Integrating research and outreach education from UMass Amherst
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To contact the Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment and its units, please call 413-230-4538.
The central region of Massachusetts is composed of Worcester County. The largest city in the region is Worcester.
Because of the coronavirus emergency, the UMass Amherst Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment and UMass Extension have postponed public face-to-face programs through at least May 18. Online presentations are being prepared where possible. The Soils and Plant Nutrient Testing Laboratory as well as the Plant Diagnostics Laboratory are both also closed until at least then.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has named Clem Clay as director of the UMass Extension Agriculture Program, a 110-year old educational outreach program that serves farmers, landscape and turf professionals, fruit growers, arborists, nursery owners, flower growers, service providers, public agencies, non-profit organizations and businesses.
The 70th annual Worcester County 4-H Fair returned for a second year to the fairgrounds on Old Coldbrook Road, in Barre. Nearly 300 4-H exhibitors from 4-H clubs across Worcester County, neighboring counties and New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island were on hand as clear skies and cool, dry air carried an early hint of fall, providing ideal weather for fairgoers. Extension 4-H Youth Development Program assistant director Linda Horn and CAFE Assistant Director William Miller made opening remarks.
“Six streets in search of a stoplight,” they call the spot where Madison, Green, Harding, Water, Millbury and Vernon streets converge without benefit of stoplight or central rotary in Worcester. Michael DiPasqalue, licensced architect and urban planner who directs the UMass Design Center in Springfield, weighs in on the design of this unique intersection. (Telegram 10/15/18)
Katie Campbell-Nelson, vegetable specialist with UMass Extension, comments on this year's difficult growing conditions in the central part of Massachusetts. Worcester Telegram & Gazette, August 16 2018.
Extension weed specialist Randy Prostak is quoted in article on discovery of the invasive plant giant hogweed growing in two towns in Worcester County. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, July 22, 2018.
The cold, wet weather this month has set the vegetable growing season behind, according to Katie Campbell-Nelson, a vegetable expert with the UMass Extension in Amherst. (NEPR, 4/24/2018)
This year, the USDA is expecting about 46 million pounds of apples, the highest mark in 10 years. "There will be lots of apples and they'll be big," said Jon Clements, UMass Fruit Extension program. (Worcester Business Journal 9/18/17)
Wesley Autio, director of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and professor of pomology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said moisture, sun and temperature have been ideal this summer for peaches and apples. (Telegram 8/23/17)
When Joe Elkinton worries about gypsy moths, it is time everyone else in Massachusetts does, too. Elkinton is a professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and an expert on this pest. Recently he observed, “I would say almost surely this is the largest outbreak we’ve seen since 1981. This is unprecedented. It’s been 35 years. Defoliation caused by gypsy moth Lymantria dispar has occurred over this summer, in many parts of Massachusetts and the rest of New England.”
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