New Hampshire’s bobcats are responding to the detrimental effects of roads – including possibly hunting in residential areas – as they continue to rebound and re-colonize in areas of the state with dense road networks and substantial traffic volumes, according to new research funded by the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire.

The NH Agricultural Experiment Station recently hosted “Connecting the Dots for Pollinator Conservation:  Wildflower Meadows and Pollinator Habitat.” Pollinators are essential for most of the fruit and vegetable crops produced in New England. The value of pollination to agriculture is estimated at more than $200 billion a year worldwide. However, the abundance of and diversity of pollinators are declining in landscapes across the United States.

With new tomato cultivars coming out every season, scientists at the NH Agricultural Experiment Station recently conducted a three-year experiment to see how new tomato cultivars stacked up against each other after being grown in a high tunnel at the Woodman Horticultural Research Farm.

University of New Hampshire researchers have found that using black tarps and cover crops successfully suppressed weeds in an organic vegetable system, allowing scientists to forgo tilling, which can have deleterious effects on soil.

The research was conducted at the Woodman Horticultural Research Farm, a facility of the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, by Seamus Wolfe, a sustainable agriculture and food systems major, Dr. Richard Smith, associate professor of agroecology, Natalie Lounsbury, a doctoral student in agroecology, and Nick Warren, manager of the agroecology lab.  

In a major breakthrough in shellfish management and disease prevention, researchers at the University of New Hampshire have discovered a new method to detect a bacterium that has contaminated New England oyster beds and sickened consumers who ate the contaminated shellfish. The new patent-pending detection method – which is available for immediate use to identify contaminated shellfish – is a significant advance in efforts to identify shellfish harboring disease-carrying strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

As climate changes, Northeast winters are warming more rapidly than other times of the year. While this may mean favorable growing conditions start earlier in the year, some ecosystems, such as perennial grasslands, can take better advantage of that change than others, such as forests, according to new research from the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire.

Nearly every gardener knows that one of the best strategies in choosing plants is to consult the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which identifies plants based on how tolerant the plant shoots are to cold temperatures. But plant roots are another story, and they often are less tolerant of sub-freezing temperatures than the shoots of the same plant. For businesses that grow nursery stock in containers, protecting container-grown plants during winter leads to increased labor costs and can cause high losses due to physical damage.

The Granite State continues to depend on migration for most of its population growth, and the state is becoming more racially diverse, according to new research from the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station and the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

The University of New Hampshire announces the official launch of and participation in the National Land-Grant Impacts website, a centralized online resource that highlights the teaching, agricultural experiment station research, and cooperative extension efforts by land-grant universities.

J. Brent Loy, professor emeritus of plant biology and genetics, and a researcher with the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, was honored at a special twilight celebration Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, recognizing his 50 years of research and innovation at the University of New Hampshire.