· NEWS BRIEF · NEWS BRIEF · NEWS BRIEF · Penn State turfgrass was in the spotlight at the U.S. Open golf tournament in June. Staff at the Pinehurst Resort and Country Club in North Carolina resurfaced the greens of its famous Old Course with Penn G-2, a heat-resistant variety of bentgrass developed by Joseph Duich, professor emeritus of turfgrass science. "The new Penn G-2 putting surface performs better in the warmer climate of the Southeast," says Thomas Watschke, professor of turfgrass science. "This grass grows straight up, so it gives the ball a truer roll." Penn State turfgrass varieties are used on 90 percent of all golf courses around the world, according to Watschke.
The College of Agricultural Sciences popular Agronomy Guide is now accessible via the World Wide Web. The Agronomy Guide is a 251-page handbook that addresses all production practices for agronomic crops. Topics include pest and soil fertility management, corn, grain sorghum, soybeans, small grains, forages, cover crops and conservation tillage for soil erosion control, enterprise budgets and computer uses for businesses and homes. The Web site, which features a searchable index, can be accessed at http://AgGuide.agronomy.psu.edu/. Paper copies of the guide are also available by calling (814) 865-6713.
Agronomy Ph.D. candidate Keith Goyne was awarded a four-year full scholarship by Penn State's Biogeochemistry Research Initiative in Education. The program is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the University's office of the provost, and departmental and college monies.
David Gustine, adjunct associate professor of agronomy, and David Huff, assistant professor of turfgrass breeding and genetics, published a paper on "Genetic variation within and among white clover populations from managed permanent pastures of the northeastern USA." The citation is Crop Science 39(2):524-530. Mar-Apr '99.
Heather Karsten, assistant professor of crop production/ecology, was lead author on a recent paper in Grass and Forage Science. The article, "White clover growth patterns during the grazing season in a rotationally grazed dairy pasture in New York," is cited as H.D. Karsten and G.W. Fick, 1999. 54:1-10. Karsten also recently received a USDA special grant to study methods of improving profitability of pasture-based dairy systems. She will collaborate with other researchers from the College of Agricultural Sciences.
Sridhar Komarneni, professor of clay mineralogy, lectured on sol-gel versus nanocomposite processing of electroceramics at the Second Asian Meeting on Ferroelectrics in Singapore and on cation exchange and fixation in clays at the National University of Singapore. Komarneni also lectured on nanocomposite clays and sol-gel nanocomposites at the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research, and on sol-gel processing of PZT at the Omron Corporation in Tsukuba, Japan.
Charles Krueger, professor of agronomy, was recently appointed for a three-year term to the Budget and Finance Committee of the Crop Science Society of America.
Brian Needelman, Ph.D. candidate in soil science, received on e of 13 fellowships awarded by the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium to Penn State graduate students. He is studying agroecosystem runoff source area modeling at multiple watershed scales.
Richard Stehouwer, assistant professor of environmental soil science, received a three-year grant from the Pennsylvania Department fo Environmental Protection for a project entitled, "Agricultural utilization of biosolids: Effects on soil and crop quality." The project will measure changes in soil and crop quality that have occurred at 20 farms around the state where repeated applications of biosolids have been made.
Three agronomy Ph.D. candidates were honored at the recent Gamma Sigma Delta / College of Agricultural Sciences poster exhibition. Yibing Joanie Zhou, plant physiology, and Patrick Drohan, soil science, won first place in their divisions. Frank von Willert, soil science, won honorable mention.
Three agronomy graduate students were winners in the second Environmental Chemistry Symposium, which is presented by the Center for Environmental Chemistry and Geochemistry at Penn State. Jennifer Landa and Frank von Willert, M.S. and Ph.D. candidates, respectively, in soil science, each won first place for best abstract. Von Willert and Mingxin Guo, Ph.D. candidate in soil science, won second and first place, respectively, for their oral presentations.