News

Thriving in Minnesota climate for over 80 years without cultivation, hemp has adapted to Minnesota’s frigid winters and hot summers. Dr. Tom Michaels and lab have initiated a hemp breeding project to develop Minnesota-specific cultivars and better understand industrial hemp and its diverse use cases. 

This summer, eight undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds across the country were provided full-time research positions with CFANS through the Sustainability Opportunities for Agricultural Research - Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates (SOAR-REEU) program, which aims to close the agricultural career gap for youth from underrepresented groups. 

A University of Minnesota-led team of researchers received the first round of funding from a $10 million grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to follow up on their work with VitisGen2, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project focused on cultivating disease-resistant grapes that can be grown sustainably with reduced pesticide and fossil fuel use. 

The University of Minnesota’s Plant Protein Innovation Center (PPIC) is the first center of its kind in the nation for plant and other alternative proteins. PPIC was founded in 2018 to bring together researchers—including undergraduate and graduate students—and industry to study and produce sustainable plant protein ingredients. The center is housed in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

For decades, University of Minnesota apple breeders have been pioneering innovative new varieties to grow a thriving apple market in the state. Get to the core of their groundbreaking, future-focused research.

View our seminar recordings from the fall semester. Recordings will be added week by week. Recordings are available for 180 days after the date of the seminar. 

As winemakers around the world scramble to adapt to the climate crisis, grapes engineered and grown in Minnesota—once a winemaking afterthought—might hold the secret to stabilizing their craft in an increasingly unstable climate.

Congratulations to Dr. Eric Watkins! Dr. Watkins has accepted the role of vice provost for distributed learning starting in September.

As Kate Fessler works toward completing a master of science degree in applied plant sciences, she's evaluating a tabletop strawberry system that has been widely adopted in Europe and Canada to determine its feasibility for use in Minnesota. We talked with her about her journey to the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) and how tabletop strawberries could extend the growing season for the much-loved fruit.

Ancestry tests aren’t just for people or pets anymore. Thanks to DNA-based tracking, researchers at the University of Minnesota have finally traced the family tree of Minnesota’s favorite apple cultivar - the Honeycrisp. Sifting through thousands of DNA markers, Department of Horticultural Science researchers have unwoven the pedigrees of many of the U’s best apple cultivars, following the roots back to their European ancestors and the first days of the breeding program.