News from the Media

As a whole, the nation’s stone fruit growers are really looking forward to 2017. The results from a national State of the Industry survey regarding their production plans for the coming year show growers are brimming with confidence. Fully 43% plan to increase production in 2017, while 49% plan to stay the same. Those results are very similar to 2016 — back-to-back years of positive vibes. (1/3/17 Growing Produce)

Although the emerald ash borer is killing ash trees around the state, it has done the most damage so far in Berkshire County, according to Tawny Simisky, entomology specialist with the UMass Extension program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.   (12/19/16 Berkshire Eagle )

April Vokey, a well-known angler, interviews some of the most influential people involved in the fishing world today. Andy Danylchuk, associate professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, describes his research on the ways in which fish respond to angling events as examined through blood tests. (12/2/16 April Vokey Fishing Podcasts)

Wildlife ecologists who study the effects of climate change assume, with support from several studies, that warming temperatures caused by climate change are forcing animals to move either northward or upslope on mountainsides to stay within their natural climate conditions. But a new study of lowland and higher-mountain bird species by wildlife ecologists Bill DeLuca and David King at UMass Amherst, now shows an unexpected and "unprecedented" inconsistency in such shifts. (11/28/16 Science Daily, 11/29/16 Environmental News Network, 11/30/16 Foreign Affairs)

Cranberries are a billion-dollar industry in Massachusetts and employ more than 6,900 people. But the market is getting crowded, and that’s pushing down the price. Wisconsin has been the top grower in North America for years. Quebec has only been growing cranberries for the last 20 years, but it surpassed Massachusetts in its cranberry harvest in 2014. Why hasn’t Massachusetts kept up with Wisconsin and Quebec?  “It’s not so much that our production is down, it's that it's stable, and other areas are growing,” according to Carolyn DeMoranville, the director of the UMass Cranberry Station in Wareham. (WCAI 11/21/16)

Stockbridge School of Agriculture professor Baoshan Xing is being recognized as a UMass Amherst Spotlight Scholar. An expert in analyzing the chemical behaviors of soil and soil contaminants, Xing has been identified as a most highly cited researcher in the area of environmental and ecological sciences by Thomson-Reuters for the past three years. He represents one of the world’s “most influential scientific minds.” (11/8/16 UMass News Office)

The browntail moth that is infamous for an itchy, painful rash caused by the hairs of its larvae, increased in population and territory in Maine this year. The moths remain an occasional problem on Cape Cod, but that's the only place in Massachusetts where they're a problem, said Joe Elkinton, professor of entomology at the University of Massachusetts. (Press Enterprise [Maine], 10/23/16; Berkshire Eagle, 10/22/16)

Local apples are particularly sweet this year because of sunny weather and not much rain, a combination that adds up to apples concentrating their sugar more. That is the assessment of "Mr. Honeycrisp," as Jon Clements is known. (Herald 9/22/16)

Wildlife ecologist Curt Griffin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with postdoctoral researcher Scott Schlossberg, are members of a research team that compiled the data for the Great Elephant Census. It confirmed massive declines in African Savannah Elephants over the last decade. (9/1/16 News Office)