K-State achievements--2003 Agriculture

2003 Agriculture

* K-State agronomy students won top honors at the North Central Weed Science Society annual meeting in Louisville, Ky., Dec. 2-4. Zach Deeds, master's student in agronomy from Hays, won first place with his paper presentation titled "Simulated Drift of glyphosate and imazamox on winter wheat." This paper was co-authored by K-State agronomy faculty members Dallas Peterson, Kassim Al-Khatib and Phillip Stahlman. Shannon Jordan, Belvue, senior in agronomy with a minor in Spanish, took first place for her poster presentation "Susceptibility of naturalized sericea lespedeza in the Kansas Flint Hills to infection by the root-knot nematode Moloidogyne incognita," together with K-State agronomist Walt Fick and plant pathologist Timothy Todd. Jordan is a graduate of Wichita Area Technical School. Kathrin Schirmacher, master's student in agronomy from Quebec, Canada, won second place with her paper presentation titled "Annual weed emergence and seed production at four sowing times in corn." This paper was co-authored by K-State agronomy faculty member Anita Dille. Phillip Stahlman, professor and senior weed scientist at the K-State Agricultural Research Center-Hays, was recognized as Fellow of the North Central Weed Science Society. December 2003

* The Kansas State University Collegiate Crops Team has claimed its fifth national championship in a row. The team captured victories at both the Kansas City Board of Trade and Chicago Collegiate Crops contests to win the national championship. K-State placed first in all three phases of the contest in Kansas City: seed analysis, grain grading and plant and seed identification. The team won the seed analysis and plant and seed analysis phases of the Chicago contest. December 2003

* Kansas State University is one of the country's top three universities serving the meat and poultry industry for the third consecutive year, according to Meat & Poultry magazine. Texas A&M University and Iowa State University were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the magazine's November 2003 issue. It recognizes the country's top 10 programs the Meat & Poultry staff believes offers educational and value-added incentives. K-State ranked third in three categories: programs in pork processing, in beef processing and in poultry processing. November 2003

* Four K-State entomology students won first-place awards for their research presentations at the 51st Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America Oct. 26-30, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Andrew Allen, Hutchinson, master's student in grain science, with Subramanyam Bhadriraju, professor of grain science and industry, won first place for his poster, "Monitoring insects in a pilot flour mill using traps and grain/flour samples and effects of heat treatment on insect numbers." Jared Hopper, Leonardville, master's student in entomology, with Gerald Wilde, professor of entomology, won first place for his poster, "Two-year analysis of the oviposition by the sunflower head moth on sunflower heads." Dhana Raj Boina, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, doctoral student in entomology, with Bhadriraju and David Margolies, professor of entomology, won first place for his poster, "Development of thermal death kinetic models to predict the stage specific mortality of confused flour beetles during heat treatment." Rizana Mahroof, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, doctoral student in entomology, with Bhadriraju and Kun Yan Zhu, associate professor of entomology, won first place for her poster, "Stage-specific variations in expression of heat shock proteins in flour beetles exposed to different temperatures." November 2003

* K-State entomology student Huarong Li was selected as the winner of the 2003 Mauro Martignoni Student Travel Award from the Society of Invertebrate Pathology. Li is working on his Ph.D. under the direction of entomology professors Randy Higgins and Brenda Oppert. The Martignoni Award is the premier student award sponsored by the society, recognizing excellence in graduate studies research in the fields of invertebrate pathology and microbial biocontrol. It includes a $500 travel stipend to support the winner's travel to the society's annual meeting to accept the award and make a presentation. Huarong has been invited to the upcoming annual meeting July 26-30 in Burlington, Vt. Li submitted an application for the award, including an abstract, "Resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis endotoxins in the European corn borer (Lepidoptera: Crambidae)." His application was ranked first among 10 applications by a large panel of judges, which included the chairs of each of the six divisions of the Society of Invertebrate Pathology and members of the awards committee. May 2003

* The Kansas State University Crops Judging Team won the 2003 North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Crops Contest April 6 at Murfreesboro, Tenn. They also won this title in 1999, 2001 and 2002. The team placed first in the categories identification, agronomic calculations and laboratory practical and placed second in the agronomic quiz category. April 2003

* K-State's Butterfly Conservatory and Insect Zoo was awarded the 2003 Educational Project Award from the Board Certified Entomologists at the 58th annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America-North Central Branch, March 23-26, in Madison, Wis. Awards also were presented to Randy Higgins, professor of entomology, the 2003 C.V. Riley Award for his outstanding contributions to the science of technology; Aqeel Ahmad, graduate student in entomology, first place for his poster presentation, "No adverse effect of coleopteran-specific Cry 3Bb1 toxin released from root exudates and biomass of transgenic corn on earthworms"; Angela Tucker, Salina, senior in fisheries and wildlife biology, first place for her poster presentation, "Additive effects of juvenile hormone homologues in Heliothis virescens."

* K-State is the first veterinary medicine program in the United States to offer a master's degree in public health and the fifth graduate program to offer the master of public health degree in nutrition. K-State's program combines resources and faculty from K-State's department of human nutrition, department of kinesiology, department of animal sciences and industry and College of Veterinary Medicine. The master of public health program will help meet the demand for trained public health professionals to address issues including rising health care costs, the increasing population of older adults, obesity in children and young adults, outbreaks of food-borne illnesses and the threat of bioterrorism. January 2003

K-State College of Agriculture