Something to Chew On

Our lives are frequently and significantly affected by food. Because we must eat to survive, many human cultures have developed with food at their very core. Through prosperous times and depression what we eat has influenced art, music, science, relationships, and more. In this fast-paced world, we often don’t take the time to consider how food gets to our plates, the importance of what and how that food is produced and the aesthetics of food requirements and food enjoyment. Often, seemingly obscure or unrelated aspects of life circle their way back to food. The goal of this podcast is to explore the complexity and nuance of food systems, celebrate the progress we have made, and debate the best ways for humans to proceed forward into the future. Join our hosts as they informally discuss these points with various contributors from Kansas State University and abroad.

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Diversity is the key to Sustainability: Challenges and opportunities in the field of Weed Science 02/08/2022

Diversity is the key to Sustainability: Challenges and opportunities in the field of Weed Science Listen to our first podcast of 2022, where we discuss weed management techniques, old and new, and the tools being developed to achieve food crop yield optimization with , Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the at Kansas State University. Weeds can reduce food crop yields by more than 30%. In this podcast, Kumar discusses the ways in which this problem might be solved when the need for food production will continue to increase, and the challenges caused by climate change create a moving target. Transcript: “Diversity is the key to Sustainability; Challenges and opportunities in the field of Weed Science”. Diversity is the key for sustainability. You keep doing one thing again and again you will see a problem that we have seen in our herbicide based methods or weed control. Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. We welcome back co host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology, weeds can reduce food crop yields by more than 30%. These interlopers compete for resources including soil nutrients and water. We attempt to control weed growth through chemistry, but over time they manage to mutate, overcome, thrive, and adjust to given management techniques. So how is this problem solved when the need for food production will continue to increase and the challenges caused by climate change create a moving target. Today, we will hear more about weed management techniques old and new. And the tools being developed to achieve food crop yield optimization with Dr. Vipan Kumar, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University, I want to welcome you Vipan would like to before we get started in the technical side of things, just get a little background and understanding of who you are and how you got to the place that you are today as far as your professional interests go. Sure, So my name is Vipin Kumar, I'm originally from India. I did my bachelor in crop science, but finished in 2008 from Punjab Agricultural University back in India, in the state of Punjab, it's a Northwestern State in India, mainly known for wheat production and rice production. And it's very big in ag, Punjab state. So, my original goal was to help communities there, especially the farming communities to management practices they are doing so I did my bachelor there. And then I started my master actually mastering Weed Science in Pau 2008, fall 2008. But somehow I was also interested to come abroad and expand my education here in the States. So I was looking through some programs and during that time, I got to know there is a master positions open in Louisiana State. So I I applied there and I got invited and came over 2009 That was summer 2009 started my graduate research assistant with LSU, Louisiana State, Louisiana State University. So that program was specifically looking for someone who can help growers in terms of managing their irrigation water irrigation scheduling, developing some crop coefficients for the cotton prop in North East side of Louisiana. So I was based in actually a research center. It was in North East Louisiana, about five, four or five hours from the main campus Baton Rouge. So my whole research was on resource center and I got to know very few people there but I had a very excellent project to work with. So during that time, I was doing a master I got interested in Weed Science because wonderful. One of my committee member was a weed scientist. He was the superintendent with the research center and he was on my committee and glyphosate resistant Palmer Amaranth was kinda getting a lot of attention during that time in codon. So during that conversation and meeting with his students, I got interested in wheat science. So finishing master and then I started applying for PhD program. So I think during that time, there was not a whole lot of opportunity because of the economic constraints, but I found one position in Montana State University 2011 So I started my PhD 2011 in Montana State University, Bozeman, the whole my dissertation research was focused on herbicide resistant weeds, mainly Tumbleweed Kosha, looking at, you know, characterizing herbicide resistance evolution, how we can manage in terms of what strategies growers can use to control herbicide resistant Kosha in Different cropping systems. So, that was for four years I spent there and then just immediately after finishing my PhD, I started my postdoc there and two year postdoc in the same program in Montana State. So 2017 I got here at K State got this position, where I am in his as an assistant professor in Weed Science. Part of my responsibilities. I am 100% researcher. All the focus is on developing integrative weed management strategies for western Kansas. Looking at herbicide resistance evolution in weeds, what are the novel and innovative strategies we can come up for our dry land are no till dryland growers in western Kansas. So that's I have been doing last for more than 40 years in Hays, Kansas. And a little bit history on this tradition. My predecessor, Dr. Phil Stallman, he had spent 42 years on this role. He was kind of He's like one of the pioneer in herbicide resistance management in High Plains specially in dryland cropping system in Kansas. So right now leading a statewide program, research program and little bit outreach program because I've been involved with a lot of growers here are the my appointment is not extension or no extension tents, but the been doing some extension as well. So that's kind of in the nutshell, what I'm doing here. That’s great. Okay, well, thank you so much for that overview. That's helpful in me understanding a little bit more about what it is you're doing in reading through some of the information I found on your website about what you do, there was a lot of discussion on no till and the impact of no till on managing weeds and that type of thing. Can you tell me a bit more about what that term means and how it impacts the growing period? Sure, since the dustbowl period, the soil conservation practices have been you know, taken place among growers in the main reason was those soil conservation practices were to conserve the soil and other resources for longer term because soil erosion in these areas, especially the Great Plains area, or High Plains area was pretty obvious. And because we control it was generally achieved by tillage. So folks still the ground and control the weeds in history, if you see that's like number one method it used to be and then USDA NRCS folks came up with this idea of conserving the soil not to till the ground just to preserve the soil from erosion as well as not to blow the surface soil where we have fertile soil. So, so no till is basically a concept brought up after the Dust Bowl period and got adopted by growers throughout the Great Plains. And no tillage equipments also got, you know, into the market after that like no till drills, no till planters, that growers don't have to till the ground to make the seed bed they can directly go and plant or drill their crops. And this idea or concept was achieved with the chemical weed control. So if you look at after 1940s, when the this chemical era started, like the two four D came into the market, or any other cleaning herbicide came into the market, one of those early products came into the market grower started using those and they found very convenient to kill those weeds and not till the ground. So this chemical era helped to adopt that concept of no tillage in High Plains as well as in throughout the Great Plains. So mostly what growers been doing is they don't tell the grounds they clean their fields before planting and after planting and in season crop by using chemicals and by using herbicides, so it's kind of serving to purpose they're controlling the weeds and they are also conserving the soil. Another aspect of doing no tillage is to conserve the moisture. We are in semi-arid regions our annual precip is not that great. If you look at historically we are between somewhere between 12 to 24 inches, you know depending on the place where you are in the Great Plains so doing a no tillage practice also helped conserving the moisture throughout the winters time. So whatever the snow or the moisture comes, if you don't do the ground, you know it stays there for the subsequent crop to plan and have the crop in place. There are two things basically conserving the soil and conserving the moisture that no till practice came into existence. But however, I would I also like to emphasize over the last 1015 years, what has happened is because we have relied too much on chemicals, too much on herbicides, and we are seeing evolution in weeds, they are developing or evolved resistance to these chemistries, what folks have been using in our systems. So herbicide resistant weeds have really, really become a threat to this Nortel production system and chemical industries are struggling in terms of bringing new chemistries into the market, because there is not a whole lot of investment going into bringing a new motor factions, especially from herbicide standpoint. So the dilemma is to control those herbicide resistant weeds, we need alternate strategies, alternate methods of weed control. So that's where my role kind of come into that where that fit is how we can combine different methods of weed control, including chemical or non chemical, and come up with some sort of sustainable system that can go in longer term. Yeah, if I could follow up with a question. How prevalent is this problem globally? Herbicide resistance globally, it's, it is the number one problem for Weed Science communities as well as the grower community. Wherever folks have been using herbicides, we have been seeing increasing trend after 1980s, we have been seeing exponential increase in a number of cases of herbicide resistant weed population being reported, there is a website called Weed Science dot O R G, that documents every single case been reported to the world. And if you go to that website, you will see after 1980s, that graph has just jumped to the highest level. And it's not only one herbicide, it's basically, you know, all the available herbicide motor factions, we have reported case of resistance somewhere in the world. In the US, we are leading in that graph, country wise, in terms of herbicide resistance, the complicated issue is okay, one time a herbicide fails, for example, glyphosate. So folks start using other herbicides or other mode of action, but now been doing those things, we have been seeing multiple resistance in our weed populations. So resistance not only to one herbicide mode of action, but 23456, even six herbicide mode of action resistance in those weed species. So that's the challenge that we are having a limited options in terms of chemicals. One of the quality parameters for seed, like the grains and things like that is the number of weed seeds that are also in with the grains. Is that a significant way of moving herbicide resistant genotypes around? Yes, recently, what happened has most of our soybean, you know, most of our corn, we export to other countries. And there has been international standards in those products. And there's inert material and weed seeds are one of those standards. And recently, we have got email from our society, as well as USDA that come up with the plans how we can minimize those weed seeds in the crop seeds. Because some of the Chinese importer, they have stopped taking some of our soybean because of the big weed seeds present in those crop seeds. So it's a function of what is escaping in those crops, what is leaving in those crops at the time of harvest what you're harvesting with. And that's ultimately making those crop quality lower and making those export important difficult. And it's not only that they have they have also raised concern that hey, we don't have this, let's say big weed in China, you are sending herbicide resistant pigweed in our ways. So that's the hurdle with the growers how to sell those because the quality is lower in terms of having weed seeds in those. Those greens. Yeah, so you mentioned some, weed genotypes with resistance to five, six or more chemistries. What's the strategy then? How do you get on top of this? Yeah, I feel fortunate and excited some time that I'm in the field that where there is a lot of growth, there's a lot to do. I don't know if you have probably noticed that recently, a Weed Science area we have so many openings, so many positions coming up in industry as well as in academia and public sectors. And the reason is that we are struggling with these issues of resistance and crop weed competition in different scenarios. So, you know, considering that we are getting, you know, way back in terms of herbicide options. Industry is not coping up with the new molecules in the market. And we have more and more cases of resistance. So the shift of the research or read science research has gone to looking at non chemical strategies, what are the non chemical strategies we can bring into our system? So historically, as I said, folks used to do tillage. But in our system in Great Plains, High Plains, that's probably not a good recommendation, if you want to give folks will not like that, because we've been promoting that no till system for decades. And that is number one challenge. But in other areas, tillage is helping and it's helping those folks controlling those herbicide resistant weeds or multiple system weeds. Another approach we are looking at, what are the ecological tactics? How about the crop weed competition, how we can make our crops so competitive against weeds, that we don't have to rely too much on chemicals. One example I can give that is ecological method we are testing here is cover crops, how the cover crops can come into the system, and helps pressing those weed populations and reduce the seed bank. Again, these are not these ecological tactics don't work like chemicals, but they have a fit in our system. If we can, let's say suppress our weeds from 100 100 weeds to 70 weeds, there are still benefit having that. And you can add with the chemicals method of weed control. So that's just one example than other methods, we are looking as a non chemical methods or harvest weed seed control, that new thing is kind of getting a lot of interest among growers and researchers throughout the globe. So when I say harvest weed seed control is basically a technique when you're harvesting the crop, you have weeds in that crop, so you are harvesting the crop and you're also collecting those weed seeds. And then either you are destroying those weeds by crushing them when they're coming out of the Combine that's called harvest wheat seed destruction or you can put them as a CEF as a narrow line called chaff lining behind the combine. So this concept was brought up or discovered by a grower actually in Western Australia in a dryland wheat grower actually, just similar to what we have in western Kansas, he was struggling with the rigid ryegrass, multiple resistance to the rye grass. So what he did is he started destroying those rye grass seeds when he was harvesting wheat. So over the two, three years when he did that, he found that he reduced the seed bank, he didn't have to deal with that problem with the chemicals. So but in US or in North America, that technology has just arrived. And we are the first one in classes we have bought that destructor and Jeff minor. And we have got some USDA wants to test here in High Plains, how that's going to work in our system. I'm just giving example that those are the kind of approaches we are looking at it from the future work. Third thing which I really like to touch base is the proceeds. And that's the coming future of the Ag digital agriculture or Smart Agriculture. You can name it differently, but that's happening. So from a weed control research or weed control perspective, precision agriculture is another way to look at these problems or herbicide resistant weed problems. So how specifically does the Precision Ag is it about applying chemical where it's needed when it's needed? Is that the strategy there? Or? Yes, that there are different aspects there preseason agriculture or preseason technology is what we are, but I can envision is, you know, it can help us at least doing field mapping with to start with if we can detect early detection of herbicide resistant weed population in a farm. And then we can develop strategies accordingly. And again, then the next level of proceeds and that could be a variable rates of herbicide application or spot treatment. We don't need to spray the whole farm maybe, but just a little patch where we have herbicide resistant weeds growing. So that's where we can, you know, have precision ag tools helping us in the future if we have a good set of data, especially if you have good algorithms and good database, we can identify our pig weeds or Kosha or any other weeds in our crops, I think that can help making making your decisions or plans for weed control. Yeah, thank you. Sorry, Maureen I’ve been dominating. No, that's okay. It was you know, as he was talking about some of the methods that they're looking at it. It took me back to my previous life. Were working in the food safety area, we focus heavily on integrated pest management, it sounds to me like the directions that you're heading now that the chemicals are not doing what they're supposed to necessarily be doing. You're looking at these integrated systems of trying to control those weed productions from a whole variety of different areas. And it may be that there are packages or approaches that can be taken based on location based on crop type based on a variety of other things. But you will have that group of tools in your toolbox. Is that am I interpreting that correctly? Yes, yes, you're right, you're on the same page. The things are like with this herbicide resistance management, it's all economic aspects. Economy drives these things, the farmer economy, when they are going to make their weed control decision, they're going to look at what herbicide how much it takes, what is the rate? What is the cost. And if you see, like with the roundup resistant weeds, folks have been switching to other chemistries which are more expensive, and having more other issues as well as like drift to other crops or drift to other organisms from environmental standpoint. Also, chemical control is kind of getting ahead. In terms of some folks, they don't like some chemicals because they are hitting their other organism or other crops sensitive crops. And the second is, economically Is it viable to use that chemistries, for example, you know, most of the folks most of the industry, you might notice these days, they're giving a talk having a true two or three different herbicide mode of action in a tank, they have a pre mixes available two to three actives in those pre mixes. But those are very, very expensive. Those are not cheap products to use. So the idea with the growers with the lower commodity prices, they don't want to put those high expensive herbicides at especially when you are doing in a fallow weed management, you're not getting any output or any return in those fallow fields. So to make the system more economical, you need to think about where my money is going in terms of inputs, those herbicide applications and in fallow systems grower used to spray like three, four times in the season. It's not like one application, and they're done. They used to spray three times four... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/22063850

The Many Paths of Pathogens with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases 06/22/2021

The Many Paths of Pathogens with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases In this episode, we host , associate director of the in the at Kansas State University. Dr. Hardwidge’s research focuses on understanding, treating and preventing diarrheal disease caused by bacterial pathogens. These pathogens represent important threats to food safety, biosecurity and animal health. His research team is tackling the fundamentals of biochemical interactions, leading to a better understanding of mitigation methods. Transcript: The Many Paths of Pathogens with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases We have to be as scientists extremely open and and generally willing to share data be transparent about our raw data and like other aspects in life know when to ask for help. [Music] Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik. Coordinator of Global Food Systems. I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a philosopher of Science. We welcome back co-host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology. Diarrheal disease caused by bacterial pathogens is a challenge in both humans and animals in many instances the introduction of pathogens in animal systems causes illness and in some cases is carried through meat processing affecting contamination of food meant for human consumption. Studies of food safety at K-State includes fundamental through applied research. The importance of research in the area of pathogenic bacteria has been addressed in several of our podcasts to date. Most focusing on the applied research in testing, monitoring, and mitigating potential contamination of food products. However, the basic molecular biology of host pathogen interaction is not well understood. In today's podcast, we will talk with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, Associate Director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases here at K-State. His study of host pathogen interaction has led to a better understanding of the mechanisms by which pathogens enter and colonize in a host system. With studies leading to an understanding of how this impacts autoimmune disorders, cancer, and more. I would like to welcome Dr. Philip Hardwidge to the podcast. Dr. Hardwidge is the Associate Director of NIH and Cobra Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. I am hopeful that he will explain to us exactly what all that means. Before we get started in talking about your current activities, Dr. Hardwidge could we maybe get a little bit of understanding of who you are, what your background is, and what brought you to K-State. What brought you to the area of study that you're in, today. Thanks for having me on this podcast series. I'm from the midwest, Michigan and Illinois. My father was a Pfizer scientist and we happened to be living in Central Illinois when I was a high school student, so he gave me some interest in Microbiology and Chemistry, so I ended up doing a Microbiology degree at the University of Illinois, and wanted to develop a research program kind of at the interface between Biochemistry and Microbiology, so I knew from a fairly early age where my career would hopefully head. I did a PHD at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School in Rochester, Minnesota. So, Mayo is a very famous hospital. They also have a very robust graduate training program. And after that, I did a postdoc at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada. Primarily because one of the leading E Coli Microbiologists was running his laboratory in Vancouver and when I finished my education I took an Assistant Professor Position in South Dakota State University back in 2005. There were some unique opportunities to help develop their graduate program, and I had the opportunity to work with germ-free piglets which are a very nice model for some types of E Coli diseases. I was then recruited to the University of Kansas Medical Center and then subsequently recruited to Kansas State University where I've been since 2012. Great, thank you for the overview there. In the introduction, I referenced the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is at K-State and what your goals are there? Sure, so we call this CEZID, Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. This is an NIH Center that's administered by Dr. Juergen Richt and myself. So, [Dr.] Juergen is a Virologist. I am a Bacteriologist and we're both interested in looking at virulence factors. So, namely what features of pathogens. What components of bacteria and viruses cause diseases in humans and animals. We're also looking at host pathogen interactions. And to do this we use basic science. So fundamental aspects of how bacteria and viruses work. How they cause disease, and we also take translational approaches that can be InVitro in test tube[s], lab experiments, or in large animal models of disease. So overall, we're attempting to advance our understanding of new or emerging infectious diseases, or zoonotic diseases, those pathogens that can cross the interface between animals and human beings. So Covid-19 is a great example of both cases. It has recently emerged, and it is Zoonotic. It's believed to have originated from bats, so you know within this center. [Dr.] Juergen and I administer the day-to-day operations, but we’re heavily interested in mentoring junior scientists. So, there are four primary projects each Principal Investigator works on a different pathogen that examines one emerging or zoonotic infectious disease and then there are five pilot projects. So smaller projects we funded with some seed money, and then there are two research cores, uh, to help develop the research infrastructure here at K-State. Sounds like it's a great center, and could you say something about why zoonotic diseases deserve such a focus, or what's important about them? Okay yeah, so obviously we've learned a lot more, or the public has learned a lot more, with the Covid- 19 pandemic. But you know zoonotic disease diseases, or zoonoses, are diseases caused by viruses or bacteria that can spread between humans and animals, or animals and humans. So, in many parts of the world there's very close association between animals and humans. So, farming systems can be quite different compared with what we're familiar with in the United States. So, there's very close contact between humans and animals and some good examples would include Influenza. So, we have the flu circulating in chickens and in pigs. These viruses can mutate and suddenly become able to infect human cells and cause disease. Antibiotic resistance is an issue. So, we've tended to treat food animal diseases. So bacterial infections of pigs and cows with very large quantities of antibiotics to control their infections and to promote weight gain. Well, this can evolve antimicrobial resistance in these organisms and some of these pathogens can also infect human beings. So, antimicrobial use in agriculture can have a direct impact on our ability to treat human infections. And then there are vector-borne diseases. So, bacteria and viruses that can be spread or transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. For example, so that the insect, the mosquito or flea, can provide a conduit between an animal and a human being. So, as the mode of transmission. So, many of these diseases are extremely serious. They're relatively new. They're emerging, and the the life cycle, this animal to human interface, explains why they're why they are called a zoonotic diseases. Great, thanks! And could you describe two, sort of, some of the different projects you, said there's a course of on going ones, and then some pilot ones. So, I don't know which, pick a couple just to give us a sense of some of the work that's going on in a little more detail. love to hear some more. Okay, so yeah, within our CEZID program, we have four very exciting primary research projects. One of them directed by Dr. Tom Platt, in the Division of Biology, looks at a pathogen known as shigella flexneri. Shigella has a lot of similarities to the hemorrhagic E Coli, the hamburger E Coli, E Coli o157 h7. He's very interested in the environmental behavior of Shigella. So what must Shigella do to survive in aquatic environments versus survive when Shigella has colonized a human host. And many of those molecular mechanisms are very different. The pathogen has to do, you know, many different things make many different proteins depending whether it's living in the environment, or within a human. [Dr.] Stephanie Shames studies Legionella. So, many of you may have heard the term Legionnaires Disease from this outbreak in the air conditioning vent in a convention in Philadelphia many decades ago. So, Legionella is the pathogen that causes this human disease. And [Dr.] Stephanie studies some of the specific proteins that legionella uses to subvert host defense mechanisms. Bacteria and viruses have evolved very elaborate mechanisms to short-circuit or subvert our natural host defense. My own laboratory studies those mechanisms as well. So, that's [Dr.] Stephanie's focus. We also have a Flavivirus project, Japanese Encephalitis Virus, Yellow Fever Virus these are Flaviviruses. [Dr.] Scott Huang is trying to design live attenuated vaccines to control flaviviruses. And finally, [Dr.] Nick Wallace is studying Papillomavirus. Papilloma Viruses are believed to cause non-melanoma skin cancer, but the mechanism is not understood. So, [Dr.] Nick's studies are designed to start to understand at a molecular level what's going on between Papillomavirus and skin cancer. If I could ask a question, you indicate that you're looking at certain proteins to maybe influence the outcome in a human infection, or an animal infection for that matter. We have a lot of vaccines for viral diseases, but relatively few for bacterial diseases. What's the strategy for, you know, using these proteins to prevent disease? Okay so, if I understand your question right. There are therapeutic strategies so we have ways to treat diseases that have already occurred, or we have preventative measures such as vaccines. Bacterial, many bacteria, are challenging to tackle with vaccines. There can be great variation in the surface of bacteria. The outer membrane proteins, for example, are often targeted by vaccines. This is essentially the outside of a bacterium. These can be very highly variable between strains among different strains. So, it's hard for a cocktail of vaccine proteins to really be effective in preventing disease. There's an emerging strategy known as anti-virulence compounds where we attempt to not kill the bacteria using antibiotics, but we attempt to subvert the bacterium's ability to cause disease. That's also something my laboratory is developing. How does that work? Okay, so the the classic antimicrobial penicillin, for example, you know, inhibits cell wall integrity in the bacterium, so the bacterium lyses and dies. There are many antibiotics used that block the ability of a bacterium to make new protein, bacterial cell then dies. Resistance is a major problem here. So, the more often you challenge a group of bacteria with these antimicrobials. The more frequently you select for mutants mutations in the bacterial genome that will allow it to resist those antibiotics. So, one emerging concept is to not try to kill the bacterium, but try to simply block its ability to colonize a human host, or secrete a toxin that would be deleterious to a human or an animal. And that's thought it would be much less prone to the evolution of resistance mechanisms. We're not trying to destroy or kill the bacterium. We're simply targeting a very small component of its biology, namely its ability to cause disease. Some of these targets are a little less obvious to identify. So the cell wall is a very obvious and effective target for antimicrobials. Some of the mechanisms that bacteria use to block the immune system. These are being targeted for these anti-virulence therapies, but they've only been identified and studied relatively recently. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, so that's cool. So the idea is not just that we haven't targeted this stuff, yet. So it's new, but that even ongoing application of these to it's basically blocking a side effect of what the bacterium's up to. Right? And lets it still propagate and continue on, because you're not sort of killing off only a subset of them. You're not forcing evolution, right? So, that the virulence isn't part of isn't something that it would sort of act against. Exactly, that's the concept. So, a good example is perhaps the hemorrhagic E Coli this is a devastating disease. If humans acquire this organism, but it's typically an accidental infection, so through undercooked ground beef, contaminated produce, humans occasionally get E Coli infections. Extremely serious, potentially fatal disease but this organism lives very naturally in the intestines of cattle. So, it's a commensal organism. It does no harm to the cattle. So, it's not really something that one would would do a blanket antimicrobial attack on. There there may be a mechanism by which we can have a more selective targeting of their virulence functions. So prevent disease but not select for uh resistant strains of this organism. Yeah, that's that's really neat, and and you said you're looking at some of those these interactions too in your own lab. Could you say what you're working on in this area? Yeah so, I became interested in this area through some serendipitous scientific conferences, a few years ago. My lab had always been interested in the biochemistry of bacterial proteins that are able to block the immune system of the human host. So, some bacteria such as E Coli and Salmonella have a secretion system. So, they have a nano scale needle and syringe like machine that allows them to inject proteins into the intestinal cells. They are colonizing so this nano machine allows the bacterium to manipulate the human cells, and try to prevent the cells from establishing a dialogue with the immune system. So the biochemistry of these proteins, how they've evolved to bind signaling hubs in this innate immune system, what enzymatic activities they have to inhibit host proteins. Very fascinating to me, but it became clear through some collaborative discussions, that some of these proteins might be good targets for anti-virulence therapies. And they also might be good model proteins that could be used to study the immune system more generally. In other words, bacteria and viruses have evolved to inhibit the immune system. Can we use some of their examples to build other drugs that would function as anti-inflammatories. That's kind of the direction my lab has gone in the last five or six years. So, you're turning this then to not just how can we prevent more more disease, right sort of, how can we learn from from what these bugs are doing to actually address other concerns like right? Exactly, so, if we take, and that's you know that's the value of of basic science and basic molecular microbiological studies, if we really take a close look at what nature has already done. What evolutionary pressures have selected for, we can learn a lot about how organisms interact with each other. And specifically with regard to the immune system and inflammation, we can see very clear examples from bacteria and viruses. They have very very effective anti-inflammatory strategies. So E Coli and Salmonella for example, are great masters of inhibiting inflammatory responses. Well, if one looks at other diseases, other human diseases, such as Psoriasis, which is skin inflammation, cancer, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease. These all have some common features in that some of the inflammatory signals proteins known as Cytokines are overproduced in too high abundance. So, can we take some of the bacterial strategies that block the production of these proinflammatory proteins, take the bacterial proteins, modify them detoxify them make them friendly for use, and turn them into lead compounds for new new drugs. So that's an emerging area of many laboratories. It's a concept known as drugs from bugs. The bugs are the bacteria and viruses perhaps. They can suggest to us novel therapeutic strategies to controlling inflammation. Nature did it first. Nature did it first. So, let's learn from nature. There are many ways to, you know, look for potential new therapeutics. There's random libraries of small molecules, there are you know very robust computational strategies, so letting machine learning, computer strategies to predict chemical interactions, or take a look at what bacteria and viruses have already done. The work is fascinating and clearly taking a lead, from as you said, what nature has already done is obviously a very effective approach. I'm wondering, with the new N-bath Center going in, kind of in your backyard, what kind of interaction do you see going on between the work you're doing and that center? Is it going to be, kind of running parallel to one another? Do you have direct input in what's happening up there, or direct activities going on in the future? So, there are obvious parallels between the, you know, the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility, NBAF. It is literally right next door to our CEZID program, and to our laboratories. So, we're very interested in looking for partnerships certainly there will be a lot of training opportunities. So much of the workforce at NBAF is likely to come out of K-State. So, one of our missions is to train this new workforce, both with the book knowledge and the hands-on laboratory skills that will make them good contributors to NBAF. There's a lot of parallels in the mission, you know, so to protect the food supply, to protect agriculture, to protect the population against zoonotic diseases. So, there's good interface between CEZID and NBAF. So, definitely we're interested in establishing collaborations. Dr. Juergen Richt, my collaborator, he's already established several collaborations. We work with the Plum Island facility, already. This is the laboratory that's essentially moving from the Long Island area to become NBAF. So many of the projects are already in place, and certainly we'll see a lot of growth in the coming years about how to safeguard food animal health public health and really preserve our agricultural economy from various threats. Earlier, you mentioned the E Coli outbreaks that have occurred as a consequence of produce and because of those outbreaks over the past, probably five to ten years, been a lot of research looking at E Coli and Salmonella in particular, and whether plants actually play a role in their life history. And clearly they they do. That it's not really just an incidental occurrence of those organisms perhaps being sprayed on these these plants with irrigation water or something like. That in fact there's compelling data that they truly infect the plants and that they've actually documented an upregulation in expression of effector genes, and things like that. So, there seems to be some strong relationship between E Coli Salmonella and the plants. And I'm just wondering if you're aware of any evidence of that plant component actually helping to drive the evolution of those species or the emergence perhaps of new pathotypes. Because we we know that the plant pathogenic bacteria as well as as some of these share secretion systems and that some of our closely some of the plant pathogens that are closely related to the enterics, you know, have multiple secretion systems. And I'm just wondering if there's any evidence that you're aware of that there's a drive in the evolutionary process for some of the zoonotics? Some of these human pathogens like E Coli or Salmonella. Yeah, that's a fascinating question. So... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/19563512

Special episode: Safe Food Today for a Healthy Tomorrow 06/07/2021

Special episode: Safe Food Today for a Healthy Tomorrow In celebration of World Food Safety Day, this week we are joined by researchers from the at Kansas State University: , associate professor; , professor; Carla Luisa Schwan, postdoctoral fellow; and , assistant professor. World Food Safety Day aims to draw attention to foodborne risks and inspire action to prevent, detect and manage risks. This important work contributes to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism and sustainable development. The World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations jointly facilitate the observance of World Food Safety Day, in collaboration with member states and other relevant organizations. This international day is an opportunity to strengthen efforts to ensure that the food we eat is safe, mainstream food safety in the public agenda and reduce the burden of foodborne diseases globally. Transcript: [Music] Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik. Coordinator of Global Food Systems. World Food Safety Day is June 7, 2021. This is a day to reflect on the importance of safe and sustainable food, heed the work being done at K-State, and around the world on advancing an understanding of cause and control of food safety issues, and look toward better nutrition through safe food worldwide. Today we are excited to share with you a panel of food safety experts that work with interdisciplinary teams in the Food Science Institute here at K-State. Food safety is a major area of research in the Food Science Institute , including animal and plant-based foods. Through outreach to colleagues here at K-State, nationally and internationally, the Food Science Institute 's research team has tackled some of the most challenging food safety problems. From testing in our Biosecurity Research Institute, biocontainment bsl3 facilities, to helping teach consumers in developing regions of the world the basics of handling and preparing safe food. We welcome back co-host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology, and welcome to our panel of experts Dr. Sara Gragg, Dr. Randall Phebus, Dr. Carla Luisa Schwan, and Dr. Jessie Vipham. World Food Safety Day is a great time to focus on the work being done at K-State in the area of food safety through the Food Science Institute. We're going to take a bit of a different tact on this podcast by welcoming a panel of scientists that have made food safety their professional passion. They will share with us a vision of food safety research carried out at K-State, and explain how K-State is participating in the recognition of this notable day. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast doctors: Jessie Vipham, Dr. Randall Phebus, and Dr. Sara Gragg and first time welcome to Dr. Carla Schwan. Give us a little background on what the 2021 World Food Safety Day is, and where K-State fits into that? Yeah, this is a really exciting endeavor that is led out of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and it was actually envisioned and put into play back in 2018, so we haven't, I don't think, as a university, here at K-State, participated in the past. But we saw this, the date is June the 7th, it's always every year, June the 7th, and the FAO has asked people to participate, and they've given some guidelines on things that we could do. And to highlight some of the food safety work that we're doing here at K-State, which is pretty extensive. The aim of World Food Safety Day, according to the FAO is to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage foodborne risk. As we know, it's not just the health aspect of foodborne risk, but it's also how food safety contributes to food security, and human health, and economic prosperity, and success in agriculture, and market access, and tourism, and sustainable agriculture. So, there's a lot of things that are connected to food safety, and you know honestly, we address them all here at K-State in one way or the other. It's really interesting every year they come up with kind of a theme for this. For the event in this particular year, for 2021, the theme is safe food today for a healthy tomorrow. And what they're trying to do is kind of take the one health approach, holistic approach, to how food safety interacts with our daily lives. whether we're producers, or processors, or consumers, or someone transporting, or whatever we all have a role to play. And it's all systemic and integrated, you know, one weekly in the chain, start to finish, can cause a lot of people to get sick. And so, I think it's really exciting that we can do some things here, and Carla has actually kind of taken on some of the leadership as far as putting some of our activities together for that day that she'll tell you about here in just a minute. But you know, the FAO really stresses that governments, processors, consumers, and everyone in the chain has to be coordinated and focused on food safety to prevent all of these illnesses. So, just think about in a world today where we have over 600 million cases of foodborne illness annually, and as many as 420,000 deaths, and about a third of those are actually children under five years old. So, this is truly important and work that you know we do a lot of things here for the United States but our work finds its way out globally. Thanks to people like Dr. Vipham and Dr. Schwan that they're going to tell you about some of their international work In the food security arena, we often throw around the figure that we lose 35 to 40 percent of the food post harvest. Free consumption are there analogous figures of loss due specifically to food safety concerns. Well, you know, I don't know if there's any figures about food waste or food loss, but if you look at what foodborne illness does to things, other than just, you know, people getting sick and having diarrheal diseases and that sort of thing. You're looking at lost productivity. You look at chronic illnesses across the world. People may be, you know, having syndromes and sequelae well past you know the initial infection, so that the cost is just staggering in terms of economic loss, adjusted years of productivity losses, and that sort of thing. So, you know a lot of what we don't think about from a food safety standpoint is, you know, what does it do to young children with diarrheal diseases and setting them back for sometimes their entire life. To get past the foodborne illness or waterborne illness falls into that category too. You know, when we think about losses in the industry, though if there is a food safety concern, the industry does have to respond in different ways. Some of which, might be diverting a raw meat product to a cook operation, for example. And in doing so, that can result in, not lost product per se, but lost income, because cook product operations usually result in a lot less income. And so, there are different aspects in the food industry that can result in different losses. Sometimes the product is destroyed as a result of a food safety concern. And so, that could be quote, unquote, food waste or food loss issue that is related to food safety as well. Yeah, I think the World Trade Organization, oh 2017 2019, I can't even remember what the date is they had a figure that they put out that was something like 9.6 billion dollars in loss that the world experiences due to unsafe food on an annual basis. Yeah, and then I think for especially, specifically for low and middle-income countries, I think the figure is like 110 billion on medical expenses and productivity productivity losses specifically for those countries. But, I'm sure that you know United States and developed countries also experienced that similar levels of losses. Yeah so, it's significant, but the problem really becomes how do you begin to measure some of the loss. Right, so two, I think, some of the points that Randy and Sarah have made you have loss on a very individual perspective, but you also have loss on an industry level. And so, how do you really get figures around that and and ultimately when you look into the environment around economics, as it pertains to food safety, that's a really new and budding area of research, surprisingly. So, I think at this point in time we really don't have a lot of awareness for what the exact costs of food safety are, but I think based upon what we all know, we can really make the assumption that it's fairly large. Yeah, thank you very much. I'd add to that, you know, when we talk about food safety a lot of us always think about pathogens, viruses, bacteria, some fungi, and parasites. But, you know, we also have a lot of toxins and chemicals and allergens that are very important, and just as deadly in some cases, and particularly in some of the developing countries where we, you know, we have grain. You can't just you know throw the grain away but with fungal aflatoxin and mycotoxins that are produced. You know, some of what happens to consumption and chronic consumption of such contaminants, you know, it could be cancers and shortened life and you never really know that, you know, 20-30 years in advance. Great, thank you so much, Carla. I think could you give us a bit of an idea of what K-State is planning to do for Food Safety Day and how the Food Science Institute is going to be approaching that big day. Yes, as Dr. Phebus mentioned earlier, we've met a few weeks ago, and I think our food safety team came up with a really great idea of creating a specific video that we feature different students of our department here. And they're all from different countries of the world. For example, we have Costa Rica, we have Indonesia, Cambodia, Brazil, United States, India, Africa, all over the world pretty much. And so, we have those students, we brought them in, and we wanted to just ask simple questions to understand what is their food safety perception. Some of them are food safety students, but some of them are not. And so, it was interesting to see how different people from different countries and cultures perceive food safety in one day, or another. So, we are working on that project, and we're going to have this video ready to release on June 7th as part of the Food Science Institute Initiative for the World Food Safety Day. So, stay tuned for that. Additionally to that, we are featuring some of our students here to explain their projects, and what they are doing in food safety, how they're improving food safety, how their projects impact public health, and the significance in events and science in this area. And so, those videos are going to be released all month of June as part of this initiative, but we're going to be individual videos of our students, and then on June 7th we're going to have our group video of everyone talking about the World Food Safety event, and perceptions. And all of that. So stay tuned for that. Great! Can one of you speak a bit to the global perspective of the food safety work that's been done? You've mentioned, a few of you mentioned, several countries that you've worked in. And I know Carla, you and Jesse, you two in particular, have done work worldwide. How does the work at K-State impact these places around the world, and what do you learn in those places that you can bring back to K-State? Yeah, I think so, I think I'll go ahead and take that question. When it comes to food safety, I think that one of the exciting things about food safety, and probably one of the messages that gets lost in terms of food safety education, is really the breadth of opportunities that food safety provides for students, for education. Right, you can be someone who's very interested in industry, and find a place for yourself in food safety. You can be somebody who's very interested in economics, right, or in travel and and find spaces within food safety for yourself. And so, I think that when you look at food safety it really has a very wide swath of opportunities for itself, and when we first, I guess, started our work in international spaces. Carl and I work mainly in Africa and southeast Asia, that's West Africa East Africa, sorry, and southeast Asia. I think we really began to recognize that food safety can take on a very different perspective depending upon what part of the world you're in. So, my educational background was really focused on you know us food safety focused on industry level intervention work. Right, how do we improve really high quality systems, versus, you know, we get to Africa, we get to southeast Asia and and you're really starting at very rudimentary spaces, and I don't mean to communicate that you know that those environments don't have their own successes or their own opportunities but you're just working in a very very different environment, a very different mindset for food safety, and typically very different cultures. And so, a lot of our work for food safety we had to kind of I think tear down our education and our thoughts on food safety to really begin to look at food safety in different ways. And so, as a part of that you know we've done a lot of work looking specifically at fresh food markets those are huge across the world. So typically, when we think about the United States we have these really beautiful streamlined chains of food production. Right, I have someone who produces livestock or vegetables or fruit that then goes to some form of a distribution group or processing group that then sends that through to a grocery store and that's how we access our food. And then, you get into Africa or Asia and it's like a hair of how things get produced and how things end up you know actually sold to people. And, most the time that hair ball ends up finishing at what they call fresh food markets. And so, we've spent a lot of time working on fresh food markets focusing on what are some of the main points of contamination within those markets. How do we untangle those points of contamination, and then focus on interventions that are very adoptable. And so, that's I think, back to that you know how we untrain our food safety minds. You can't go into that space and and just go, okay well, just yeah, you know, you just gotta do this right you just have to use lactic acid or you just use ultraviolet light. And you're good to go, right. You have to really think about what is going to be the best intervention for this space that is adoptable in an environment where people are living on very low incomes they have very low decision-making power the government has a very strong ability to change their mind on any given day. And so, regulations aren't very clear policies aren't very clear how do you work within some of those constraints. And so, that's a lot of I think what our food safety work has been, is to look at what are very applicable food safety interventions to solve the food safety issues that we have identified for specific environments within Africa and southeast Asia. One of the things that I have I've really enjoyed my time working with Jesse and and Carla in their international work, but one of the things that I perceive is that people citizens, of wherever they are, they really have a desire to know proper methods, proper storage, proper disinfection. And that sort of thing and the outreach efforts that I've seen Carla and Jesse do seem to have really good acceptance and effect. And so, I think that's kind of where K-State gets thrown across the oceans is with our outreach and educational efforts in addition to the science. I would say we do more outreach and sort of extension style work than even science. You know, I guess in one sense I think that would be, you know, we're more extensionists, yeah than scientists. We have developed so much material even for kids. And then, if you remember Bangladesh, but just small things that you can do to prevent foodborne illness that we just sharing that information. It seems so obvious to us, but sometimes you go to those places and just share that piece of information it makes all the difference. And so, I remember in Cambodia when we were doing my project in 2018, the vendors at first they were a little bit worried why we were trying to sample their stalls, and why we're there. Then, our students, our converting students, participate in this study, they explained everything and once the vendors knew what we were doing, they would actually come to us and say please come to my cell and temple here, because you you need to help us save our children, because they're dying from E Coli. And that was to me was so impactful, because I didn't even know they were aware of all of that, and they want us to help, and they want to participate they were so friendly and welcoming in those environments. And I don't know it's such a great feeling of helping someone in this food safety area that we can impact. Even though as Jesse mentioned, sometimes the infrastructure is not as comparable to the us, but still you can impact make great impacts, and and change their environments and lives by just sharing information. I think one of the major challenges with food safety around the world is that when you look at the population of the world, the largest population exists within countries that have compounding public health issues. And so, you're not just dealing with whether or not someone's going to come into contact with raw chicken. Right, you're dealing with someone who is malnourished, who might come into contact with raw chicken, who also might come into contact with a mosquito carrying malaria, which who also might come into contact with water that is contaminated, right. So, you have all of these compounding public health challenges that really create an environment that's hard to work in, but I think very rewarding and it kind of takes food safety from this space, and I don't want to diminish the work of us food safety, because it's incredibly important, but it does take it from this you know hey we're improving these really great systems to wow, you know, if we could unlock one of these components, and find a solution something really powerful could happen. And so, that's kind of a driving force, for I think, a lot of our work, in particularly, Africa and southeast Asia. I think that's a lot of why I keep going back. True. Well, Jesse, I think they excuse me. I think you're also forgetting to talk about your work to help with capacity building for governments, like our project in Paraguay. Yeah, you know maybe you should comment also on that. And how working with the governments improve their food safety testing is also important. Well, I also don't want to take up too much of the time, but I think that that is a good point and kind of speaks to you. We just talked a lot about low income food safety, and I think the point that you're making, Sarah, is a great one which is that there's also a lot of middle-income countries where the again the food safety dynamic changes. And so, you're not really talking about the same scenario that you are in Africa and southeast Asia so if we move to places in South America such as Paraguay. You're really looking at emerging economies environments in which people are looking to enter into trade, and what does the dynamic of trade then due to the safety of that food supply. What are the lenses from a government perspective that need to change in terms of regulation and the capacity... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/19359092

Understanding and controlling meat product contamination with Dr. Sara Gragg, associate professor of food science 05/18/2021

Understanding and controlling meat product contamination with Dr. Sara Gragg, associate professor of food science This week, , associate professor of food science in the , discusses how and where pathogens access meat. The study of E. coli, salmonella and other toxin-producing pathogens has been a major focus of researchers at Kansas State University for many years. Gragg has presented extensively on the topic of food safety and studies processes in food safety and microbiology. Her research program investigates pre- and post-harvest issues affecting the meat and produce industries, with specific interests in addressing how pathogens contaminate food products and the application of interventions to prevent or reduce pathogen presence. Transcript: [Music] Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy. And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist. The safety of the food we eat is important to everyone. Studies of food contamination with E coli, salmonella and other toxin producing pathogens has been a major focus of research at Kansas State University for many years. Questions on pathogenic contamination in meat and how the organism enters into that food system are at the center of research activities in several disciplines. Today's guest is Dr. Sarah Gragg, associate professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry at Kansas State University. Her research program investigates pre harvest and post harvest issues affecting the meat and produce industries with specific interests in addressing the manner by which pathogens contaminate food products, and the application of interventions to prevent and or reduce pathogen presence. She is particularly interested in studying the pre harvest transmission of foodborne pathogens in food animals, as well as investigating interventions to reduce foodborne pathogens in live animals. I would like to welcome Dr. Sarah Gragg to the podcast, something to chew on. We're looking forward very much to having a discussion with you here today. Before we get started on some of the technical side of what you do, can you give us a bit of background on yourself, who you are, and how you got interested in the work that you do? Yes, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you, Maureen. And thanks to the entire team for inviting me today. I really enjoy the opportunity to be here with you and visit with you about my passion, which is food safety. So with that I'll share a little bit about how I came to be a food safety researcher. I was actually in high school and walked into my Agriculture class as a freshman didn't know what to expect. And we had a new teacher that year. His name was Todd Berkshires and he was starting us off on our Agriculture classes but also in taking our FFA program forward as well. We had a co-advisor, as well, in our FFA program. And so I got to know these two teachers interacted with Todd Berkshires the most and as part of FFA, we have to have something called a supervised agricultural experience program or an SAE for short. And, I grew up right outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. And I had like two or three acres and had some close friends that I also would show and train horses with, and so, I was definitely a part of agriculture but I wasn't per se the traditional farm kid if you will. And so, I didn't know what I was going to do for my SAE program. And his wife, Dr. Mindy Berkshires was a brand new assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln at the time. And he said why don't you go work with her in the lab because food science and technology is actually an SAE emphasis area. And we can see if maybe that's something that you want to do. And I said that sounds fantastic. And so I got to meet Dr. Berkshires and spend some time getting to know her and her graduate students and getting to know the lab and decided that was absolutely what I wanted to be doing for my SAE. And so, I was very fortunate at the age of 14 to sort of luck into food science, if you will, I don't think I'd ever heard of it or known what it was at the time. And so as a part of my FFA program and working with her in the lab, I was able to complete some different research projects for science fairs, and different other competitions and activities through FFA. And so I got to work alongside her and her graduate students while also logging hours for my SAE. And so, after several years of that, I realized this is what I want to do for my career. This is something I'm passionate about. Something's very interesting to me. And I also really enjoyed agriculture and wanted to make a career out of it. So really with that the rest is history. I stayed at Nebraska, to do my undergraduate in food science and technology. And about the time I was a junior in high school, the Berkshires family relocated to Texas, to Texas Tech University. And at the time, I knew that I was going to be following them for graduate school. So I stayed at Nebraska did my bachelor's and then transferred to Texas, to attend Texas Tech for my masters and my PhD. And so while I was there, my master's work consisted of looking at lactobacillus, and some different strains, as an intervention to control E coli. Oh, and 5787 in fresh spinach. And so, produce safety was really the focus for that degree. But at Texas Tech, we had a lot of exposure to meet safety, as well as pre harvest safety, working with cattle, and other animals as well. So then, I stayed at Texas Tech for my PhD, again with Dr. Berkshires, and worked on cattle lymph nodes, actually, and trying to isolate salmonella from cattle lymph nodes. So looking at the prevalence, which is how many animals out of a certain population have salmonella in their lymph nodes, and also trying to quantify how much salmonella was present as well. So looking at prevalence and concentration. And so that actually was my entire Ph. D. program. So did that for my dissertation work. And we worked with both domestic cattle as well as cattle in Mexico for the various parts of my project. And we also worked with the United States Meat Animal research center in Clay Center, Nebraska, for a large portion of my dissertation work. So that was what I was up to, before I came to Kansas State University. I did a little bit of a postdoc at Texas Tech as well. And then this job at K State came available. And I have been with Kansas State ever since. And so I joined in June of 2013. And I'm currently an associate professor with a 60% research 20 or 40% teaching appointments. So that's a little bit about how I got to this point in my career. That's great. Thank you very much. You know, looking through the research activities that you've been involved in, it's covers quite a bit of distance, I'm going through the leafy greens and the produce side of it into the animal side. You know, you talk a bit about calorie search. Have you done research on other animals as well? Yes, actually, so cattle is definitely probably the area that I've researched the most in terms of live animals or in terms of livestock, but also have done some work with swine. We actually as a food safety team here at K State have wrapped up recently two studies looking at hog carcasses. One study was looking at salmonella from carcasses all the way through trim, and trying to identify interventions that are effective at reducing salmonella. And then we did what I would call it that project sister study where we were looking at reducing ShiGa toxin producing Escherichia E coli on carcasses. And so, that those are probably two of our most recent studies. And then we also are working on a collaborative study that just got funded with Texas Tech University to look at salmonella in hog lymph nodes, as well. And so that's going to be as I mentioned, the dual institution project, where we're going to look at a variety of different hog lymph nodes, from hogs around the country with different plants, and both trying to determine prevalence as well as concentration of salmonella. So really, beef cattle and hogs are probably my two main livestock I've worked with. I'm curious on the the lymph node work, and this will be a question of based on ignorance. How does the contamination in that part of the animal's body impact human food consumption? This is a great question. So I'm going to focus primarily on beef cattle because that's where a lot of the lymph node work has been done to date and that's where we have the most data. So we have looked, a lot, at what are called peripheral lymph nodes, so those are lymph nodes that are sort of on the outside of the body embedded in the fat tissue of the carcass. Now, when beef cattle are taken apart, which we would consider fabrication, there the fatty tissue oftentimes gets cut away and is sent with trim to grinding. Since those lymph nodes are a part of that fatty tissue, those lymph nodes then can sometimes get incorporated into ground beef. So when we have lymph nodes that have salmonella in them, those lymph nodes then are in the fatty tissue, the fatty tissue goes to ground beef, and then any salmonella within those lymph nodes now gets ground up and is a part of that ground product. So then for consumers who might enjoy a hamburger that is less than well done or cooked to 160 Fahrenheit, could potentially be at risk for salmonella in that hamburger, potentially from a contaminated lymph node. Now, I also do want to point out that those that salmonella is within a lymph node, and that lymph node is embedded within the fatty tissue of the carcass. So if we were doing a carcass wash at the abattoir, let's say hot water, or lactic acid, for example, those washes do help reduce pathogens on the carcass. However, if salmonella is embedded in the lymph node, and in the fatty tissue, of course, it's protected from those interventions. And so that makes it very difficult to protect against any salmonella entering the horse through the lymph nodes. So we have to really then think about, what can we do in at the live animal side? So pre harvest to reduce the chances of having someone else in the lymph nodes? Also, can we remove lymph nodes? That's been a question. Animals have hundreds of lymph nodes throughout their bodies, right? So it would be very, very challenging to get every lymph node removed from every carcass. And so some studies have looked at what if we just remove maybe the biggest six, right? So some are bigger than others, right? Some, if they are contaminated and contaminated at a high concentration could in theory, be providing a larger load of salmonella into the ground product, then a teeny, tiny lymph node that maybe isn't as contaminated, for example. So it's really kind of hard to predict and know which lymph node might be contaminated? And, and really, what's the best way to approach this from an intervention and a food safety perspective, but it's a very important area of research currently. Yeah, that is really fascinating. Sarah, and the way that you explain it is really helpful in understanding the implications for the consumer. I'm just curious about salmonella, who knew that salmonella hang out in lymph nodes is the same? Could you talk just a little bit about the physiology? And maybe that will allow you then to get into some of your findings in terms of what can we do pre harvest? Is it? Are there particular kinds of rations that help reduce the amount of salmonella? So first, I'm wondering, is it just a natural part of the physiology of the animal? And what have you learned about ways to reduce it pre harvest? Yeah, great question. So I will kind of start, I guess, by how salmonella even ends up in the lymph nodes and kind of talk through some of those points. So salmonella is oftentimes naturally in the gastrointestinal tract of cattle. And in most cases, cat cattle are not clinically ill if salmonella. Now we have over 2500 Different serotypes of salmonella, and not all salmonella behave the same way in every post, if you will. Now, what might make us sick, like a salmonella Newport, for example, might not cause any issues in cattle. And so it's really hard to pick up at the feed yard level because that you might walk through the pens and think oh, well if they're that contaminated with salmonella, they should be ill and I can pull them and treat them it'll be fine. That's that's just not how it works because cattle are not as susceptible to salmonella. As humans are. In general, right. There are some serotypes like salmonella, Dublin, that can cause clinical illness in cattle. So I'm speaking more in general terms that cattle generally do not get sick. And so they harbor it in their gastrointestinal tracts they pay In their feces, their feces end up in their pins, and cattle lay down, it gets muddy and wet, and so it gets on their hides. And so salmonella is very much in their environment as well. So when we think about that situation with cattle, if it's in their environment, and if it's in their GI tract, it's possible that it's also finding its way to the lymph nodes. And there's a couple of different ways to consider that. One is through the gastrointestinal tract. So salmonella can pass through actually the lining of the GI tract. They can utilize what are called the M cells of peyres, patches in Peyer's patches are essentially like immune tissue in the GI tract. And someone will actually utilize that to pass through. And so then they can enter into the bloodstream and also be drained to the lymphatic system. Oftentimes, they're in Gulten in a macrophage or some sort of immune cell. And then those immune cells might carry the salmonella to the lymph node. And then we don't really know what happens after that. One of the problems with salmonella in lymph node research is if we're getting these from animals at the abattoir, so they've already been euthanized and are hanging on the line. I have that one shot. So if I wanted to sample cattle throughout it's, it's I can't just get a lymph node from a live animal, right? I have to get it at death's. And so it's not like I can sample the same animal throughout its lifetime to see when that lymph node became positive, and did it stay positive? And did it ever go negative? So those are some of the questions we have in terms of what salmonella finds its way to the lymph node through the GI tract, for example, how long is it positive? We don't know? Does it get cleared at some point does it pass through that lymph node to another lymph node, for example. And there's some research that's kind of looked at that but we still need some more effort there to kind of identify, but again, challenging research. Now there are some other ways that we sort of hypothesize that salmonella finds its way to the lymph nodes. Now, some of those peripheral lymph nodes that I mentioned, one that I have researched, and a lot of others have particularly is called the sub iliac lymph node. Now, the subiliac is a larger lymph node that kind of sits on the hind hip of the hind leg of the animal, and it drains the hind leg in that region. So we were always scratching our head. Why is that lymph node positive? How did why is the hind leg contaminated with salmonella that lymph node perceived it right? So there are some questions about is it an abrasion, that salmonella is entering through and then gets filtered to the resident lymph node, maybe it's biting flies, we know that flies love to hover on feces, right. And so maybe they're hovering on the feces and then they go bite the hind leg of the animal and introduce salmonella transdermally. And then it finds its way to the lymph node. Now, there has been some research done by some of my colleagues that have looked at what happens if we actually do transdermally introduce salmonella at different points throughout the body. And there's been really interesting research trying to understand where salmonella ends up if it's introduced transdermally. And it does tend to be in kind of the surrounding lymph nodes in that area. So that helps us kind of understand how it can happen not just through the GI tract. Now, it is though, like the sub iliac lymph node on that hind leg, for example, that can probably find its way into the ground beef system B just because of its location and adipose tissue, and then that adipose tissue goes to ground beef. So what do we do about this? Right? Well, we're still trying to identify what to do about it actually. So if we go to the farm level, we need to try to minimize salmonella in the environments and in these animals as well. Now, I will say that generally there are trends to when we find salmonella in cattle lymph nodes as well as in cattle feces and the general trend is it peaks in sort of summer to fall As you go south in the United States, and then we've also done some studies in Mexico, I think one study was, I think, September in Mexico, and we had extremely high salmonella prevalence. But you know, we were going south. And we were at that peak prevalence time. So, in general, salmonella is not found as often in lymph nodes or in cattle feces at other times of the year, and especially like here in the Midwest, we don't find salmonella as much as we would as we move south. So that helps us also sort of target some of our efforts in terms of where do we think the biggest risks are? How do we help those feed yards or those avatars and then, you know, we can apply it to all regions as well to just help minimize any prevalence we have throughout the United States or throughout the world eventually, as well. So pre harvest, good, you know, good management practices, trying to help keep salmonella out of the environment, cleaning, water troughs, and so forth. But also, as you mentioned, what are we feeding the animals? And so we have actually looked at different studies where if we add a supplement, for example, like a probiotic, does it help reduce salmonella in perhaps their feces in their environment? And then of course, in the lymph nodes as well. So that is a pretty important area of research in terms of what can we get that we can feed to the animals that will not, of course, be harmful? Right? It has to be, it has to have animal welfare in mind, but also productivity, right, we don't, we don't want to also reduce their effectiveness in terms of their growth and what they're already consuming for their diet. So we have to work with like ruminant nutritionists and feed yard experts to help identify things that might work, things that could be beneficial without harming the cattle and their and their daily game in their productivity, while also trying to improve food safety. And so it's kind of a balancing act there and definitely an interdisciplinary effort to try to tack this issue. And then I mentioned, of course, you know, at the avatar, there are questions about, should we be removing some lymph nodes? What if we remove some of the bigger ones? Does that reduce the amount going into the grind, and then in our ground beef product? So we're still trying to figure all of those things out, but it's a Farm to Fork question. That's fascinating, because it really has shows how little, you know, toward any sort of, I don't want to say global because that's not what I'm implying. But you don't have a method for for really positive controls the moment it appears. Right. Right. Well, I mean, I will say, you know, the industry is doing the best they can, right? Oh, sure. Healthy cattle with clean sanitary environment. But yeah, we haven't quite found the magic bullet or the silver bullet, if you will, to address this issue. And I think some of us that... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/19151852

A New Frontier with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor of diagnostic medicine/pathobiology 04/27/2021

A New Frontier with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor of diagnostic medicine/pathobiology In this podcast, we talk with , associate professor in the in the at Kansas State University. Kastner co-directs the interdisciplinary Frontier program, which is focused on crossing disciplinary borders, and overseeing scholarly activities for several academic units. Since food production, shipping and trade are all managed through regulation and international policy agreements, students in Kastner’s courses benefit from his experience in international trade policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. Transcript: Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on. Food production, shipping and trade are all managed through regulation and international policy agreements. History lends a trove of background and information on how these agreements were reached, how the safety and affordability of food is managed through these systems, and points to the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the system in maintaining availability of healthy food for consumers. In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor in the Department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at K State. Dr. Kastner brings a holistic perspective of pedagogical innovation in student mentoring, co-directing the interdisciplinary Frontier program focused on Crossing disciplinary borders, and superintending scholarly activities for several academic units at K State. Welcome, Justin, the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On and to get things started off, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, who you are, what brought you to the area of study that you are in and perhaps what brought you to K State? Thank you for having me. I am not a native Kansan, but for all practical purposes, a native on, incidentally, true to the theme of the global food system. The second Food Science son of a food scientist, dad, and my brother and I both got to grow up in Manhattan, because my dad, first counselor, who retired a number of years ago, took a job at Kansas State University. So my brother and I were born in Pullman, Washington, the home of Washington State University, the home of a really, really high end, fantastic dairy product called Cougar Gold cheese, which actually the CASPER family, and all generations and all within our sphere of influence, continue to enjoy. And dad works in Food Science at Washington statement. Fortunately, providentially got a job and moved to Kansas State. And so my parents moved us I was, I think, three months old Marine, if you can believe that. And so we grew up here in Manhattan, and my brother and I were thoroughly indoctrinated and manipulated by my dad, to become food scientists as well. And when I was in university at K State, in the late 1990s, that was the time when mad cow disease or BSE was a sort of conflict filled and trade dispute filled public health issue. And when I was finishing my time as an undergraduate at Kansas State, in the late 1990s, I was quite keen on studying that issue and other related other food safety related issues in global trade politics. And so my wife and I, we, we got married, we moved overseas, and to study that issue, actually, in the UK, did a master's food safety and international trade in London and then studying public health in Edinburgh, Scotland. And, you know, I think part of my journey has been falling more in love with the policy aspects of science, including food safety, but also more and more in love with history. And so one of the things that happened after we finished our time in the UK is I was able to work for a summer in food safety and animal disease related policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. And I even now, in my job the case date, I teach courses related to the work of the WTO and its principle trade agreement that governs and sets guidelines for food safety, animal disease and plant disease regulation. But while we were in Europe as you as many people listening to this podcast who relate, we just became more and more fascinated by history. So for my PhD, which actually live in Canada, in southern Ontario at the University of Guelph I, I emphasized historical, specifically late 19th century late 1800s, trade disputes over food safety and animal disease, and kind of looking at some of the policy and on economic and political precedents for resolving disputes over food safety, which I had, of course, witnessed at the WTO. And so to sort of be quick here, when my wife and I moved back to the United States, we were fortunate to return to Manhattan, and I've been on faculty here for a decade and up close to two decades, I guess, and have been involved with quite a quite a wide array of undergraduate and graduate programs, I've developed a number of courses teaching, teach a number of courses and involved with the College of Veterinary Medicine, or I'm on faculty that run not a veterinarian involved with the undergraduate and graduate Food Science Program, the undergraduate honors program, and case data lathe as well. And I'm just really honored to get to continue to help students not to put too strongly and help students fall more in love with the policy and historical aspects of the food system, which I myself had experienced when I was close to them leave. You and I have talked in the past. And so we've had the opportunity to interact. But I was reading through this again, and kind of getting myself back up to speed on your background. And I find it interesting with the focus that you have, where the College of Veterinary Medicine fits, how did you end up in that particular college with the background and the clear understanding that you have of history and politics and all of the things that go into that? I think part of the story is that but you know, the early 2000s here at Kansas State, there was a real movement to set up they weren't called this but you know, basically clusters of multi disciplinary research and teaching groups of faculty that were to some extent kind of charged to and given permission even to operate outside of their home departments outside of their home colleges for the sake of the wider University multidisciplinary tackling of complex problems, including food safety and security. So one of those programs, which was actually I think it was called the targeted excellence program. And one of the targeted excellence programs was for food safety and security. And there were a number of faculty, physicians and faculty, existing faculty who were mobilized for that effort. And one of the new positions was actually here in the College of Veterinary Medicine in my department, Department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology, which is actually one of the most diverse in the sense of scientific disciplines. One of the most diverse departments at K State because we have folks studying all kinds of issues, some directly, some indirectly, veterinary quite a few epidemiology minded scholars, certainly food safety, certainly virology bacteriology in just a very diverse academic department. And as I know, I'm preaching to the choir here. But you know, part of I think the advantage that K State has had is that we have been less snobbish about departmental barriers, and very willing to think across departments across colleges, and even komentar students who advise students might have in my case, I've been involved with helping mentor, undergraduate and graduate students, many, perhaps most of whom are not even actually in the College of Veterinary Medicine, in but in other graduate programs and undergraduate programs. And then through my involvement with the honors program that was exceptionally multidisciplinary, because I spent, you know, about four years helping students from all of the different undergraduate colleges at K State, feed their intellectual curiosity about a range of topics, not just the food system, but I think the short answer is the targeted Excellence Program was how I ended up being based here at the College College of Veterinary Medicine, but one incidental and collateral benefit of that is that I have become more and more conversant about veterinary history, which is something that actually emphasized in my PhD of wealth. And we have really one of the great patriarchs of the history of veterinary medicine in the United States on faculty, faculty emeritus here, and that's Dr. Howard Erickson. I'm sure you guys know and I've really enjoyed working with Dr. Erickson. You'll see him as a as a mentor in the field of that industry. Justin, I really appreciate hearing your background both in terms of sort of the path to took to get here as well as your PhD. I studied political communication. And your story about how you were socialized into being a food scientist really reminded me that I didn't know what a food scientist was, until my first job out of college, I worked for the National Academies Association in Washington, DC, and we had several food scientists on the staff. So my introduction to food scientists was through policy and politics, but I don't think most people probably have that appreciation for the role that food science and policy the way that they go hand in hand. I wonder if you could talk for a little bit about any how you see those two fitting together? I mean, some people might understand them to be contradictory, right? Science, purely objective policy? Not purely objective? Do you ever feel attention? Do your students feel attention? Do you have trouble convincing your more science minded students to policy matters? Well first of all, I think you and I are very unusual, and how we came to become aware of the term food science you sounds like experienced it in no an actual policy workplace. In my case, I was you know, indoctrinated by a family member. But I always joke, or I sometimes joke that most pop culture conversant Americans know food science through the National Lampoon's Vacation series, because Clark Griswold, the Chevy Chase, playing character, he is a food scientist. And so if you ever want to see the essence of Food Science, all you have to do is watch Christmas vacation, or European vacation, and you will fully appreciate the wonders of being a food scientist. You know, I think, more seriously that one of the artifacts of higher education not just in the United States, but everywhere, is that we have these names for undergraduate and graduate programs, in my case, a PhD in food science, that, yes, is merited because maybe we take courses and we are examined, and we are expected to emphasize, like in the case of food science, it's typically you know, food microbiology, food chemistry, food engineering, and food processing expertise. But the problem with these terms, like food science is that just like with any academic program, in a complex society, in a complex world, those titles will never and should never fully convey what makes you you, I tell my students that all the time, like, you should not expect the title Master of Public Health or MS in food science, or doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, you should never let those terms be the the limiting descriptor of what you bring to the table. And that's why my favorite part of favorite part of the graduate degree titles is actually MSC or Ms. Masters of Science or PhD, Doctor of Philosophy, because those convey thinking they convey a scholarly approach. They can convey intellectual curiosity, yes, about whatever the state of degree title is. But certainly not just that. And so I think in my case, fortunately, food science by being either within a narrow definition of Food Science, relatively diverse having food, microbe biology, food chemistry, food processing, but because of that, implicit diversity, there's maybe more of a openness to true diversity, and, you know, embracing all the different facets of the global food system. So I'm very thankful to the food science discipline for that very reason. And I just might add that, I think some disciplines, you know, graduate program titles, for instance, that are very precise, they may actually be very appropriate. You know, you think about someone with a PhD in say, virology that would not necessarily expect a biologist to be conversant on healthcare policy, but what I would expect them to have an understanding of the scientific underpinnings of viruses in society and in public health's reality That makes sense, and I would agree with your virologist example. But I would push back a little bit and say that while you might not expect the virologist to have an expert, an expertise in policy, I would expect anyone with even an undergraduate BS to have enough familiarity with the way that policy is made and an appreciation of our system of making policy with its strengths and weaknesses to be able to engage it in a particular way, right? I mean, back to your earlier point, I really liked the framing of his initials that matter more than what comes after the initials. And I think that that is something that maybe we need to emphasize more. There was an article 20 years ago in The Economist, basically, citing I think it was Arnold Toynbee, some quasi famous British historian, who said that the land grant university system was America's most important contribution to higher education, because it was all about being practical was all about solving problems. It was all about, you know, kind of technical information delivery there in frontier America, you know, in our case in 1863, and then Kansas State Agricultural College was founded, but one of the other sides of that coin in places like a land grant university culture, is that we tend to sometimes I think, I think it's fair to say, We downplay those initials, pH, D, and s, to maybe because we're trying to be practical, right? And that's our heritage. At the end of the day, you know, I'm always mindful the fact that, in fact, one of my high school buddies, his dad, who was a faculty member at K State, an agricultural economist, he said, his name is Dr. David Barton. He told me once that education prepares you for your last job, meaning, you know, when you are an undergraduate student, or you're a graduate student, you're developing the critical thinking skills. Those MSc and PhD initial alluded to skills so that as you go on in your career, you can continue to learn, you can continue to make sense use your human faculty of reason to understand complex problems, navigate new issues, like a pandemic, which by the way, I had no courses. But I couldn't take that when I was studying public health in Edinburgh, we did have courses on pandemics, but no one really prepared me for COVID-19. And I don't think anyone has a degree, master's of science COVID-19, you know, from the 1990s, right. But we choose an MSc Xu understand. And DVM is an MDS. I love that framing of it prepares you for your last job. I think we spent so much time and understandably so thinking about recruitment in terms of preparing you for your first job. But that's not the point at all. One of the things that I wanted Justin to talk a bit more about is the Frontier program that he had put together. That is something I remember again, in the past, I remember discussing with you and it's it's quite an interesting endeavor that you had gotten into, can you give us about a bit of background and detail on what that one was? Yes. Well, you know, like everyone listening to this podcast, and you're, you call you Maureen. It's a common experience in higher education in academic life, and probably in any workplace, to notice those kinds of similarly like minded colleagues that we have, and then collaborate with them. When I was in graduate school, studying BSC studying International Trade politics in London. My wife and I,we lived in a postgraduate student housing complex filled with graduate students and residents from all over the world. One of my fellow students that wasn't living there. His name's Jason Nicholson. He was studying international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And we became friends mainly because he would fly home to his home state of New Mexico and bring back all kinds of good southwest fare and beauty. My wife and Jason and I, we cook these meals to, you know, remember what spicy food tastes like as we were living in bland food, London. And as we became friends with Jason, Jason, I realized that we both had had excellent mentors. When we were undergrads. We both realized we had this fascination with interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving. And then we also incidentally, just both love Star Wars. So we had a lot to talk about all the time, a good reason to like each other. And so Jase, and I became friends. And fast forward 2004. I was on faculty here at K State and Jason was on faculty at kind of in a parallel way, his alma mater, New Mexico State, in the political science or government department, and we decided that we would start something called the Frontier program, and it was all about crossing disciplinary frontiers of kind of a metaphorical statement that had two meanings. One, we wanted to have students be encouraged to be intentional to think outside of the rooms stated, academic department or academic program, baby food science in case of a case State student in political science in the case of the New Mexico State University students, but also to intentionally studying issues at borders, including international trade of food, and other issues that happen at nation state boundaries are frontiers fronteira. And so the frontier party was born out of that kind of idea. And Jason and I and others, Dr. Avenues share case state, we were able to grow that program and through different partnerships over about a decade and a half, including, perhaps most notably the US Department of Homeland Security in their career development grants program. We build a fairly, you know, I don't think it's too daunting to say this, but just very, I think exceptional program of experiential learning and CO mentoring. So Jason and I would, with other faculty and universities, we would take as many as 2030 students, three to four times a year to international trade ports, used to be socially engineering groups, meaning we would have students from political science, sociology, public health, food science, different universities. And we would travel to international trade ports to policy centers to groups like the Congressional Research Service that you probably know about, Colene, in Washington, to historical archives. Remember, I mentioned earlier my interest in history. And we would just give these students a chance. It's not a course as a field trip, and chance to be with peers who are not in their own major, make friends with them. But it'd be a total geek out field trip, you know, learning about international trade, learning about food inspection reports, learning about what was in on the bookshelves in an 18th century, you know, Virginia archive related to food and health meeting with incredibly competent policy analysts and the Congressional Research Service in the Library of Congress. And we would do these trips we did, I think we've had today we've kind of stopped numbering because the program with DHS has ended, but we have probably had 300 400 students travel on these trips. And... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/18879113

Robotics + Ag with Dr. Dan Flippo, biological and agricultural engineering 04/13/2021

Robotics + Ag with Dr. Dan Flippo, biological and agricultural engineering How do we plan to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050? Increasing the availability of sustainable, arable land through the use of modern robotics could help to expand food production, and reduce the need for destruction of forested land. In this episode of our podcast, we talk with , Patrick Wilburn Keystone Research Scholar in at Kansas State University, about the work he is doing to mesh state-of-the-art robotic technology with food production to move toward sustainably feeding the world past 2050. Transcript: Robotics + agriculture with Dr. Dan Flippo, biological and agricultural engineering Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. I’m Jon Faubion. I’m a Food Scientist. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. How do we plan to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050? Increasing the availability of sustainable arable land through the use of modern robotics could help to expand food production, potentially reducing the destruction of forested land. In this episode of our podcast, we will talk with Dr. Dan Flippo, the Patrick Wilborn Keystone Research Scholar in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at K State, about the work he is doing to mesh state of the art robotic technology with food production to move towards sustainably feeding the world past 2050. Dan, welcome to the podcast. We were looking forward to understanding more about your current research. But before we get into that, can you give us a little background on yourself and how you became interested in this area of study. So I am actually from Kansas, they grew up near Wichita, a little town called Douglas on what's called a hobby farm nowadays, we didn't call it back then. But my dad worked at the post office all day and then came home and farmed. We didn't have too many acres. It was just enough to, it was more of a side business for him. And he wanted it, like it, for it to expand, but it never worked out. He was plagricultureued with machinery problems. And so we had, I have so many memories of broken tractors and that New Holland baler, his was kind of his bane of his existence, it caused a lot of problems. And so I kind of grew up with this mentality that farmers, you know, they're more machinists, mechanics, you know, and they cost it machinery and things like that. And so I went to, I came to undergrad here at K State, in mechanical engineering. And so some of the professors that are still over there taught me and after that I had really no interest in going back to grad school, I went to work at Cessna aircraft in Wichita. Worked there about eight years. And then I mean, my wife and for son, we quit that job and went to grad school while I was at Wichita State System paid for a master's degree in robotics, and mechanical engineering, but emphasis on robotics. And then we went to the University of Oklahoma. And I studied under Dr. David Miller, who is well known as far as planetary science, planetary robotics, planetary exploration. So nothing to do with agriculture really at all up to that point in my education. So I did a lot of wheel to soil interaction traction, specifically with robots and built a very big test apparatus. And I wanted to teach at K State actually. So the reason we went to Oklahoma, went out of state was the purpose of getting back to K State. And so I learned a lot about just the robotic world and the robotic feel soil interaction, it was regolith, really not soil that. And then after I graduated there, there was new university jobs, nothing and I was really set on being in Kansas. And so opening came up in a John Deere in Iowa, programming large tractors and so this is kind of my getting back into the agriculture world and agriculture industry. So I worked at John Deere for about two and a half years, and that's when K State job came up. And it turned out it more of a postdoc for me, kind of introduced to a lot of features and the customer world of agriculture machinery. Didn't like Iowa, it’s really too cold for me. So in 2013, I applied and we got a job here K State. And Dr. Joe Harner. He's already department head, he had a kind of a vision for robotics and kind of that next phase of agriculture. So he was very intent on getting someone who has specific interests in robotics. And so I came in 2013. And we've been here since then. I teach agriculture machinery courses, off road machinery courses, hydraulics, some mechatronics. engine power transfer. My research is in robotics. And so specifically small robotics, what I mean by that is like wheelchair sized robotics, in the agriculture field, so we've kind of focused on the smaller side, just for safety reasons. Because we've found that, you know, once a robot is big enough to hurt somebody, then the amount of sensors and, and technology and complexity goes way up. And so we've kind of, we've kind of focused in on the smaller robotics, and to try to stay away from all that complexity. If my robots ran into you, they would just either stop or run over your toe or something like that. But they wouldn't, they wouldn't hurt you. So we've been successful. We've been successful with that. We've gotten several grants through USDA, some corn commission grant and some EPSCoR grants with and throughout this time here at K State, I've had some really good collaboration with people. Dr. Stephen Welch has been kind of a mentor to a lot of us. He's got some fun stuff going on. And he's always big into dreaming. And so he's, he's on several of my grants. I'm on his EPSCoR grant, Dr. Brian McCormick over an entomology, we've worked a lot with him, he's always fun. To come up with crazy ideas. We had some ideas about shooting lasers at aphids and things. And so he was all about that he enjoyed that. And so this is where we're at, you know, right now we're trying to finish several of these big grants we got one of them is the high sloped hill, where we're trying to increase our arable land, by farming on on hills that conventional tractors can't go is wouldn't be safe. And so we have these smaller wheelchair size tracked vehicles that plant wheat on hills, and either lead cattle graze on that weed or are harvested. So we're working on that we're working on a Dr. Ajay Sharda, who's my colleagricultureue, he's got an NRI grants, National Robotics Initiative. Both those are and it's, we're have a robot that looks for aphids on sorghum and using machine learning. And this, when it spots an aphid or thinks it does, it sprays just that one plant. And so we have a spray rig on a four wheeled robot, and this will save an immense amount of chemical, both for costs for the farmer and environment. And so I think with you know, it kind of brings up a point where these robotics, we're kind of in a new world, as far as farming goes up into this point, we've progressed, you know, we started with just scattering a seed, then the horses and oxen, and then there was a phase change kind of facing that's assessment term, aircraft term phase changes, when you go from one look to another, a big change in design. He went to two mechanical tractors, you know, there's a lot of farmers thought that they we had cabs on our, on our farmers and we had auto steer, then we had bigger and bigger tractors. And we've come in some some issues with just making tractors bigger and bigger. And we, we've done that because of labor shortages and skilled labor shortages. And so we run into problems with the road, and you know, transportation, getting those big tractors, on Highway, soil compaction, things like that. So what we're really trying to focus on is the smaller vehicles, and this has allowed us to kind of open up the world and kind of get rid of a lot of assumptions about farming, you know, really is you're just getting the seed in the ground. And then you're taking the yield from that plant. And so how do we do that? We have a small vehicle, so we've had to kind of rethink how to plant were we thinking, you know, the options are kind of open right now we can we can think about multi crops in the fields and more environmental conscious farming. You know, one thing that we kind of talked about here is that we're able to do more environmentally responsible agriculture, because we're bringing in technology because we can rethink how we do things with the smaller robots and stuff. That's kind of where we're at. I'd like to hear just a little bit more about what you think this opens up. So you know, you mentioned the phase change and You know, each of these new technologies really changed the way our culture was done right and a change sometimes change what was what was actually grown change how it has grown change the, you know, economics and, and the nature of farms. And so, you know, with all the openness of the future that you just talked about, it's hard to say, but I'm curious just about what kind of where you think we're heading with all this change? You know, what, what is it? What is it set up for us? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, right now, with my robots, I'm trying to think through how we can redo things but want for instance, I was just having a conversation with Dr. Sharda, the other day about, you know, the whole Native American, they do the three sisters method where they grow beans, squash, and corn all at the same time. And those three crops help each other one fights off bugs, the other one gives, you know, the corn gives the beans, some of the verlon with the small robots and automation, you know, we can think about multi crop fields, and not just mono mono crops. And so that kind of a lot of people, you know, I think farm and they take it a certain way. And right now, there's a lot of startups with, with agriculture robotics. And there's tons of them, a lot of bigger companies like the company I worked for, and even the other two big companies that do agriculture equipment, they're a little scared of having their tractors being autonomous, and then they do concept vehicles, things like that. But, it's a big risk to have a big tractor, computer controlled risk. And for the people that are there, you know, if there was a Sunday there in the field, which has happened, you know, things like that. So, there's a lot that has to happen before, I think these big companies are going to, really sell on autonomous tractors. But the startups are crazy. And they're mostly smaller vehicles. There are some like mid tractor size startup companies. But I think it's going to kind of generate this startup level of people coming ideas and ask them questions like, Why do we have to do it this way? And maybe they're not farmers, maybe they maybe they're just either hobby farmers or urban farmers? You know, why not? I saw a gantry farming thing where it just has like a small bed that you put in your apartment or somewhere and it has a gantry, that plants and that takes care of all the plants and things like that. Um, where are we going? Yeah, that's, an interesting question. I, I don't see us getting rid of tractors for quite some time. I mean, the, the amount of power and work that is done in one pass in those tractors on a flat field is amazing. And I think the tractor companies have really come a long way as far as technology and things. And they're expensive, too. I think for a long time. These smaller tractors, these smaller robots that we're working on, are coming in kind of augmenting, either like on high school Till's or farmers that are just getting going, you know, that scalable, you know, they, they want to farm more land, they just kind of bind the robot, things like that. Right now, we're trying to just get people to rethink because farmers have the kind of the tendency or reputation of being somewhat stubborn. And so they do things the way their dad did data, data is another one. I mean, there's so much data right now, coming off of agriculture vehicles, and fighting over who gets that data. Other companies will say that, that data is the farmers. But so there's so much data that no one knows what to do with. I mean, we have images of fields. And so right now, I think there's going to have to be some people really picking up the data, data analysis part of it to try to help farmers make better decisions. Do you see the initial use of your work? You mentioned urban farming and that type of thing. And kind of the difficulty in introducing this into the very large scale? Do you see it first being introduced into the smaller urban farming or, you know, smaller farming type systems prior to and then kind of building up from there? I do. I think people that enjoy that technology, you know, the people that get the iPhones and stuff like that, they all kind of think this is really cool. And start there. I see a big community doing that. That's why with this grant, we kind of try to focus on sloped Hills because this is not any place where a tractor can go. And so this kind of helps feed the world. A big push, you know, I'm sure you guys have heard the 2050 push where, you know, we have to feed over 9 billion people by 2050. And so this is kind of an industry rally cry, you know, John Deere kind of talked about that a lot. So we have really, he tried to bring awareness about that as well. And so one way of doing that is, is opening up these little pills that no one's using. So do you conceive of these as being scalable? If, if a large producer wanted to take them on rather than having to do, I don't know, how many passes on a, on a three on one subsection field, that there'll be multiple of these units is that? Yes, yes, it's kind of the scrubbing bubbles, technique. Remember that commercial. So you have, you'll have a bunch of a swarm of robots that will work day and night, to get the work done. And now, my robots are pretty slow, you know, they make one pass really easy, but you can have a bunch of them. And so we're gonna have to, you know, networking, as far as wireless connectivity, you know, in the rural areas, and things like that, is gonna have to be extended quite a bit. So right now, you know, thanks to the bigger tractor companies where we have RTK GPS, which is, you know, very sub centimeter accuracy GPS, and that's, we have a lot of stations and stuff. And so we're able to use that, but we're gonna have to, we're looking at right now, you know, different wireless technologies, Dr. Sharda, especially, is looking at different wireless technologies to get to talk from, you know, inside the canopy of like corn. And so one one, not another nice thing about these small robots is that we can be under the canopy of crops. And we're not looking down at the leaves that are healthy, we're looking at from up and seeing where the bugs are trying to see where water stress is, and try to get to a better health picture of what's going on underneath. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit more of the details of what has to be done to make these workable, I mean, so we've got some of the promise, right? Sir, we can open up areas like the soap pills, that can be more scalable, you can think about doing things differently, right, in terms of, you know, planting multiple crops, and you can reduce the use of pesticides. Right. So he's awesome, super positive. Right? So, what are the challenges for making it work? The biggest one, I think of right now is how to keep these guys powered, and how to service them. What I mean by services is, if they're planting, get them seed to plant, if they're harvesting, get that seat away from my vehicles are all like electric, so how to get batteries to them, without them coming back and having to do that. And so we're looking at some different things that actually, I don't know if they're gonna work or not, but we're looking at UAVs, you know, unmanned aerial vehicles to be carrying batteries to service and swap on these on these ground vehicles. And so that's one way of servicing the robot. So you can keep working. We were trying to stay away from fossil fuels, we're trying to keep you know, it all electrical. But the power density for diesel is so much more than a battery. And so it's just a big challenge. You know, if you have other robots, UAVs or other ground robots that are servicing, then you have to have quite a bit of communication between the two, you have to have routing plans. And things get a lot more complicated. And so I kind of see that once you work with multiple robots, them all working together, you know, that's going to be quite a task. And we have some very smart machine learning people working on this. And yeah, just getting them power and getting them seed or getting the heart the yield back from them. I think that's one of the things that it's kind of holding us up right now. You know, one thing I will say is that one thing we didn't see coming is getting seed in the ground in a no till situation like on a hill, my robots weigh about 180 pounds 200 If you load them down batteries. So a normal conventional planter, you know, takes at least 300 pounds to push down. And so we tried it, we loaded down with weight even and so we've had to think of some different ideas. And so now we're going with a powered Tiller planter that actually is is more or less a disk with with teeth on it. And it spins, I think it's about 240 rpm, and it it cuts a furrow do this ground and then we put seed in it then recovered back up. We just can't press a disk in there like a normal tractor. Good. So this takes up power. It's not ideal. It's not what we're going for. But we try to, to go with the simplest possible design and then kind of if that doesn't work, we kind of work ourselves up to more complex issues, but that's those are the biggest things that we run across right now is you know, you could have robots that when they ran out of juice, they come back, get recharged, and then go back out. But for a bigger field, that kind of becomes an not very good solution. What we see is the major push backs that you might get from farmers have spent 3035 years using different approaches in the mechanics we expect to have to answer to. Most of them don't believe that this will work. So yeah, and a lot of them, you know, my dad was same way kind of your link to the land. That's John years phrase, but they see farming as you're on a tractor. You're out on the field, you know, your field. Bouncing over the phone. Yeah. But the thing is, a lot of these bigger farmers have five 7000 acres, you know, doing their field? Is it them on the tractor? Can they really see how their crops are doing? And they can, in certain instances, you know, for what, for example, we have this duck shares, we're going on this NRI grant that spots, aphids. And so right now, you know, an entomologist, you call them up, he'll come to us a few places in your field. And say, either, yes, it's bad enough, you need to spray or no need to wait a little while. So either spray the whole field, or you don't spray enough, you know, and it's just issues like that. And so I think the pushback is, is people, you know, Agra culture, it's a culture and so people are kind of back against, that's not farming, you know, that's not sure. And I think, I think I wasn't around when this happened, but talk to my dad, you know, when people went from horses to tractors to this kind of the same tune. Yeah, attitude, same, you know, you're working together with your horse to, to work the land, you know, I read somewhere where, when calves come on tractors, people were like, you know, I want to smell the dirt, I want to smell the earth. And the auto steer, you know, it's not me steering,... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/18706316

Safe and secure with Dr. Stephen Higgs, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology 03/23/2021

Safe and secure with Dr. Stephen Higgs, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology In this episode, we welcome Dr. Stephen Higgs, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State University. On this episode, Dr. Higgs discusses interdisciplinary biosecurity research programs, agrosecurity and collaborative research. Higgs, who is director of the Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, also highlights the role the BRI will play in transitioning work to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, adjacent to the K-State campus. Dr. Higgs’ research is focused on mosquito-related viral spread, but through his oversight of the BRI, he has expanded to the areas of food safety and security, plant and animal disease and zoonotic disease. Transcript: Yeah, never quite know in this way of research, right? You never quite know what's going to happen. And any day I walk into the BRI maybe a day when one of our researchers makes a discovery that changes the world makes it a better place. I honestly believe that's how I feel every morning. Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. I would like to welcome today a guest host, Dr. Jim Stack, Professor of Plant Pathology, and Director of the Great Plains Diagnostic Network. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast, we are joined by Dr. Steven Higgs, director of the biosecurity Research Institute, and a University Distinguished Professor in Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology. His research is focused on mosquito related viral spread. However, through his oversight of the VRI Research Center, Higgs has an expanded association with activities carried out in various sectors of K State to include food safety and security, plant and animal disease and zoonotic disease. In this podcast, Dr. Higgs will discuss interdisciplinary biosecurity research programs, agro security initiatives, and the development of collaborative research. And the BRI's place as a platform for transitioning work that will be conducted at the new national and agro defense facility here in Manhattan, Kansas, and adjacent to K State and the BRI. Welcome Dr. Steve Higgs to the something to chew on podcast with the Kansas State University Global Food Systems Initiative. And we really appreciate your time and your willingness to chat with us today. It's a pleasure to be here. That's wonderful. Before we get started, it's part of the discussion I'm sure we'll get into some of the details of your work that you're doing and the facilities that you oversee at K State. But I think before we head down that path, maybe get a bit of a background on you, who you are, what brought you to the type of research that you enjoy doing and maybe what brought you to Kansas State University. Okay, so, yeah, so I just go by Steve. I've been here at K State since 2011. And my background is from the United Kingdom. I grew up in a very small market town called Wantage and Oxfordshire about 20 miles from Oxford within 60 miles from London. I, it was a small community, it's a country community, which is why I love Manhattan. And I you know, I was a country kid, eventually went to university to study zoology, and then specialized in parasitology. Actually, parasites that could potentially infect livestock. I was studying them in mice, but it was Coccidia that could infect chickens and cattle and so forth. I then went to the London School of Hygiene, I ended up in the environmental microbiology facility in Oxford, and then I was sent to the United States to Colorado State University to learn genetic engineering of mosquitoes. And I'd never been to the States before I came here I stayed a month and then I came back the following year to do a course and was offered a job and so I briefly went back to England came came back came to the United States with the intention of staying no less than a year and some 25 years later, 30 years later. Here I am, I worked at Colorado for 10 years, then University of Texas Medical Branch for 10 and then visited K State to see the Biosecurity Research Institute at a time when I was not really looking for a job and just was one of a better term blown away by the facility and the people here and and what could be done here. So what was it about the facility that wowed you? So, you know, my background in terms of research and education and training has been focused on viral diseases of people and virus viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes. And that's obviously very important because hundreds of 1000s of people are infected by these pathogens every year, I came and looked at the BRI and thought, well, this is so much more of a broad scope and broad impact potentially, because unlike any other facility in the world, and I mean that there is no other place like the BRI we can study foodborne pathogens, we can study plant pathogens, as you Barbara Valent, and Jim Stack. And then they studying viruses here, which is what my background is, but not just of people, but also of animals in particular, livestock, the bread was just incredible. As far as I'm concerned, never seen a lab that could do all that because there isn't one. And I thought well, coming here as a matter of this, that it is a truly global impact on and it touches everything. It is a Global Food System in one building, because we work on those pathogens that affect pre harvest, post harvest food, plants, animals, foodborne pathogens, everything. If it was wider than I'd ever sort of, considered before. Steve, the connection between food security and public health is very tight. And when we look at the goals that collectively the global community has set in terms of enhancing public health, improving food security, and raising standards of living, all of those things really are integrated. And it's hard to tease one out, if you don't address all of these things, we're not going to reach a goal. So the question, looking back, say over the last 20 or 30 years, where do you think we've made a lot of progress on the public health side? For some of these mosquito borne, you know, vectored viruses, where have we made the most progress? And where are we still needing to make progress in order to achieve those kind of global goals? Like, like you say, Jim, these are very tightly interconnected, that they're inseparable in terms of, human health and well being the pathogens and the effects of food and diet, we know that if you don't have the diet, you don't get the food and your susceptibility, and the consequence of the disease can be very different. In terms of the mosquito borne pathogens, one area where there has been obvious progress has been in mosquito control, there have been some, you know, techniques that have arisen that we're not even thought of, but not not on, on the radar, I talk about things like not genetic control, necessarily, but technique of using, for example, or back here to reduce populations or to drive populations down. And we, you know, you look at 100,000 cases of dengue. And, you know, there's probably been two and a half million people, just in the United States infected with West Nile, each one of those infections essentially starts with the very simple process of one mosquito that happens to be infected biting somebody. And clearly reducing the population as a hazard. Its goal and consequence reduced numbers of infection. And so we have made considerable strides in that particular area. It's remarkable to me, it's remarkable to me sat here still having this career in mosquito borne viruses, just of how much we don't know. You know, we've known about some of these diseases since the late 1800s. You know, so 120 years ago. And, you know, I got into this in about 1985. And thought, well, this is going to be a short career. If we've known about him for 80 or 90 years, there can't be any questions left to answer. And that is so untrue. We don't know some of the most fundamental things about these viruses and how they interact with the mosquitoes, and how they spread, and how they cause some of the diseases. It's sad and it's remarkable. There was hoping in genetics, when we started getting genome of mosquitoes. And this includes anopheles for malaria, it was like a huge hope of, oh, well, if you understand the genetics of the beast, then we will understand the diseases and we can manipulate it and, you know, maybe make mosquitoes, it can't be infected. And really that hasn't transpired. Which is, which is sad. We don't know, something that I'm particularly into, we don't know why some types of mosquito can be infected by some viruses, and some can't, you know, put it the other way why some viruses infect some mosquitoes and others don't, that seems pretty fundamental, because you want to control the species that are responsible for the diseases that you're trying to fight. So basic research has to still be done. One area that I look at my career, and I'm, I suppose my research, my group's research has been more diverse than most other groups. And I'm, I'm very proud of that, because we kind of invented a term a long time ago, you know, virus vector vertebra interactions, I came up with that. And that's what we've been doing. We haven't just looked at the these diseases from the perspective of a virus infecting a mosquito. But we've looked at the interactions between that virus and the mosquito, the interactions between the mosquitoes and vertebrate hosts, sometimes people that they buy, and the relationship that the broad scope of that relationship, but it's very complex, and still lots more to do. So oftentimes, progress is a function of innovation in technology. And over the last decade or so, we've seen the application of some new technologies, for example, Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes, and more recently, the gene drive technologies. What are your thoughts on the adoption of those the application of those in the real world? What are the pros and cons of that? Complicated question, Jim, you know, this has been something that has been discussed for many, many years. Like I say, I came to the United States in 1991. Because the there was getting to be technology that could maybe predictably, engineer mosquitoes that has progressed in leaps and bounds as new technologies came in gene drive was being discussed, then, even though you know, just as a concept with no idea that something like CRISPR, Caste Nine would come along and actually provide that capability. So it's been discussed. And the ultimate goal has always been to release those mosquitoes with reduced capacity to, to be infected and transmit the different pathogens, particularly malaria. I mean, that's been a huge focus, especially for the Gates Foundation. And there is still a hard push, I've been involved in some of the CRISPR Caste Nine discussion in the context of malaria and other pathogens. discussions have been supported by the foundation's National Institutes of Health, and then the Gates Foundation and others. It's, it was gene drive on the horizon. I think that's what the book was called. And it's still very much on the horizon, the horizon is getting closer. But we still haven't quite got to the point of having those resistant mosquitoes that could be released unreduced reduce the incidence of infection. We're at a point where genetically engineered must be there's a technique called redl has been widely used, and it's actually been approved for use in the United States now to question but that depends very much on constant release of mosquitoes in absolutely huge numbers to push down the population. The wall back here, technology, which was one of those strange things from you know, Gates funding, that it was kind of a not exactly a back burner, but it wasn't a front runner, and then everything came together, but that it worked. And not only could it suppress populations, but it actually made the mosquitoes less susceptible to infection in some cases. And so, that is certainly something that is has been moving forward to combat for example, the Zika outbreak in Brazil and things like that. So that is actually, you know, happening as we speak. On a regular basis, those types of mosquitoes, you know, I'm always a little frustrated by that term innovation, you see that in, in grant requests a lot, you know, it has to be innovative, but sometimes old and well tried things still still work. But I do understand, you know, that we, we need to look at novel techniques and novel approaches, because, frankly, some of it, some of the old ones are past their time, if you like. What are your views about the effects or possible unintended consequences of doing things like reducing or maybe drastically reducing mosquito populations? Right, so this is that that is a different way of attacking the problem rather than, you know, preventing bites or infections. Right. And, and are there are things to be thinking about in terms of, you know, ecological consequences, etc. So how does that all factor in? So, in terms of ecological consequences, Scott, it would seem to be that there are no species of other organism, you know, predators or whatever, that wholly depend on the mosquito, I mean, we are never going to get to the point where there are no mosquitoes out there. If we can alter the species composition of the populations, to, for example, reduce the incidence of disease. So if you were, for example, eliminating the Anopheles Gambi population in Africa, that would reduce malaria incidents, the chances are, there's another mosquito species that might bite, but not might not transmit, that will probably fill the spot of the one that you'd remove. But there really are no even bats if there's no animal that holy depends on mosquitoes that couldn't switch prey, I guess, as far as I can understand, but as much as I've read. Yeah, so it makes these interventions, a fairly safe and certainly worth on your view, take it whatever those effects might be sort of in terms of the outcome is like very much worth. Yeah, and one technique that, you know, I saw firsthand in when I visited Africa a few years ago, was Gates Foundation, kind of pushed and promoted the use of insecticide impregnated bed nets. And, you know, relatively simple technology, I mean, had to be sort of fine tune in terms of usefulness of the nets, and, you know, education of people to use those nets. But I went to a village in Africa, there wasn't, I didn't see an insect the whole time I was there. They hadn't had a malaria deaths. You know, this is something that kills, you know, half a million children a year, some, you know, a child dies of malaria, I think every 30 seconds, still, these these bed nets, eliminated the mosquitoes and reduce the incidence of malaria to two to zero in this village and, you know, kind of low tech, but extremely effective. I'd like to take the discussion out a little bit further in, in your backyard today is being built the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center, the NBAF Center, which I'm sure you've been watching happened over the last several years. Where's the intersection between the VRI and NBAF? And how do those two organizations fit with one another? So, right, right from the very beginning, at the time, when I was interviewed, I was asked what I thought about NBAF. And, you know, I was very pro NBAF because of the impact it will have in terms of protecting United States providing new knowledge, vaccines and so forth, to secure our food supply, and it will have a global impact on securing global food supplies in many respects. So right from the very beginning, we've had very open productive discussions with the people involved with NBAF, you know, frankly, at all levels, from, you know, senior Homeland Security and USDA. People and we've had lots and lots of visitors from Homeland Security as they were building and an even before they were building it in discussion, design and so forth. And then USDA ever since I got here, because they were USDA people here in Manhattan, the US Department of Agriculture, ARS, arbitrary, Arthropod Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit. When I got here, they helped build the insectary in the BRI. We're doing their research in here. So we all understand that you can be an expert at one thing, but collaboration really gives the power to move research forward, we understand that and we've always had that very open discussion of how we can help him valve as its as it's moving forward. One of the things that happened early on was the state of Kansas, dedicated $35 million to develop research capabilities here at the BRI, in collaboration with the USDA on diseases that were priorities for NBAF. Unwell, we used it in NBAF study to NBAF but which we could all also handle the BRI there was some very significant hurdles in terms of approvals for us to be approved to work with these pathogens, whether I mean, just like Jim Stack wheat grass, we know were the first non federal non government lab that able to work with some of these pathogens, like African and classical swine fever has never been studied a non federal facility. So we'd be breaking new ground. We have a number of USDA people who are here in town and are at Plum Island and who embark including, for example, the director, Alfonso as adjunct faculty, to different departments in K State that gives them the ability to work closely with us to be on committees and so forth and interact closely. BRI is not just research, it's education and training, we do a huge amount of training. On one of the conduits that link, the BRI and NBAF is educational programs or training programs. So early on, we received an award from Homeland Security to train Principal Investigator scientists. You know that NBAF is a modern replacement for Plum Island, Plum Island. I've visited plumb a few times. But the first time I went up there to meet the scientist, it was a very small room. And like seven people showed up, and I'm thinking, wow, where's everybody else? They said, Oh, well, the other, the other person, the other two people can't make it today. So I was amazed that, you know, in that 350 person facility, there were really only about nine principal investigators. Well, NBAF will have certainly double that, maybe more. So it's critical that they have the right expertise. And we've been involved in the training of principal investigators. Like I said, we got the Homeland Security grant, there was then a USDA award that came out. So we've got five more scientists, graduate students being trained at the moment. The wonderful thing about that particular program is that they are guaranteed positions with the government, but for most certainly NBAF after they complete their degrees. So we're still training those people when NBAF opens, ultimately, we're going to have good case data is going in to, to direct some of that research. Obviously, researchers have research teams. And so we also have another award, largely based here at the BRI. That is training laboratories support staff. So that's, you know, that's an incredibly impactful relationship before and bath ever opens its doors and starts research. And we certainly hope and I was, I now have regular meetings with the director of NBAF and with other USDA, people. We certainly all intend that relationship will not end when NBAF opens its doors but will continue long term. I can certainly see the need and the importance of kind of being connected at the hip between the two facilities. You can ask them again, because then I don't have to answer them off the... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/18442169

Chemistry: A dating game with Dr. Christer Aakeröy, university distinguished professor, Department of Chemistry 03/09/2021

Chemistry: A dating game with Dr. Christer Aakeröy, university distinguished professor, Department of Chemistry In this episode, we welcome Dr. Christer Aakeröy, university distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University. Dr. Aakeröy’s research lab focuses on supramolecular and crystal engineering. By translating molecular function into predictable intermolecular recognition, he is creating versatile pathways for improving processing, performance and shelf life of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, dyes, and energetic materials. Transcript: I'm thrilled to bits with the way that this is working out. And even if we don't make the world's best new fertilizer, I'm still perfectly comfortable with learning so much more about what is required. And maybe I can't make the difference but my students and Ganga’s students and postdocs can take this to the next level and I think that's the legacy that is worth pursuing. Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy. And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast we will visit with Dr. Christer Aakeröy. Dr. Aakeröy is a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at K State. His area of research is focused on the science of communication and change between molecules. This work emphasizes the synthesis of organic molecules, some of which are used in the formation of cocrystals. This versatile material can be used in creating new methods for delivery of important components in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and other areas where controlled directed releases useful. In this podcast we will discuss Dr. Aakeröy's interdisciplinary work with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, Professor of Agronomy here at K State on the targeted release of soil nutrients in crop production. I should say before we start that, unlike my usual self, I'm going to be rather the mirror today. I'm just fascinated by the work that Christer is doing. But I know that you're a chemist. So I know that you'll have a lot smarter questions about Reno that presupposes a lot of don't question. Fair. But you know, and Christer, just for your edification, as I, I'm really fascinated by you have to know that. Obviously, I'm not a chemist. And it's probably the weakest of my subjects when it comes to scientific understanding. I'm really I understand what you're doing. But the CO crystallization that's, I'm, I need some help on that. So just definitely specific growth as we go along to get that but I'm really curious. And I hope that when we leave here, I understand this idea of CO crystallization better. Okay, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna attempt some ill advised or ill conceived analogies in that case, to try to put that science across. And yeah, it might get a little risky at times, but we'll clean you be happy to know that chemistry is only about communication. That's all there is to it. There you go. There you go. I was struck by that. As you know, the first word on your description is communication. And I think, Oh, really? I'm intrigued, but I'm not sure. So let's find out more. To welcome today, our guest Dr. Christer Aakeröy, who is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University. In welcoming Dr. Aakeröy, as I get started here, I would, I would like to say that I have people ask me how something like chemistry fits into the Global Food System. And from my perspective, it's a critical piece. And this is critical as any of the other pieces is as critical as transportation, or Agronomy or Plant Pathology or any of the above. One of the analogies I use frequently is to discuss food from a grocery store or from a farmer's market being at the very tip of the iceberg. And that's where we interface most frequently with the food that we however, the fundamentals that happen in research in the basic sciences and chemistry and physics and those types of areas are at the base of the iceberg. And those are the things that support ongoing abilities to move forward with technologies and that type of thing and it's as critical a piece of the food system as anything. So with that being said, I will then jumped into, again welcoming Dr. Aakeröy, and asked if you could give us a little background on who you are, how you got interested in the work that you're doing. And then maybe we'll just take it from there. Thank you very much. And thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast as well. Maybe we should warn the listeners to this particular episode that I have relatively limited experience with farming or food science, food production, and food distribution. But as a chemist, I still believe that chemistry is underpinning all of these different efforts that we are looking at. So maybe there's going to be something that can be useful to the listeners. At the end of the day. My own background is quite, quite diverse. I grew up in Sweden, I have a Norwegian passport. And I was never ever ever going to be a scientist. My goal when I was in high school was to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I didn't really know the difference between the two at that point. I applied to go to do psychology at Uppsala University in Sweden, they had only 10 positions. And I was the first on the reserve list. So I didn't get introduced ecology unfortunately, as a result that I decided to take a year off. And maybe this was my first contact with food because I took a job in a meat processing plant meat packing and meat processing. I learned a lot about the sort of rather harsh end of the Global Food Systems industry. And I can't really say that it was love at first sight, I have to be perfectly honest. It was long hours hard work. But I learned a lot about people I learned a lot about different skills. And it wasn't really something that I ever thought I do. But I spent a year in a meat packing and meat processing plant. After that I decided to switch so I became a substitute teacher and stuff because I still couldn't get into psychology at Uppsala University. So I became a substitute teacher. And I don't know, if you remember what it was like, at school, when you had a substitute teacher. If you had a substitute teacher, nobody would do anything. But it was to me it was a really, really interesting and valuable experience because you walk into a classroom with maybe 30 or 40 students. They're not interested in you if you're not interested in the topic. And it is really a challenge to try to basically have maybe 30 seconds or a minute to win or lose that battle. You walk in you try to read the room, you try to figure out who how you can communicate with these students. And it turns out that I, I think I won more battles that I lost by and large, which made me realize I wanted to become a teacher at the end of the day. So I went to University eventually. I did Chemistry, and I had minors in Mathematics and Biology and in Pedagogy. So I actually got myself a teaching degree from Uppsala University, I started teaching still never had any intention of becoming a full time proper scientist. Long story short, I had a chance to travel to the UK to do some Chemistry at the University of Sussex, which is south of London. It wasn't really because I was interested in Chemistry, per se. It was more a case of having an opportunity to do live abroad. First London which is which was a fantastic experience. One thing led to another I was offered a place to do a PhD at the University of Sussex. I didn't quite know what a PhD was, unfortunately. So of course I had to say yes, so I accepted Teamspeak and that was in Chemistry. I still didn't really know what I wanted to do at that point, which is strange, because at that point I had a doctoral degree in chemistry. I applied for two jobs. One was the British Petroleum. And one was at Queen's University of Belfast, I interviewed at both places. My interview at Queen's University in Belfast is probably was the other of the whole podcast itself. But I was offered a job at Queen's University Belfast and I stayed there for three years did Inorganic Chemistry. I got tenure. And then I resigned two weeks later because I had been sort of headhunted by Kansas State University. I couldn't really refuse. To be perfectly honest, I never saw myself moving to your living in the United States, let alone in the Midwest, in the middle of the Midwest. But now I've been here for close to over 20 years and certainly from a career perspective and a life perspective. It's probably the most definitely the best decision I ever made. I have, like I said, I've lived in that K State now for over 20 years. My research spans a wide range topics, food size is bad in minor, minor, minor minor, out of that. We did a lot of fundamental research in chemistry. And we can talk more about that in a while. I teach a variety of freshman classes I do, like I still really, really enjoyed the teaching. The bigger the class, the more enjoyment I get out of it, I think. So I can't wait for this particular lockdown and, and zoom based educational methodology to be over so we can actually get that teaching in person again, because luckily, the research is going my students are in the research labs on a regular basis. So we haven't been too badly affected by that. But yeah, I mean, so difficult times, but we're going to get through it. And we're going to get through it because of big science and STEM research. That's basically what's going to help us out in this process. So that's a little bit of a starting point. Well, thank you for that background and overview. i It's interesting to understand the directions and different directions that people take and getting from, you know, what they think they want to do when they're 18 years old, where you actually ended up today and certainly ending up in Manhattan, Kansas is taking you a long way from where you started. Actually all senses that he senses. Absolutely. In reading through the research that you have been most heavily focused on at K State. I keep seeing the term cocrystals over and over again popping up. Can you explain to us in layman's terms a bit about what that research is? What is the cocrystal? And how does it impact research? Right, so let's in that case, we have to probably go back to basics a little bit. So making a contrast is essentially trying to convince different types of molecules to coexist in a crystalline or solid material. And that might sound relatively straightforward. But it turns out that molecules more than likely are not keen to coexist with other molecules that are different from themselves. In the same crystalline, solid environment. In many ways, molecules are rather selfish. They like to hang out with molecules that look exactly like themselves. They are a little bit suspicious. Molecules, they don't look like themselves. So in some ways, they are a little bit like people as well. So one of the one of the buzzwords that we use in my research is that we think we like to talk about the Chemistry that we do in terms of molecular sociology, or psychology, we are basically, we're basically trying to figure out how we can convince molecules to interact productively, to recognize other molecules to bind to other molecules. Because when different molecules bind and hang out together, they can perform and do very, very different things. And there are many analogies that you can make with this. For example, if you have a football team, with only quarterbacks, that football team is not going to win anything at all. But if you have different molecules or players in different positions, then as a whole team, then you can do very, very, very different things. And the same is true for molecules. I think one of the illustrations that we sometimes refer to is that, let's say, let's say if you have a cup of coffee in the morning, and some people for some reason like to put sugar in the coffee. At the end of the day, you forget about a cup of coffee, and you leave the coffee cup sitting for a day or two, you come back to it and the water is gone. And at the bottom of the cup, you will have crystals of caffeine. And you'll have different separate crystals of sugar. Now each trickle contains billions upon billions and billions of molecules of caffeine in caffeine crystals, and billions upon billions of dollars of molecules of sucrose, no sugar in the sugar crystals, you will not find a single molecule being able to fit in to the other type of crystal because they're the molecules are so selective and so specific about what other molecules they're willing to spend time with, and what other molecules that are willing to recognize and bind with. So in that sense, molecules are very, very selfish. So making a cocrystal to figure out what molecules want. And what we tried to do in my group, then we did for a longest time, that was the basic research that we did was to try to interrogate individual molecules and find out. So based upon the shape, the size, the particular functionality of a molecule, what would that molecule look like in a potential partner? Is it something to do with shape? Is it something to do with size? Is it something to do with the different elements that make up that molecule? So in many, many, many early experiments, we played a molecular dating game, if you like. But it's really like a dating game. So we essentially, we introduced one target molecule to another set of molecules, maybe three or four different potential partners. And we let them spend time together, we dissolve them together in some solvent. And as the experiment, figure out, if they did crystallize together in a cocrystal, or if they just went their separate ways. So based upon hundreds, if not 1000s, of experiments, we can begin to figure out dating guidelines for molecules. So this point, we are really treated, that knowing what a molecule wants. So if you can draw a molecule, if you can describe a molecule to me, I can probably give you a pretty decent idea of what kind of partner is the best fit for that molecule. And that is the basis for how we make country schools. So calculus is just a macroscopic overview of that. So we convince one type of molecules to form a new solid material with another type of molecules. And the reason why we want to do that is we want to make new materials where the properties of that material is taking the best of both worlds. And that's really the driving force for making cocrystals. And that's just very, very briefly what a country's length, this might sound a little bit like, like, regular dating, as well. And, um, we have actually made the molecular dating. I'm going to tell you about that. Fascinating. It is fascinating, Christer, this is really helpful to me, I find myself wanting to follow up on several different possible threads of the, you know, human social analogy that you suggest to us. So when you say that you had a dating app for Oculus? I can I assume them that the rules that you have discovered, for what molecules like to hang out with other modern molecules are fairly contextualist or objectives? In other words, I would think that whether or not size or shape or whatever other characteristic is relevant to a good match would depend by and large on what kind of molecule or what class of molecule? I mean, how hard is it to sort of abstract out these rules to other kinds of molecules and larger groups? Yeah, no, I mean, that is that is the the big question, because, obviously, in order to have these, in order to identify these guidelines for molecular dating, they have to be somewhat transferable between classes of compounds and between classes of molecules, you can't just have one set of guidelines for molecule A and then have another set of guidelines for molecule B, because then you're not making any progress. But it turns out that, by a large molecules are just like many of us quite superficial, in that sense, is looked for, for a few couple of key characteristics. They don't really worry too much about personality, initially, at least it's usually about looks in some usually about a trade. And it's usually about appearance. And that typically most frequently leads to a recognition event, which leads to binding. And once that binding takes place, the chances are that you are going to poetry's to where both partners are present together, whether the properties of that material are going to be better or worse than those expressed by the two individuals. That is difficult to predict. But the big thing the molecular dating app that my students put together, essentially will be really, really, really somewhat frightening. primitive in essence, because you've put in a few descriptors of your molecule, and then the program will list a set of potential partners as likely, very likely or highly unlikely to be suitable candidates. And that's it. So it's, it's a swipe left, swipe right kind of deal. But just for molecules. Wow, you didn't know that about molecules. So they had personalities that had a social life like that, did you? I had no idea. No, I did not. Ultimately, the reason why we want to pursue this is that, for example, if I can, there is the first application we looked at here was actually in the pharmaceutical industry. Because it turns out that a vast number of potentially useful pharmaceutical drugs fail to reach the patient, because they have, they may have a really good biological properties, biological activity, but they have very poor physical properties, physical properties, like solubility, for example, you'd be astounded at how many compounds fail in development, because they're not soluble in water. Now, if a drug isn't soluble in water, it's not going to be good to water based organisms like us. So what we tried to do in that context was to try to combine the biologically active, maybe a cancer drug, which was poorly poorly soluble in water, with a co former, a partner that was very, very soluble in water. Now, if we convinced the two to live together in one crystalline material, we could take advantage of the favorable biological activity of the cancer drug, and the favorable physical water solubility or the other component. And that will then take us from something that couldn't possibly make it to the market into a formulation that potentially could make it to the market because now, it combined the best of both worlds, trying to figure that out in advance, is still something that we can't do with too much certainty. For the longest time, we would still be trying to work out how we get those molecules to live together, and that we have a pretty good handle on. you, in some cases drives the process by a solvent that is almost partitioning, or do you have to add energy to the system to get it to just fleetingly change? Its its three dimensional property, so it would then start it would interact? And then once it's sort of caught? Yeah, I was gonna say, Yeah, well, not to push this analogy too far. But initially, we made we do all these experiments in solution. So we have to have a solvent that we can use. And more often than not, it's the solvent is some sort of alcohol. I'm not saying that that is helping the molecules to get together. But you need to find a solvent, it could be, it could be an alcoholic, could be water, it could be acetone, it could be chloroform, it could be all sorts of things. But you need some sort of solvent in which both components are reasonably comfortable. Because if they're both reasonably... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/18252341

Focus on Nutrition, Behavior and Lifestyle with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in food, nutrition, dietetics and health. 02/23/2021

Focus on Nutrition, Behavior and Lifestyle with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in food, nutrition, dietetics and health. In this episode, we talk with , associate professor in The at Kansas State University. Dr. Rosenkranz's primary research is focused on the influence of physical activity, sedentary behavior, nutrition and obesity on cardiovascular and metabolic clinical health outcomes. Her work has assisted in a successful application to the Food and Drug Administration to have resistant starches four added to its definition of fiber. Transcript: Focus on Nutrition, Behavior and Lifestyle with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health. If you're an expert in one area and not the others, it's important to have a strong team around you who can help understand the other behaviors because there's such an interaction between them. And if you're not accounting for those other behaviors in some way, shape or form, you actually may come up with an answer that's quite a bit different than where the truth actually lies. And so I always think having nutrition and physical activity in or you know, information or expertise on your team is really important, no matter if you're, you know, on one side or the other at that interaction. Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy. And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. From an individual's perspective, all of the things that go into producing, transporting and distributing food is only supportive of what we consume. The food we eat directly affects our health and along with lifestyle food is a major component in influencing overall well being. In today's podcast we visit with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz. Dr Rosenkranz is an associate professor in the Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health here at Kansas State University. She's a recent recipient of a Global Food System seed grant where she is studying the effect of fiber and resistant starch concentrations in food and their impact on the cardio metabolic outcomes in humans. Her broader area of interest includes behavioral aspects of lifestyle on health outcomes with a focus on nutrition and dietary intake. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. And welcome to the Global Food Systems podcast, Something to Chew On. Could you give us a little background on who you are and how you got interested in your area of teaching and research at K State? Absolutely. So I feel like I've been around a long time at this point. And my background goes way way back in terms of where my interests kind of come from. So I'll try to give you the short version. But so I graduated from Manhattan High School here in Manhattan, Kansas, and basically did my undergrad in psychology and then did a master's degree here at K State in kinesiology and specifically kind of exercise physiology area. And there I got, you know, I became really interested in taking some nutrition courses and I had been an athlete pretty much all of my life. So between my master's degree and my PhD, I went to work for USA Triathlon, I traveled around and put on coaching education clinics, and my husband was involved in junior national team triathlon training. And so obviously, with sport, nutrition became a really critical topic. And so building off of my master's degree, I decided that I wanted to come back and actually get a PhD in human nutrition. So my two loves our exercise physiology and human nutrition. And my research really is exciting to me, because I often combine those two primary loves that I have so kind of looking at both mechanistic as well as applied approaches to understanding the influence of, of lifestyle, on the whole on cardio metabolic health outcomes. And so that's really kind of what drives the very large umbrella under which my research sits. Specific to this project. I was really, really fortunate that Dr. Mark Cobb was a mentor of mine for quite a long time and we knew each other speaking of small worlds that we were just talking about, he and I did triathlons together for a number of years and he helped to mentor me and he introduced me to this current collaboration that I've got going on sort of multi pronged across the grain sciences and industry, they bakery science and working with MGP ingredients. So we were really interested in looking at the effects of fiber consumption on cardio metabolic outcomes. And then we got really interested in this resistant starch kind of world. And again, this is all really I owe this connection, this collaboration to Dr. Hobbs. So I would be remiss if I did not mention that. And so really, some really exciting findings that we had led me to continue on in this work. And it was an opportunity to allow my graduate students to obtain training that was really transdisciplinary, which is also really exciting to me. And I think one of the real goals here is to help to train students to fulfill the industry needs at the end of the day. So understanding those connections between brain science and industry, and human nutrition, metabolic health out, and how that interfaces with the FDA and their regulatory processes, has been a really big learning experience, not only for myself, but for my students. So there's a very long winded short answer to your question. No, that's great. So the what you were talking about on the resistance starch is that the seed grant, the GFS seed grant that you're referring to are is more expensive than that. Okay. Yeah, so the GFS seed grant is kind of the latest development in terms of that collaboration, because we've worked on a few different projects with the same team partners leading into the latest efforts for the seed grant, which the seed grant is really meant to examine the opportunity for making further health claims related to resistant starch for being able to meet the FDA regulatory guidelines for making such health claims and involve a little bit further work from from where we've been, which we were involved very, very recently, just within these last couple of years in helping to get Rs four resistant starch for designated as a fiber. And so that was sort of my introduction into this real regulatory world at the FDA. So I was really fortunate to have some strong partners who obviously had done that quite a bit before. So yeah, the GFS grant is kind of our next steps. So things that we started to talk about while we were doing some shorter term studies, while we're working on that fiber classification, kind of like, well, where are we going to go from here and say, we developed this collaboration together to work on the longer term consumption question and how that impacted cardio metabolic health and in more particularly, our bad cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol, as well as blood pressure. So in terms of FDA regulations, those are the two primary outcomes that they're really in, they're really interested in in terms of being able to make that cardiovascular health claim. That's fascinating. As I was reading through this, I was thinking back to the work I did over the past. I mean, I, in my past life, I did a lot of work with the food industry and with FDA on exactly what you're talking about here, and would be really interested in understanding how your interaction worked in getting that process in place in the classification. I, the discussions on fiber are ongoing with the food industry, as you probably learned in that activity. And interesting to know where the university fits in those kinds of discussions. And how about that piece work? Yeah, absolutely. And so as a cereal chemist, you probably actually have a much more in depth knowledge in terms of some of the structure function interfaces when it comes to fiber. So part of our team, not only Dr. Mark Cobb, and myself but Dr. Ody Maningat who works with MGP ingredients and Atchison, Kansas, and he's their vice president for ingredients or research and development and he's their Chief Science Officer. He's a K State alum. And, and you guys probably already know him and then Also classmates of both John and mine. So that small world keeps cropping up again and again, doesn't it? Along with Ody or Dr. Maningat I should call him his formal title, but Dr. Paul Seib, who's also emeritus professor of grain science and industry and then Dr. Yong-Cheng Shi has been a part of our team as well. So sort of together with them. We're talking about it You know, things that are going to be beneficial to MGP ingredients that also are possible with the expertise that we have at K State. And certainly I defer to Dr. Seib and Dr. Shi and Dr. Maningat when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of the structure of those starches and how they intersect with human health. And my heart is really, as a clinical researcher, and I work exclusively with human subjects, I really haven't done much with rodent models, although a little bit on collaborative teams. So really kind of understanding how we would translate these questions into projects that are going to meet the requirements of FDA and what they're looking for. So I had the opportunity to sit in on some calls with the FDA with my whole team around and then and then we would be able to meet up afterwards and talk about what the primary concerns from the FDA perspective were based on the existing literature and why in the initial classification for resistant starch, really resistant starch types, one, two and three were indicated as fiber but resistance charge for was not and sort of understanding why the studies that had been done previously, were not enough to make the case for a fiber classification for that particular type of resistance starch. So my job really is working with Dr. Haub, who's the other human clinical researcher on the team to come up with ways that we could design a study that would allow us to assist MGP and grant scientists and industry in translating that work that they're doing based on crystalline structure based on processes that they use to create this resistant starch type that comes really from wheat, which obviously has a huge impact on on the state of Kansas, in more ways than one to translate that to a project that's going to be acceptable, according to the FDA criteria. And I don't know if that answered your question or not, but if not, I'm happy to follow up. No, that's great. Thank you. Yeah, sometimes when I'm talking with relatives, or friends, or people I don't even know. And they find out that I'm a food scientist, or cereal chemist or whatever. They'll ask me to de convolute some terms that we use all the time and understand and they don't have a clue. And one of them, you mentioned, I think about the second sense of your when you started speaking and it was a lifestyle. It's an umbrella term, but what are we actually saying? What components go together to make different lifestyle? So obviously, that's a great question. And I appreciate that so much, because I think as a researcher, we sometimes forget how much we know and how specific our research vernacular is. So when I say lifestyle, I've got something really, really specific in mind. And they're really a compilation of different behaviors, that definitely have strong research support behind them in terms of their ability to impact health outcomes, and in particular, health outcomes that are, you know, non communicable chronic diseases that are really in the top 10 or so of our most prevalent causes of death. And so I am really talking about physical activity or exercise. I'm talking about your dietary intake, talking about sleep, I'm talking about, you know, some of the cancer preventative behaviors, like wearing your seatbelt, not smoking, using your sunscreen. And so if we kind of take a look at those things together, then that's what we're really kind of trying to look at is what are the effects of these behavioral aspects on really important health outcomes? And obviously, I've focused primarily on the nutrition or dietary intake, and then I, I still dabble quite a bit with physical activity and exercise and the interactions that are specific to those two key critical energy balance related lifestyle factors. Excellent. So there's no single, one single definition and if the researcher developed that, in the best way to utilize it to to get the answers that they hoped there were to get the answers they're testing for. I suppose. Yeah, it's a great point because I think if you're an expert in one area and not the others, it's important to have a strong team around you who can help understand the other behaviors because there's such an interaction between them. And if you're not accounting for those other behaviors in some way, shape or form, you actually may come up with an answer that's quite a bit different than where the truth actually lies. And so I always think having nutrition and physical activity in or you know, information or expertise on your team is really important, no matter if you're, you know, on one side or the other at that interaction. Great. Thanks. Sara, if I could follow up, I had a similar question to John, as I reviewed your data and your research, a term kept coming up that occurred to us a couple of times already, and that's cardio metabolic outcomes. I frankly, I thought about that a lot. And I thought I don't know what those are now, I've heard you mentioned them. And I'm getting an idea LDL and HDL levels, blood pressure, could you talk a little bit more and maybe provide a few more concrete examples of what cardio metabolic outcomes are? And maybe that will provide a chance to sort of talk a little bit even more about the interaction of nutrition and exercise in relationship to our cardio? Cardio metabolic? Absolutely. Another really great question and, and friendly reminder to me that I need to not speak in the way that I speak sometimes, and I apologize for that. No, no, you don’t apologize. I just, you know, for someone who doesn't deal with these issues every day, it's pretty understandable that we come up with specialized languages, right? We all fall prey to that. It's more efficient. Yes, that's exactly right. And I know that I'm speaking to a whole bunch of very knowledgeable people. So for me, cardiometabolic is, is kind of, if you speak with young people, today, they have this term, it's probably already out of vogue at the moment called shipping, where you're kind of putting two things together. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And that is, you know, cardiovascular risk factors, and then metabolic risk factors. And so we know that there is a lot of shared risk when you're talking about people who have cardiovascular disease. And people who have diabetes mellitus type, type two diabetes is a one that we're most familiar with. And so cardiometabolic risk factors for me are ones that we would understand from the research literature can help to predict risk for cardiovascular mortality, or cardiovascular morbidity or sort of complications related to cardiovascular disease. And we know that people with type two diabetes mellitus often have stronger, much stronger risk of death from cardiovascular disease related issues as compared to people without type two diabetes mellitus. And so these risk factors that I think about are you know, you go to your doctor and you get your blood test, and you get screened for your total cholesterol, your bad cholesterol, your your healthy cholesterol, your HDL, your triglyceride levels, they'll test your fasting glucose, which definitely is related to not only cardiovascular disease, but also to that diabetes mellitus issue, blood pressure, would be another one that crosses over quite a bit. And then we think about things like body composition, or waist circumference, BMI. And then, you know, really, there's some specialized things that I've looked at a lot with my research, and that is markers of inflammation. And we know, for example, that C reactive protein is a global marker of inflammation. And that inflammation in the body is sort of what connects the risk for a lot of these different chronic diseases, which are big causes of death for us in terms of the United States and other westernized types of countries. And I think the other one that I look at often is things like insulin, and that's probably familiar to most people as it relates to diabetes and you know, controlling blood glucose. So insulin and glucose outcomes would be definitely sitting more primarily in that metabolic world, but certainly crossover into cardiovascular disease too. So the reason I kind of combine those into one term is because there's so much commonality there. So those would be really the primary things that we look at is insulin, glucose, inflammation or oxidative stress, and then our lipids and blood glucose, blood pressure, and other things related to the metabolic syndrome, which again, crossover between cardiovascular disease and And the more metabolic types of disorders or diseases that we have. One thing and again, reading through some of the background that you've got in your training, the Bs in psychology or BA in psychology has me intrigued to understand where that fits into what you're currently teaching how you're doing, how you approach the work that you're doing. Now, what a great question. And something that I often talk to my students about. And, you know, that is, my path toward where I am now has been quite circuitous is how I would describe it. I definitely didn't follow that trajectory of, you know, bachelor's to Master's, straight on to PhD and on into my academic career, I've traveled a lot and had a lot of experiences, but my BA in psychology is still foundational to the things that I do, and I think allows me to understand not only the mechanistic or physiological side of the work that I do, but also the behavioral aspects. And so I think, for me, I think about, for example, I used to teach a class called exercise testing and prescription when I was a student within the Department of Kinesiology. And one of the things that I would often mention to my students was that I could write the perfect exercise training program that would, you know, be almost guaranteed to get somebody the results that they wanted. But if they didn't do it, then it was literally worthless. And, you know, similarly, that holds true for a diet, like if I prescribe somebody or write a specific diet for somebody to follow, but it's impossible for them to adhere to, or they're unwilling to, or unable to, for some reason, then it's not worth anything at the end of the day. And so when I was getting my undergraduate degree, I really had in the back of my mind, that I wanted to work with people with eating disorders. And I had some opportunities to do that I was involved in running an eating disorder support group and had some experiences that are somewhat sort of seared into my brain, that made me realize that it was not work that I felt that I could do without really negatively impacting my own mental well being. And I really got involved with some coursework, as well as some research that had to do more with behavioral modification, and specific specifically around cigarette smoking cessation, and had an opportunity to really kind of get into some of the behavioral world around those lifestyle factors that we were talking about earlier. And so that, you know, that is really still a big part of what I... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/18059624

The Power of Passion: The next generation of researchers with Dr. Valentina Trinetta, assistant professor in animal science and industry 02/09/2021

The Power of Passion: The next generation of researchers with Dr. Valentina Trinetta, assistant professor in animal science and industry In this episode, we discuss one professor’s pure joy in impacting the community by keeping food safe. 's focuses on understanding the ecology of foodborne pathogens and identifying microbial entry routes into the food supply chain. Dr. Trinetta also works on the development and implementation of antimicrobial intervention strategies to reduce and control foodborne pathogens in different commodities. Transcript: The Power of Passion: The next generation of researchers with Dr. Valentina Trinetta, assistant professor in animal science and industry We are in a phase where the food system has become so complex that we cannot not consider it all the part of this chain or this system. Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy. And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist. Hello everyone and welcome back to Kansas State University's podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast we visit with Dr. Valentina Tonetta. Dr. Trinetta has passion for understanding ways to keep food safe is outpaced only by her passion for teaching. Her research focus is on understanding foodborne pathogens ecology and identifying microbial entry routes into the farm for food supply chain. Dr. Trinetta also works on the development and implementation of anti microbial intervention strategies to reduce and control foodborne pathogens in commodities. Dr. Trinetta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry at Kansas State. She carries a BS in Food Biotechnology from the University of Pisa Italy, a master's in Genetics, Biotechnology for food safety from the University of Naples, Italy, and a PhD in food science and technology from the University of Milan, Italy. Dr. Valentina Fernando, we want to welcome you to the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. Before we get started, in our discussion today, I would like to ask you to visit with us a bit about some of your background and how you got to become so interested in the area that you work in today. Thank you for the invitation. As you probably understand from my accent, I am Italian. I was thinking when I was a child that I wanted to be a medical doctor. But I realize that I'm very afraid of blood and needles. And so I decided to become a doctor of food. So since my start in the university, all my degrees are in Food Science. My masters and my PhD are in Food Science. And slowly I got very interested in food safety. I spent part of my PhD at Penn State University and really fell in love with research and the opportunity that I could see at Penn State and in general, doing your research in the United States. Therefore I continue with a postdoc at Purdue. And before starting my position at Kansas State in 2016, I worked for a corporation a chemical company Ecolab in Minneapolis, and in all my experience I work with different commodity but always in food safety and trying to control them transfer foodborne pathogens in the food supply chain. Since 2016, I moved to Manhattan, Kansas, with my family. And I am an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry. And I'm also a faculty of the Food Science Institute. I have a heavy load of teaching Food Microbiology and then all the rest of my appointment is research. Very interesting. I see you had mentioned that you are in the Department of Animal Science and Industry. But it looks to me from looking at your areas of expertise in the studies that you've obviously done before you came to K State. You got interested in capabilities for reaching beyond just the animal science area? Is that correct? Yes, exactly. I'm working a lot on product safety. And even if I am part of the Animal Sciences and Industry department being part of the Food Sciences Institute is key, because I'm fortunate enough to be connected with the multicultural department of Kansas state and with some faculty in Olathe campus, and they're pretty strong in Urban Food System. And the last three years, we have been pretty successful on working on produce safety. In Kansas and Missouri, we do have several projects, looking at improving shelf life and quality of berries, trying to help the Kansas producer with transportation and ensuring quality of these small crops, we recently got a bigger grant on sponsored by USDA NIFA, to help always grower in Kansas semi story to make sure their water that they use for crop production is a safe. And so this has given me a little bit of versatility of not always working with the same type of commodity, but working with different people, different reality, different food matrices, and trying to apply the same type of mental approach, but in a different way. Because the situation and the production of produce is completely different than animal food. So help me out a little bit I people as I talk to people or students and talk about the supply chain, and now they're starting to hear people are starting to hear about the supply chain is that applies to the COVID vaccine. How would you define the supply chain? What's the good definition for that that we could use? Or I could use as a starting point in talking to two people or students? So I think I would and this is also based on what in my previous job that represented the supply chain for the corporation or for the company. So I always refer to that situation, at least in my mind and to talk with students, I think we can define production chain from farm to fork, but I would define supply chain all those operations that transport the product. So when I talk about supply chain, I always refer to the part that goes towards retailer when the finished product is produced and there needs to reach the consumer they. Regarding your question about COVID vaccine, I was fortunate enough that to be involved in a recent grant getting sponsored by USDA NIFA was a emergency call. And we put together a set of experts from Kansas State University. And since the strength of the Food Sciences Institute and animal science is the ability to work in the food wings at the BRI we partner with a virologist at the vet school and we are going to see all the parameter that can in the production part of animal food that can influence the spread of COVID-19. So we are excited we started officially this project in September. We are still at the BSL two level working with surrogate we are ready to start with the BSL three virus at the BRI in January. We are going to evaluate air flow different surfaces, foot contact, not foot contact and understand how the food industry can use the tool that we already have as disinfection and sanitation to try to overcome the spread of COVID. Valentina, I want to learn more about this research regarding COVID-19. And that you're working on. But before we leave this concept of the production chain from farm to fork, I wanted to follow up on Jon's question a little bit. I think that that's a very interesting and informative way to distinguish the supply chain from the production chain. I, as I listened to you talk about, for example, the work that you're doing with K State Olathe, and water in the urban food system, I was reminded that, at least it seems to me that food safety really emphasizes that food systems are a system and a very complex system. I mean, I think about how contamination with water can end up contaminating crops and end up contaminating a salad that ends up in a restaurant somewhere. So what I'm getting at is, is it really a chain? Or is it something even more complex than a chain that you as a food safety scientists have to think about in terms of like larger, complex interactions? I think it’s more complex solving, as compared to the mere definition of a chain. And I'm gonna give you another example of another type of research that I'm doing that seems not connected, but I think it is. So I am working on a lot in feed safety. I'm working with this swine group in the animal science department. Because I came across this very problematic stereotype of salmonella that recently has been seen pretty often in United States at the retail level or production level. So in piece of pork meat, we had several outbreaks with these salmonella. And so I was reading several article and I came across a work that some professor from the vet school did on African swine fever, demonstrating that one of the way to turn off transmission of this virus is through feed, and I start researching about these salmonella serotype. And there are a lot of entities such in Canada and North Europe that did preliminary study. And they found a lot of the stereotype in our feed and feed meal. So I was fortunate enough to partner with this swine group at Kansas State and is almost four years there. We are researching the presence of the serotype from feed. Now we did the feed, we are investigating the farm. And they recently got a GFS a seed grant through the Global Food System Initiative, where we are gonna understand if we've lived pig, if they drink or they eat or they ingest somehow this pathogen if they keep it inside their body and then at slaughter, there is still the partition. And so like this pathogen can go at retail level. So what I'm trying to say is that, that I don't think it's a matter of water meat to anymore I think we are in a phase where the food system has become so complex that we cannot not consider it all the part of this chain or this system. So it's very fascinating for me also investigating what we call pre harvest beside harvest. And I think I came to this consideration because working at Ecolab that is a chemical company and see all the work that they do with the food industry and with their client on giving information and giving tools for cleaning and disinfection. I am pretty comfortable with saying that the industry as all the metal the potential to produce safe food. I think we under look some points that are coming before the production. Right? Right. That's a wonderful example and exactly what I was getting at. And it's a great example not just because of your point of looking at a different point in the food system, but also because it required some interdisciplinary outreach and connection on your part that I would assume is absolutely vital. Now in tackling those complex interaction, I we had, we had working with a historian, because that was the migration of these foodborne pathogen from Europe to United States until 15 years ago, this particular serotype of salmonella was never seen in the United States on log in. And so we are trying to understand if there was a change in the in how this one industry worked, that allow the transition the migration of these microorganisms from Europe to United States. And so we have a KPI in the history department that is helping with this research. So has been very interesting also for that. Absolutely no, that is that is even more interdisciplinary than I realized. That's great. Thank you. And even more complicated, because if it's coming from Europe, and then goes into another complete, I guess web if you want, or set of connections. So it's not not just finding the particular serotype here and tracing it down. How'd it go make it to the US to begin with. And then since it's gotten in the US, that's another set of problems. So it appears that it keeps the idea of mitigating the problem as one of the potential focuses of the research. Beyond just figuring out now it's here we have this problem. How do we get rid of it? How do we control it? I love the fact that you're working with somebody in the history department. I know that you've heard my spiel before Valentina, but just the critical importance of bringing in various focused ideas on how to tackle big problems is so important. And sometimes we forget about the impact of what the humanities brings to some of these questions. I think that's wonderful. Sometimes is difficult to make this connection. So the Global Food System Initiative, really gave me the possibility to stretch my mind a little bit and say, Okay, this is the occasion where I can try to truly do a multi or interdisciplinary project. So I contacted the professor from these departments. Yeah, no, that's wonderful. You know, I'm curious, going back to the discussion that you provided a bit on the research you're doing in livestock processing facilities, where do you see the information you develop is going to be critically important. But I'm seeing that we are hopefully going to watch this COVID issue go away over the next year? Where do you see some of that information and work that you're developing now sit after this as this part of our lives is closed up? You know, once we get our hands around COVID? Are there going to be outcomes of that that will be impacting the industry long term and how they do the work in those facilities? Or is it something that will be shelved until the next time we have something like that happen? So my hope is that what we produce is gonna be relevant for COVID-19, but also for how to better mitigate if we have another problem of this type. I think our approach is that since we are not we did not propose the development of new cleaning or disinfectant tool, we are going to work with what the industry is already using. And we did it on purpose because we know that sometimes the adoption of a new system becomes too difficult for the food industry. So we part we start with the advantage of proposing to the industry what they already know this step forward. The ease that we are gonna try to combine factor and parameter that sometimes been looking a separate way that can be pH or concentrate or temperature, and we are going to try to combine them and see and see a way to enhance the capability of these chemical compounds against COVID. Now, I think all our study will be applicable to other type of pathogen and viruses. Also, because unfortunately, we are seeing an increase of antimicrobial resistance. So, the fact that we are going to offer also results on the physiology of the virus and what is happening when the virus is treated with this compound can be useful if we see in a rise of salmonella, multi resistance pathogen in the poultry industry, understand and take the results that we are going to produce from this grant. So I do not see it only for COVID-19. I see it as the way to explore with the tool that we have now, but enhance and improve if something unexpected is gonna happen again, to make our food safe. Is it possible that contamination by other microorganisms, salmonella, for example, work could actually create a micro environment that would facilitate the length of life of COVID 19? So it's something that we cannot disclose, because I saw a lot of study where there is a symbiotic relationship between viruses and bacteria. And an example of that is not a virus, for example. But I think COVID is so new, that we do not have that knowledge yet, but definitely think that there is an interaction. Thank you. Don't question makes me think of another that's much more simplistic, and it will but will show my lack of rudimentary knowledge and biology. But I was I'm struck by the fact that Valentina, you usually work with bacteria like listeria, E coli, salmonella, and now but I mean, as you as you referenced in some earlier discussion, as well as this project, regarding COVID, you're being brought in to think about viruses in the way that they're transmitting. And under what conditions is that? Is that a relatively easy jump for someone like yourself, who's usually working with different kinds of bacterial pathogens instead of viruses? Or do you just provide different kinds of expertise to the project? How does? How does that translation work? Yeah, so I'm not a virologist, and bacteria and virus are completely different. So we made sure we had the virologist in the team. I think we got this grant, because we brought in a different perspective of how the food industry work, what they are using for clean sanitation, how food products are produced, what they need to do the in the operator and the employer in order to producing keep the environment and the products safe. So we brought in all this knowledge, that is definitely definitely applicable to virus. Now we needed the virology is because the mode of action and how to cultivate and how to enumerate and recover the virus is completely different as compared to bacteria. So I think is a good example of synergistic activity. And all of us bring a different perspective. Right? No, I agree. And as I hear you talk about that synergy it, it just makes me think about how how interesting it is that the safety of the workers in these facilities is directly related to or connected to the safety of the food and the way that it's pretty I don't know, maybe it's, it's not that revolutionary of an idea and for food safety, like yourself, I'm sure it's not. But I don't think I would have automatically put those two kinds of risks together as as interacting and influencing one another. Actually, the majority of foodborne illnesses that we have is because of hygiene, or poor hygiene of worker or wrong way to handle food. So they are very much related. They very are connected. Right, Does the neurologist that you're working with, Can you I guess the term would be carry a culture of, of COVID? Is there a way to keep it alive for an extended period of time outside a system that that has the cells that it would normally populate? Yes, because we will, we are working on these trying to keep the virus alive for longer because our study is going to be over time at a different temperature. And we are going to understand the survivability of the virus for example, on Stainless steal at refrigerated temperature for one week. But we have been reading also that there is a group that was able to recover a COVID on a piece of meat to when this piece of meat was frozen for at least two weeks. So we do have some evidence that the virus can survive. Yeah, it's ironic that you should be investigating it living longer, rather than shorter, even a good experimental reason. Volunteer, I really look forward to hearing the results of that research, as I'm sure many people will be very interested, you know, in Kansas and around the world. But I haven't I have a completely different line of questioning for you. In the materials to prepare for today. We were given some information about some of your social media posts. And I have to say I had a lot of fun looking at your labs Twitter account. And I wonder what's going on with that spinach that you posted? Can you explain a little bit about the experimentation that's being done on the color of this spinach? Yeah, so I need to say that all my graduate students and undergraduate students are helping me a lot to be active on social media. And after I'm going to explain you about the spinach, I want to tell you what I had my undergraduate student do for food, food micro but so this project of the spinach is funded by KDA. So is really to help increase the production of safe products in Kansas, a lot of time, especially in the last two years, I think all of you heard about outbreak related to lead to and leafy green. So we also know that consumer one grass organic, natural way to preserve their food, they don't like the idea of adding a lot of chemicals. This step of washing leafing leafy green spinach salad is key to prevent... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/17886047

Tackling the dynamics of food-energy-water systems with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering 01/26/2021

Tackling the dynamics of food-energy-water systems with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering In this episode, we welcome , assistant professor of at Kansas State University. Her research focuses on the complex dynamics of food-energy-water systems. Vaishali’s modeling is based on farm management scenarios and integrates agro-hydrologic models and climate data. This research couples human activity and natural systems with applications in sustainable agriculture, water resources management and applied hydrology with particular interest in the Ogallala Aquifer and farming in the Great Plains. Transcript: Tackling the dynamics of food-energy-water systems with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering So, you know, when I tell people that I'm a modeler, they're like, you know, she sits in front of a computer and punches numbers and you know, but then there's that part of it where you translate that information into tools that the stakeholders can use. And that to me, is, is a really important component. Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy. And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast, we will visit with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, a small but mighty advocate for tackling the question of climate, water availability and crop management in today's challenging environment. Dr. Sharda’s main area of study deals with modeling based on farm management scenarios, integrating agro-hydrologic models and climate data. This research couples human activity and natural systems with applications in sustainable agriculture, water resources management, and applied hydrology with particular interest in the Ogallala Aquifer and farming in the Great Plains. Dr. Vaishali Sharda is an Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Kansas State University. Sharda carries a BS and MS in Agricultural Engineering and Farm Power and Machinery respectively from Punjab Agricultural University, and a PhD from Auburn University in Biosystems Engineering. I would like to welcome you, Dr. Vaishali Sharda to the podcast today, we would like to learn a little bit more about your background, about who you are, what got you interested in what you're doing, maybe how you got to K State, and then we'll open this up for a good discussion with Dr. Lind and Dr. Faubion. So would you like to start by telling us a little bit about yourself? Sure. Uh, first of all, I like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity. I definitely appreciate it. Talking about my background. So I'm originally from India. I did my undergraduate and my master's in Agricultural Engineering from Punjab Agricultural University in Punjab, which is not India, and I applied for my master's in Agricultural Engineering or Water Resources in 2001. And then September 11 happened and I did not get a visa to come to the United States. So then, you know, life happens, I got married, had a daughter and then my husband applied for a PhD and he got admission at Auburn University. So we all came together to Auburn. I had already given my GRE and my Teufel with the plan that I would also start my PhD once we are in the United States. So and that is what happened. I started my PhD at Auburn as well. I changed my field a little bit. I used to work more in farm machinery, but then I moved on to the Water Resources and Agricultural Water became more of my research area. After finishing my PhD at Auburn in 2012. I moved to Washington State University on a postdoc opportunity which was at a research station in Prosser which is in Yakima Valley, and I used to work with a unit called Ag Weather net. So they are basically a network of agriculture of weather stations. And but the director there was very involved with crop modeling. So that's how I started using crop models extensively for water resources management. I worked there for about a year and a half and that's when my husband got his faculty position at K State. And we moved from Washington State to Manhattan and I was still working remotely for Ag Weather Net for quite some time after we moved to Manhattan And as it is with mostly with, you know, dual career professionals at one place, it is not easy to get employed at the same Institute. So we kind of worked around that for a little bit, I worked at University of Nebraska Lincoln for about two years at their water center. And I was part of the Ogallala Water Cap, which is a USDA NIFA funded project. And we looked extensively at integrating agricultural models, hydrologic models, economic models, and using climate information to inform these disintegration. So I worked both in Nebraska and Kansas as part of this project. And while I was still working at UNL, I got a, I got this assistant professor position here at K State, which tied up really well since I was already working both in Kansas, and Nebraska. So it was an easy transition for me. And so I started working part time at K State. And then in fall 2019, I started my tenure track position at BAE and I have continued my work on integrating crop models and hydrologic models, I have gained more knowledge about economic models and a big appreciation of the socio economic impact of everything that we do as engineers, as water resource managers. So I'm incorporating more of that into my research. And that is how this idea about this proposal, the Global Foods Seed Grant that we got came up to kind of integrate the information, and, you know, have that bridge between the two disciplines. So that's how it happened. That's a brief introduction. No, that's very good. Thank you so much. It gives us a good understanding of how you got to where you are today. And clearly, there's a good solid background in the in the research area in the Great Plains, in areas where water is critical to to the agricultural business side of things, I was looking at some of the information that was provided on your background and work and one of the questions that I had is, you talked about just a minute ago about the social socio economic interface there. How do you get the information that you're working on to the user? Or how do you make that impact? Either the grower or the, you know, those folks that are being directly impacted by the the information that you're developing? Yes, thank you for that question. Maureen, I think we rely heavily on the extension component of the land grant system. So while working at Washington State and even you are now and that case, day two, we have always had the opportunity to work with Extension agents, whether those are county agents, because they actually connect really well with the producers. Now, I have been to a lot of meetings with that, where I have directly interacted with producers, and somehow they place their trust in in the extension component of all their all the land grad schools. So I think it is a great connection. And working in the climate change climate variability area. Initially, I think we you know, as a graduate student, I realized that producers have their mindset. And they have their beliefs, which has come from many, many years of experience. And they don't like when a scientist who's probably half their age comes and challenges it, and tries to tell them that you should not be doing a certain thing this way, rather doing it my way. So that is, I think, where the extension people come in really helpful because they know the connection, they know the ways and they have that capability to translate your very technical information into turns where producers understand it and appreciate it and are perceptive of it. So I think I would say that extension plays a big role. And at K State at the Southwest Research and Extension Center in Garden City, Dr. Jonathan Aguilar is he's a great asset to all the work that we do and he helps to connect our work to the farmers there. We can we conduct field days of a lot of producers in the region come and listen to what is being done what is new and especially specifically in irrigation research, and and they pay attention. And they are very open to adopting new technologies or ways to conserve water to sustain the life of the Ogallala Aquifer specifically. If I can follow up on that Maureen, I really appreciate the question. I've had it on my list too. And I, you know, I take your point about some voices, just having more resonance with the farm audiences than others. And everything in the social scientific literature about diffusion of innovations would indicate that, you know, you're absolutely right, you, you talk to the people who are closest and already have entrusted the producers. But I have to tell you that as I read your piece on ideal irrigation rates in Texas, High Plains with soybeans, I grew up on Nebraska farm on a corn and soybean farm. I know what a you know, what a visceral decision it is, whether to irrigator on or not. And as I read that piece, I thought, wow, this is so immediate, to the decision making of every farmer with a center pivot in now, obviously, that was in a particular context. And part of the argument of the article is, it's going to vary by every context. But what I'm getting at is, I don't quite want to let you off the hook. Surely, there's a way that you can go about your research, which provides information that's really useful and immediate to farmers. And it seems to me that that's what you're doing in your research. Did you ever or do you think about the end user when you're designing your questions and designing your research? Right, right. And we totally do. And that's where decision support tools come into picture as well, you know, you get there. I mean, farmers are one of the smartest people that are out there, you know, you tell them that this is the reason behind doing something that they're we're asking them to do or we're recommending, they'll listen to you. And that's where decision support tools come into picture where you give them an app, for example, with I have a farmer in Nebraska, who we worked with extensively and Ogallala water cap, and he told me about a time that he has 42 apps on his phone that he uses to kind of to manage. And I mean, given that his farm is huge, he has a huge operation, and you know, all kinds of different enterprises. But this is where I think you know, if you want to, I know the context of your question. So decision support tools, and designing them in a way that they're appealing. And that they're user friendly, the interface is not overwhelming. So that you know, you just punch in simple numbers, and we can give you a suggestion of when to irrigate, you know what your soil moisture is like you from right from, say feeling the soil, to relying on the soil moisture sensor data, and then inputting those parameters and then coming up with an irrigation strategy. So that is partially what we talked about in that paper that you're referring to the soybean study in Texas High Plains, there is another paper that I'm currently working on for Kansas, it's for GMD three, and I work with Nathan Hendrick. So we're an Ag Econ. And so, you know, we are trying to look at how can we save water while not compromising on yield? Essentially, that is the main question that is out there. And that is what the farmer wants. They do want. Yeah, that is the holy grail. Right, right, you know, they do want to save water and sustain the life of aquifer. I have met with farmers from western Kansas and eastern Colorado, who said on your face that they know that they're if their grant kids choose to farm, they might not have the water that they have now on the farm. So they want to make mends to their current practices, but it's a financial decision at the end of the day, you know, they do not want to give up on their bread and butter. So we have to come up with smart and intelligent ways to reach the farmer so that they listen to us and they adopt the strategies that can help them. Is this a strategy that has better outcomes or more outcomes or more efficient if the people that adopt these, these changes or these methods are contiguous, or doesn't matter that they might be isolated with other you know, other producers in between? That was something you know, that's a great idea and we haven't looked at it from that point of view. But I would say that, you know, if it's, if the strategies or if they irrigation, different irrigation management scenarios are adopted, as you know, not not as a separate entity, but more more on speed given spatial scale, that they might be more effective. Yeah. My wife grew up on a farm in South Central Kansas. And there were clearly thought and opinion leaders out in the field, that a lot of different producers that would look to them, and in some cases may make them. So I just wondered if that apply, in this case, to my will? Or on the other hand, there were people that no matter what they did, everybody else was going to do the opposite. And, you know, I mean, there's that, obviously, I've heard it so many times, that people are farmers turn on their center pivots, when they see their neighbor is irrigating. And I mean, I agree that used to happen. But I think especially in areas where water is scarce, like invest in cancers, people are getting smarter about it, you know, nobody turns on their central pivot because their neighbor is, or at least that's my experience to the farmers that I have talked to, don't do that anymore. So So if all of this research, and it's it's translation, then out into the productions, producers field is wildly successful beyond your wildest imaginings, what would we what would we see what would the outcomes be that you could look at, or point to say. Well, the long term outcome would be that we would be able to extend the life of our aquifers, or, you know, make it sustainable long term, especially given the future impact of the changing climate and keeping that in mind. So I think the long term significant effect of this research would be definitely to increase the life of our water resources. Great. And perhaps more than more next generation is a visual staying on the farm of meaning successful. And, you know, there's another one of my graduate students spent this summer in Garden City. And what we are trying to do now is, as part of the Ogallala watershed, let me backtrack a little bit, what we did was based on the information that we have, from the environmental data, which is your weather data, and then you know, in field observations of plan data, you know, growth in season growth, metrics, like Leaf Area Index, biomass during the season of the crop that you're growing. So based on that, we calibrated our models, and then we studied the irrigation impact. What we are trying to do now is having more infield data, for example, data from soil sensors, data from drones that tells you about crop stress, and disease, and then combination of satellite data. And we have aerial data from a manned aircraft. And they are collecting data and sending those images to us. So you know, combination of all this data, so it's more like a machine learning, artificial intelligence, kind of, so you have your environmental data, you have your infield, in season data, and then you combine everything together to make your decision, I think more informed. Right as robust as possible. As robust as possible. So that is the next step that we are taking to hopefully make our models even better. So the results that we have from the calibrated models from what work I have done in the past are great. And the farmers that have adapted those irrigation strategy. So a combination of how much water is available in the ground. So we call it plant available water, and how frequently do you irrigate? That's called irrigation frequency. So the combination of the two is what we were using so far. But with this data set, I think we can add a layer of information to the models. Great. And I think that would be really interesting to look at. So he's my grad student that's right now working on it, and I look forward to seeing his results. That how are they better? Hopefully better And then what we already have? Well, you know, I, I hear you say that it's the extension folks that get out and get face to face with producers and sort of make the sale, if you will. Do you feel like you're an advocate? Do you enjoy that process as well? Or is it just a set is that an end of business that you're just not comfortable with, because you sound like a spectacular advocate. I completely enjoy it. You know, and I think I have come a long way from being a grad student at Auburn to I just love talking to people. So you know, and it's so it's enlightening to you know, hear other people talk about their experiences. And I have no doubt that the farmer who has worked all his life in a field knows more about, you know, the entire management package of growing a crop than I do. But we are all learning from each other. So I really, really appreciate that part of the job, though, I did not get to do much of it this year. But you know, that's something I completely enjoy. And I love when people challenge your science, you know, I love to tell this story that when I was a grad student at Auburn, I went to present my research to farmers and extension agents in a extension meeting. And here is this, you know, five feet tall girl from India, who is new in the country and talking to a group of farmers and extension agents and telling them that climate change is happening. And it's anthropogenic, and we are causing it we humans are causing it, and how it impacts the weather, the day to day weather, as well as what impact does it have on our border availability. And after the present, after my presentation was over, I would say good 65-70 year old, tall, well built farmer approaches me and tells me whatever you presented is all wrong. And you know, climate change is it's been happening forever. We are not causing it. It's a natural phenomena. It's written in the Bible. And you know, and I just gave that my PhD advisor was standing behind me and I kind of gave him a look. And he was like, he gave me the look that you have to handle it. This is part of the training. So I told him, I was like, I respectfully disagree. In my mind, my faith and my science, they run parallel, they cannot merge. So you know, but I, you know, that's part of the job that teaches you so many things and you learn how to how to handle and how to defend your science. So yeah, As someone who teaches communication, I of course, love that story. I assume that that kind of experience was unique to your extension, training and background. I just wonder how many other scientists would be benefited by having that kind of experience of interacting with the public to present their findings? Yeah, I completely agree. It's enlightening, you know, you, this is something that you cannot learn by doing research in your lab setting, you know, until and unless. So, you know, when I tell people that I'm a modeler, they're like, you know, she sits in front of a computer and punches numbers, and you know, but then there's that part of it, where you translate that information into tools that the stakeholders can use, and that to me, is, is a really important component. And I think, you know, growing my father has spent all his life in extension, he retired as the additional Director General of extension in Indian Council of agricultural research, which is parallel to USDA here. I should say that I grew up in the middle of it... /episode/index/show/kstate-gfs/id/17700500

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