lay the groundwork for a revised classification of the group, and for published guides to the identification, host plant use, and distribution of the consituent species -- not least, we will finally have a valid and correct name for the cranberry pest, and a published means of telling it apart from the lookalike species with which it has long been confused.  This will result in more accurate information about the pest and its biology being conveyed to growers and informing pest management.

The proposed study aims to examine the nutritional health, food insecurity, and maternity care experiences of immigrant women in Massachusetts and in communities outside of the state. Through community engagement, interviews, and surveys of 10-15 immigrant women, as well as secondary data analysis of data on immigrant and refugee women in Massachusetts, our study hopes to demonstrate the importance of the migration experience, place of residence, and host communities in facilitating optimal health and nutrition outcomes for immigrant women and their families. We work with community partners and Extension Nutrition Education Program (NEP) staff to examine and interpret study findings. This process will increase engagement of our extension educators and community partners in research on their communities and facilitate an accurate interpretation of research findings. Our work is also important for generating ideas for innovative nutrition programming to meet community needs; developing and implementing training for NEP staff and educators; and for formulating policies that prioritize investments in nutrition, food security, and health infrastructure for communities in transition and immigrants in the U.S.

The food industry is under transformation due to some important changes in consumer preferences. With a trend towards a healthier lifestyle, food quality, nutrition, and safety are increasingly important to consumers today. There is an increasing demand for more information about the nutritional content of food, for food considered healthy and health-enhancing. However, at the same time, obesity and diabetes rates continue to rise and so do health care costs as a result. There is significant interest in developing and implementing policies to address these problems and promote healthy eating. In this Hatch project, we examine the effects of two public policies aimed at improving consumer health outcomes.  More specifically, we propose estimating the welfare effects of a policy proposal that bans use of partially-hydrogenated oil in food products leading to a ban on trans fat. Partially hydrogenated oil as a source of trans fat, is a primary cause of deaths related to heart attack and obesity in the United States. However, use of partially-hydrogenated oil as an ingredient, even in small amounts, significantly decreases cost of production by providing longer storability and shelf stability. To evaluate welfare effects of this ban, taking into account the demand- and supply-side responses, we use the microwaveable popcorn market as a case study, use Nielsen retail scanner datasets, and estimate a consumer demand model for microwaveable popcorns. We recover consumer preferences as well as marginal cost of production. We propose estimating counterfactuals by allowing firms to endogenously choose prices as well as product portfolios. Using our model, we can simulate the expected product offerings in the market as well as the prices of those products, hence we can compute the total gain in welfare from both before and after the ban is imposed.

Widespread, international and local interest in greening municipalities and increasing urban tree canopy cover continues, largely through community-based tree planting initiatives. It is generally estimated that newly-installed (i.e., planted) trees require at least 3 or more years before establishment, when they resume pre-transplant growth rates. Most trees installed in the urban environment are dug from the nursery field with a spade and wrapped in burlap and a metal basket (‘B&B’ or ‘balled and burlap’ or ‘BnB’). There is interest, however, by tree enthusiasts (i.e., shade tree committee members, Master Gardeners, etc.) and professional urban foresters (i.e., tree wardens/municipal foresters), in planting trees grown using other easier-to-plant systems, including a variety of container-grown (CG, IGF) and bare-root (BR) tree production methods. Ideally, trees that are being planted persist longer than the individuals that are installing them, thus trees grown from these production systems, must have the potential to grow long-term and reach maturity to provide optimal value in relation to the social, economic, and environmental services that urban trees are known for. This may be a challenge, since urban environments often present very difficult growing conditions that foster widespread urban tree morbidity and premature mortality. Though advances in understanding have been made, there is a dearth of empirical data describing the survival and growth of these trees, with the preponderance of research considering trees growing in traditionally forested environments or agricultural plots, rather than urban settings. Since budget constraints are routinely identified as a key limiting factor relative to urban forest management practices, there is also a need for further information concerning the longer-term costs associated with maintaining newly-installed urban trees.

Collecting growth and maintenance cost data on established urban oak specimens in Amherst, MA, produced using various nursery systems will 1) add to the overall base of knowledge concerning urban tree growth and survival 2) enable the quantification and further understanding of the relationship of urban tree growth/survival and nursery production system 3) Enable the quantification and further understanding of the long-term costs associated with planting and maintaining urban trees. The long-term goal of this work is to gather local, empirical data that will help urban forest practitioners consider the appropriate (i.e., most cost-effective, best-performing) nursery production system, when selecting trees for urban planting in Massachusetts and other New England communities.

Reliable, sustainable sources of clean water are increasingly hard to come by. But did you know that there are a lot of additional benefits from cultivating and protecting freshwater wetlands atthe source of some of these waters? Wetland ecosystem services include, but are not limited to, providing verdant habitat and food supply for a large diversity of plant, animal and insect species, water filtration, slowing and spreading of floodwaters, limiting erosion, storage of carbon and other nutrients, temperature buffering, pollinator habitat and forage lands, and water storage. One of the most basic, defining metrics of a wetland is, as the name implies, its wetness. The relative water content in the soil can be assessed in a variety of ways, and this quantity alone is important for reasons beyond wetland function. Specifically, for a wetland to become established and remain functional independently, sufficient water must be present throughout the year to favor wetland plants and animals, which thrive in wet environments but are unlikely to outcompete invasives or other species in drier regimes. We forsee a continued interest in wetland restoration in Massachusetts and predict that measurable metrics to assess the success of such restoration efforts are desired. Two recent developments support this: first, Massachusetts DER created a new Cranberry Bog Program in 2018 to facilitate exactly these types of restorations, and second, Living Observatory (LO) has begun a learning collaborative of scientists, artists, and wetland restoration practitioners to document the science and best practices of freshwater wetland restoration projects. Building on recent projects and successes, we propose to identify and establish a comprehensive catalog of metrics for measuring the success of freshwater wetlands that have been restored. We will continue our observations of soil moisture and subsurface thermal regimes, and add additional observations of weather and climate variables, phenological change, subsurface water levels, water chemistry, and microclimates and topographic influences of microtopography and other restoration practices.

The world fisheries production has levelled off and most of the main fishing areas have reached their maximum potential. In contrast, the global human population is increasing; thus, the demand for aquatic food products also increase. Global aquaculture production attained 90.4 million tons in 2012, generating an incomes US$ 144.4 billion, and the production of food fish was 66.6 million tons. Epitheliocystis is a serious skin and gill disease in fish, believed to be caused by pathogenic intracellular bacteria. The disease has been reported in at least 90 species of marine and freshwater fish in both the southern and northern hemisphere. It affects a number of commercially important aquaculture species, including salmon, kingfish, trout and bream. Infection in these fish species is characterized by the development of cysts, typically in the gill epithelia, promoting the fusion of gill lamellae. This condition is usually benign; however, sometimes it can be associated with a high mortality, particularly in cultured fish. Infections can lead to respiratory distress and death, particularly in cultured and juvenile fish. While fish mortality data attributed to epitheliocystis is sparse, a remarkably broad range of 4%-100% observed mortality rates has been reported. Even with the recent molecular advances in identifying the pathogens, the reservoirs and modes of transmission of the etiologic agent(s) of this disease remain largely unknown. Bacteria belonging to the order Chlamydiales are an extremely important and diverse group of pathogens of vertebrates, which include respiratory diseases of fishes. Chlamydial infections of fish are emerging as an important cause of epitheliocystis in new and established aquaculture industries [6, 8]. However, empirical data and direct evidence relating to the etiology, treatments and epidemiology remain limited, highlighting the need for more work to better characterize this disease across the different hosts and locales affected.  We hypothesize that Chlamydia-like organisms are an important etiologic agent of epitheliocystis. We believe that a better understanding of disease transmission, mechanism of disease process and host range will provide a basis for preventing this emerging disease in aquaculture. Upon successful completion of this project, we will (1) have a better understanding of the etiologic agent(s) of epitheliocystis; (2) have an understanding of how the disease is transmitted and possible reservoirs in the aquaculture setting for common fish species; (3) determine the treatment regimen most effective at preventing and eliminating epitheliocystis in commercial fisheries settings and (4) pilot an effective screening/diagnostic test for early detection and confirmation of epitheliocystis.

Forest dynamics and the spatial and temporal modeling of the dynamics of Food-Energy-Water (FEW) systems at a watershed scale are critical for sustainable land and resource management. The assessment of vegetation (Forest and plant biomass) and land use dynamics is vital for scientific innovation and for enhancing local and regional sustainability and resilience. Assessing built, natural, and social components and their interactions as a dynamic system can lead to comprehensive strategies that improve food production, conservation, energy efficiency, and water resources. Dynamic changes in FEW systems are complex processes, especially the state of the complex system and its trajectory over time. As the population increases and new demands on ecosystem services, watersheds face environmental, energy, and food challenges. This could include polluted waterways, floods, droughts, loss of forest and green space, energy inefficiencies, crop loss, yield loss, soil erosion, increasing density of built structures, and a deterioration in watershed services. Increasing population densities increase built components causing higher forest loss, impervious cover, wastewater discharges, stormwater surges, nonpoint source pollution, loss of open space, farmland loss, and habitat fragmentation that substantially impact watershed systems. Agricultural land is also at increasing risk from urbanization with pressure to produce more in a limited area and with limited resources.

The nexus between food, energy, and water (FEW) has strong interaction with land use-based assessment, requiring system-based modeling for policy. The system information on interactions, tradeoffs, trajectories, thresholds, and endpoints in FEW systems is needed to evaluate sustainable patterns and processes that can be used to manage built, natural, socioeconomic, and cyber systems. We propose to study these issues at a regional watershed scale through integrated spatial and temporal modeling of forest dynamics at a watershed scale. 

The goal of this research is to simulate and optimize interactions in patterns and processes in built, natural, and socioeconomic components and forest dynamics on FEW services based on a multiscale system at the watershed scale. Specifically, (i) to evaluate baseline spatial and temporal changes in FEW systems at the watershed scale; (ii) To assess the influence of changing built and natural environment on FEW dynamics and processes; (iii) to evaluate farmland management and its impacts on FEW systems; (iv) to study attitude, values, and behavior towards FEW outcomes under land-use patterns and conservation alternatives; (v) to develop a multiattribute, optimization model for pattern and BMP choice to enhance watershed sustainability for FEW provision; (vi) to develop a web-based decision support system (WDSS) with site-specific information for stakeholders on FEW resilience and conservation choices.

The target audience will include farmers, land owners, municipal officials, private forest owners, government agents, nonprofits, educators, scientists, and professionals. The information generated will cover the watershed-based assessment, strategies to sustain water resources through forest management, handling increasing urban demands through forest BMPs, supply augmentation potential through forest ecosystem functions, and potential effects of LID at the watershed scale. Educators can use the information to develop simple classroom activities demonstrating workshop concepts. 

Research activities in the Connecticut River Watershed with result in outcomes that directly benefit the target audience through capacity building and spatial information that will be helpful for decision-making. The workshops will provide information on the spatial distribution of water supplies and use and trends in distribution. The workshop will recommend strategies to sustain water resources and will involve brainstorming and breakout sessions to develop implementation plans. A website will be developed for the project and will be used to disseminate information to communities within the watershed and watersheds throughout the region and the US

Forests are the natural vegetative cover for most of New England. In many parts of our region, the forests have been clearedtwice over the last 150 years, yet today they continue to dominate the landscape. Our forests have also faced threats, such asthe introduced chestnut blight, which removed the American chestnut (Castanea dentata), a once dominant tree species, fromthe landscape. Despite this and other losses, we continue to enjoy the many essential benefits forests provide to our daily lives,such as clean water, climate change mitigation, wildlife habitat, scenic landscapes, recreational opportunities, and forest products. In other words, our forests are inherently resilient. However, we are now facing an uncertain future, in which our forests will encounter many, often interacting, stressors, of particular note are forest conversion and parcellization (Stein et al. 2005; Olofson et. al. 2016); invasive insects (Hicke et. al.2012, Lovett et. al. 2016), and climate change (Franklin et. al. 2016, Janowiak et. al. 2018). Though our forests have shown themselves to be resilient, they also have characteristics that make them vulnerable to these stressors to varying degrees (e.g.,aging forest landowner population, simplified forest structure, and uniform composition). While there is uncertainty as to how our forests will react to these stressors, we can be confident that our forests will change. Understanding the ways in which these stressors will change our forests and developing strategies to address them is critical to maintaining the essential forest services on which we rely.

A pressing problem for forest managers and society as a whole is the need to mitigate rapid environmental changes affecting allof life on earth. Third to only to habitat destruction and direct exploitation, biological invasions are a leading cause of extinctionand loss of biodiversity in forest ecosystems and around the world (Dirzo and Raven 2003). One poorly understood aspect ofbiological invasions is that the introduction of non-native organisms to areas outside their home range leads to novel ecologicalinteractions among species that have not historically co-existed. These new interactions raise key theoretical questions, suchas: How do species adapt to new environments as they expand their range? Can novel species interactions alter longstandinginteractions between native species? Do native species re-assemble into new food-webs with novel suites of species afterinvasion? We will address these questions in terms of invasive plants and their effects on native species of New England'sforest ecosystems.

Our focus is on the essential pollination services provided by bees on cranberry, the major crop in the region, as well as the bee community in southeastern Massachusetts. Bumble bees, the most common and efficient pollinators of cranberry are undergoing rapid decline. Thus, our focus is surveying and curating collections of bees, education, and research directed at the health of bumble bees; regarding the latter, we will quantify the major pathogens affecting bumble bee health and impacts of grower practices, particularly systemic sprays prior to bloom (contaminating pollen and nectar) and fungicides sprayed at bloom.