“Fields of Devotion” Wins Best Short Documentary at Garden State Film Festival

Garden State Film Festival Winner!

On March 26, Fields of Devotion was shown to a packed house and won the Best Short Documentary Award at the 2023 Garden State Film Festival. This is the second award for the film, which was awarded Best Climate Film by the New York Science and Nature Feedback Film and Screenplay Festival in late 2022. In attendance at the Garden State Film Festival’s Awards Ceremony were the film’s associate …

SEBS Professors Study the Microbiology of Arsenic-Contaminated Agricultural Soils in the Mekong River and Red River Deltas

The research team of Max Häggblom, John Reinfelder, Vien Minh Duong and Hang Dam sampling soil cores in the Mekong Delta. Photo: courtesy of Max Häggblom and John Reinfelder.

Distinguished Professor Max Häggblom, chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, and professor John Reinfelder, Department of Environmental Sciences, visited Vietnam to initiate collaborative research on microbial arsenic metabolism in rice paddy soils with investigators at Can Tho University, College of Agriculture and Hanoi University of Science and Technology, School of Biotechnology and Food Technology. The research was funded …

Award-Winning Film Highlights Rutgers Efforts to Protect Basil From Blight

Rutgers researchers and students out in their field of basil. Micah Seidel

Fields of Devotion provides a window into the science behind developing disease- and climate change-resistant food crops. When a devastating disease wiped out New Jersey farmers’ basil fields, growers turned to Rutgers scientists for help. Now the public will be able to follow the unique partnership between local farmers and Rutgers scientists in Fields of Devotion, a science-in-action film and the winner of the …

Living Shoreline Combats Coastal Erosion Caused by Sea Level Rise

Rutgers scientists teamed up with high school students to build a living shoreline, near the New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center in Cape May, that helps reduce wave energy as it comes onto the beach. Photo: Dena Seidel

Rutgers scientists and high school volunteers from Camden are using nature to mitigate the effects of coastal erosion in southern New Jersey. Together they built a living shoreline, near the New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center in Cape May, that uses marsh grasses and recycled oyster and clam shells. The shells, incorporated into modified concrete blocks called oyster castles, fit together like Legos to …

Feasible Surfclam Husbandry Techniques for Northeast Shellfish Growers

Surfclams have a spawn-to-sale production cycle as short as 12-18 months. Photo credit: Michael Acquafredda.

Editor’s note: Michael Acquafredda (GSNB’19) earned a doctoral degree in Ecology and Evolution in the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies A study that provides technical aspects of Atlantic surfclam (Spisula solidissima) husbandry supports the feasibility for the culture of the species in the U.S. Northeast region. “Overall, successful surfclam nursery culture aligns well with the Northeast’s established shellfish farming framework, and …

Bee It Known: Biodiversity Is Critical to Ecosystems

Bumble Bee on Virginia Bluebells. Photo: Matt Drews

A Rutgers-led study on bees shows how different species pollinate the same plants over time. Rutgers has conducted the first study showing how many more species of bees are needed to maintain crop yields when a longer-term time frame is considered. In the paper, which was recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, scientists said biodiversity of the bee population is …

EOAS In the News: “Tiny Oysters Are a Hopeful Sign in the Hudson River”

Baby Oysters

New York Times reporter James Barron joined #EOAS faculty member Thomas Grothues and other #Rutgers scientists on a trip on the Hudson River in lower Manhattan to check on the “oyster habitat enhancements” they had installed last year and seeded with juvenile oysters. Barron reports “The oysters were small, barely the size of a thumbtack. The people measuring them, on a skiff rocking …

Rutgers Awarded $12.6 Million Grant to Create Oyster Habitat for Coastal Resilience

Oysters in a cement setting experiment from Richard Riman’s laboratory.

The university-led project is in response to a broader effort to protect critical coastal civilian and Department of Defense infrastructure and personnel at risk of climate change. Rutgers has been awarded $12.6 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop an oyster-based shoreline ecosystem to help protect coastlines from storm damage, flooding and erosion. The Rutgers-led project, …

Rutgers Shellfish Breeding Program Enters the Genomic Era

Ximing Guo (right) and Sam Ratcliff examined selective bred oysters at Rutgers Cape Shore Farm. Micah Seidel

A consortium of scientists led by Rutgers University has developed a high-density DNA chip for the eastern oyster to better research and breeding. The Rutgers shellfish breeding program, an ongoing project supported by the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fishery Service, is testing a high-density DNA chip for genomic selection, which is expected …

Nuclear War Would Cause a Global Famine and Kill Billions, Rutgers-Led Study Finds

Even a nuclear conflict between new nuclear states would decimate crop production and result in widespread starvation More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, according to a global study led by Rutgers climate scientists that estimates post-conflict crop production. “The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear …