Catching Up with CALS — Nov. 1, 2023

Dean's Message — Big Plans for Stillinger Herbarium

Understanding the health of an ecosystem requires the ability to identify plants and to differentiate native from invasive flora. In our efforts to rehabilitate degraded landscapes, or to track the effects of a changing climate, we must have baseline data about plant diversity and abundance but also have a record of how our state’s plant communities have evolved. Since we can’t travel back in time, we rely on diverse and well-maintained plant collections compiled over decades to paint that picture. At the University of Idaho, we’re fortunate to have the most complete archive of Idaho plants at our disposal, known as the Stillinger Herbarium. Established in 1892, this priceless collection includes more than 215,000 cataloged vascular plant, bryophyte, lichen, fungi and silica-preserved tissue specimens. It was originally stored in the campus Administration Building, which burned in March 1906, destroying about 80,000 specimens. The collection was gradually replenished in the ensuing years. It was reinvigorated in 1959 when the Stillinger family established a large endowment supporting scholarships, research positions and resources for preserving and growing the collection. During the past couple of years, however, the herbarium has largely flown under the radar. Shortly after it moved to its current location in the Mines Building, the herbarium lost both its director and collection manager. Then the COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on in-person visits.

Concerned, the herbarium’s many dedicated stakeholders rallied behind the collection, penning a letter with several pages of signatures urging the university to take action to get it back on track. I’m now pleased to share some good news that should help us restore the herbarium’s profile to pre-pandemic levels. Joe Kuhl, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, has assumed duties as the new Stillinger Herbarium director. He and CALS colleague Tim Prather, a professor of plant sciences and senior associate director of the Rangeland Center, have collaborated on a plan to guide the herbarium, aiming to eventually make it self-sustaining. Support from the Office of Research and Economic Development on campus has made a self-sustaining vision possible. Joe and Tim have already accomplished their top priority of hiring a collection manager and curator. Kai Battenberg, who is a postdoctoral researcher with Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution, RIKEN, will start as collection manager in February 2024. He’s well versed in the flora of the western U.S., having earned a doctorate in plant biology from University of California-Davis and a bachelor’s in botany from California State University. He also holds a law degree from Doshisha University in Japan. The collection manager serves a vital role. The collection’s pressed plant specimens each have an individual identification number and are stored in a cool, dry environment in collapsible, rolling shelves. They’re organized by families using a formal botanical naming system. Navigating the extensive collection can be extremely difficult without the aid of an expert curator. Battenberg will also help researchers and other users remotely access a database of digital images cataloging all vascular plant specimens, ensuring the collection is put to optimal use.

The collection grows every year and thoroughly covers Idaho, as well as locations from elsewhere in the nation and world. Specimens generally have a complete root structure and intact flowers. They’re of global interest. Often, scientists from foreign institutions borrow specimens for several years, analyzing DNA from preserved plant tissue to study evolutionary relationships between complex groups of plants. The herbarium thoroughly covers Idaho (pdf) and is also an asset for more basic purposes, such as a local resident seeking to identify an interesting plant discovered on a hike or an Extension educator fielding a question from the public. Often, proper plant identification can help a landowner or public land manager avoid targeting a native plant that resembles an exotic relative. The herbarium also dovetails well with another signature collection within CALS, the William F. Barr Entomological Museum — together, the collections offer insight into how plants and insects interact and support one another.

In our university’s early days, leaders had the foresight to prioritize a plant collection, understanding the importance of maintaining a record of our state’s ecology. Fortunately, we’re not taking this stroke of luck for granted and are redoubling our commitment toward maintaining this great collection and ensuring its bright future.

Michael P. Parrella

Dean
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

By the Numbers

The Stillinger Herbarium was established in 1892, contemporaneous with the founding of the University of Idaho, and has grown to become the largest herbarium in Idaho and the 7th largest of about 65 herbaria in the Pacific Northwest. The collections consist of over 215,000 catalogued specimens comprising 180,000 vascular plants, 10,000 bryophytes, 10,000 lichens and 15,000 fungi, a silica-preserved tissue collection with about 4,500 tissue samples and a library with more than 2,500 volumes catalogued through the University of Idaho libraries. Over half the specimens were collected from Idaho, representing the most complete collection of the state’s flora. The herbarium is actively growing, with 2,000 to 4,000 new specimens added each year by students and researchers, both within and outside of the university.

Our Stories

Tour Celebrates Gardens

Kathleen Roberts views her backyard as a mini agricultural experiment station where she hones her horticultural practices over time through trial and error.

As one of 13 stops on the inaugural University of Idaho Extension Edible Garden Tour, Roberts shared the botanical secrets she’s learned over the decades with several other Pocatello area gardeners who came to see what she’s created.

The Aug. 12 self-guided garden tour drew 135 registered participants.

Roberts grows her plants in raised beds. She’s found yields are lower in the taller beds, likely because plant roots get too hot. She’s had mixed results with intercropping — seeking to improve production by sowing seeds of different plant species together. Flowers grow alongside vegetables in most areas to attract pollinators. Furthermore, the sunflowers cast a bit of shade to cool the vegetables.

She saves and replants her seeds — and she gave many seeds away to guests who came for the tour. The result is a garden that yields more than her family can eat.

“I’m from a farming family in eastern Montana. I started gardening early when I was 7 or 8 years old,” Roberts said. “I love to show my yard.”

At a nearby tour stop, Marjanna Hulet’s garden also features flowers to lure in pollinators. She makes a point of planting only foods she can’t find in the store, such as heirloom tomatoes and rose-colored beans.

Tour gardener Brandi Jacobs raises chickens and ducks, who give her more than eggs. She uses their manure to fertilize a lush and dense stand of vegetables and ornamental plants. Through an agreement with a neighbor, Jacobs significantly expanded her production, planting in their adjacent yard while allowing them to help themselves to vegetables.

“We probably grow about 75% of our vegetables because I can them,” Jacobs said.

Her daughter, Viola, 13 — accompanied by a friend and her 2-year-old sister Ruby Sue — took advantage of the garden tour as an opportunity to raise some spending money, selling lemonade, baked goods and home-canned zucchini relish.

“I feel like food from the garden tastes better. It’s fun to pick it yourself, too,” Viola said.

Gate City Christian Church uses its garden to supplement donations to its community food pantry. Church member Mackenzie Gorham co-founded the pantry in 2016. She also helps run the garden, which she estimates yields 30 gallons of greens and up to 150 pounds of onions, tomatoes and squash per season.

“We get donations from grocery stores. A lot of times produce is far past its prime and we end up throwing a lot of it out,” Gorham said. Wasted produce is used in making compost.

The church also showcased the creative greenhouse members made from salvaged plastic soda bottles.

In addition to raising awareness about gardening, tour organizer Kathryn Hickok capitalized on the opportunity to promote other UI Extension gardening programs. She distributed literature on canning classes and Idaho Master Gardeners made the rounds to raise awareness about their program. Everyone who registered for the tour will also receive a quarterly Extension newsletter.

During the lunch hour, Hickok hosted a forum outside of Pocatello’s Marshall Public Library, where the crowd visited booths about UI Extension gardening programs, as well as displays featuring like-minded organizations in the Pocatello area. Visitors were treated to a demonstration in which garden ingredients were made into salsa using a bicycle-powered blender. Many guests made miniature salad bowl “gardens.” Participants were also entered into a drawing for gardening-related prizes.

Hickok, a UI Extension educator based in Bannock County and Eat Smart Idaho administrator, more than tripled her original goal of getting 40 participants registered and is confident the tour will become an eagerly anticipated annual event.

“All of the gardeners I talked with were so excited, and people who called in to the office all day yesterday were thanking me for doing this,” Hickok said. “The hope is to get participants excited and curious about gardening and show them they can do it.”

Saving Grayling

A University of Idaho-led research team is working to save the last native population of Arctic grayling in the nation’s Lower 48 States from the threat of warming water temperatures.

Previous research by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has shown environmental factors including climate change and the loss of riparian habitat have warmed Montana’s Big Hole River drainage — home to the final stronghold of native Arctic grayling in the contiguous states — to the point that summer afternoon temperatures are now stressing the fish.

Through four related studies, the U of I scientists aim to understand how chronic and short-term stress caused by warming water temperatures affect grayling health, physiology and survival. They’re also using genetic sequencing analysis to develop a strategy for raising hatchery fish better suited to withstand warmer summertime peak water temperatures when released in the wild.

The research team includes Alonso Longoria, a U of I doctoral student studying animal physiology, Matt Powell, a professor at U of I’s Aquaculture Research Institute based at the Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station, and Gibson Gaylord, a physiologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Bozeman Fish Technology Center. Lukas Andrews, a former U of I undergraduate, contributed to the project last summer, which he spent in Hagerman analyzing grayling enzymes to assess their stress levels.

“The temperatures in the Big Hole River are reaching critical levels for Arctic grayling. It is important to advance this research and see what is the limit,” said Longoria, who is using the project as his doctoral thesis. “It’s a genetically distinct population.”

The team started work on the first of the studies, assessing grayling response to chronic stress, in the summer of 2021, conducting fish experiments at the Bozeman Fish Technology Center and performing genetic analysis of grayling tissue samples in Hagerman.

For the chronic stress research component, groups of juvenile fish, known as fry, originating from the watershed were kept for 145 days at 10 different constant temperatures, ranging from 46.4 degrees to 78.8 degrees. Fish growth increased up to 64.4 degrees and decreased at higher temperatures. The researchers found 59 degrees was the optimal temperature for grayling wellbeing. Fish began to die off, however, at 75.2 degrees and above — all the fish reared in 78.8-degree water died after 22 days. The chronic stress data will be published soon in the journal “Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.”

In the summer of 2022, afternoon mean water temperatures in the Big Hole River reached a record 77.54 degrees. Cooler water temperatures throughout the remainder of the day enabled the fish to survive, but the researchers believe the short-term, acute heat stress has caused them harm. Beginning next spring, they plan to test how grayling fry respond to acute stress, simulating intervals of excessively warm water temperatures mimicking the Big Hole River.

The researchers hope by exposing hatchery grayling fry to constantly warm temperatures, they will induce epigenetic changes that will help those fish survive upon being released. Epigenetics is an emerging research area delving into how environmental stressors can affect gene expression.

Through epigenetic changes, the researchers believe grayling can adapt to withstand somewhat warmer temperatures in a relatively short timeframe and can also pass along the adaptive trait to offspring. Furthermore, hatchery grayling exposed to constantly warm water temperatures may have an epigenetic advantage over the Big Hole’s resident grayling, which endure only periodic intervals of heat stress.

“What we’re trying to do is employ a strategy called adaptive management,” Powell said. “If the river warms up, perhaps we can adaptively manage fish for a little bit of a warmer river. It makes no sense to put hatchery fish raised in a cold-water management system into a river where they’re going to die.”

Fish for the project were donated by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contributed about $50,000 toward the genetic research component.

For his involvement in the project, Longoria was awarded a research scholarship from Wilbur-Ellis Co. covering a full year of tuition.

Mint Research

Throughout the past decade, University of Idaho Extension nematologist Saad Hafez has researched ways to protect mint farmers from a nasty pest and disease combination that can wreak havoc on their yields.

Harmful nematodes can cause mint crop losses of up to 30%, but they also open wounds in plant roots, potentially enabling a devastating fungal disease, verticillium wilt, to take hold.

Hafez, who is based at the U of I Parma Research and Extension Center, acknowledges progress against verticillium wilt has been elusive, and the issue demands further research. He’s had some recent successes, however, in his efforts to find new nematicides for mint farmers to add to their arsenals of crop protectants.

About a year ago, his work resulted in the Bayer broad spectrum fungicide and nematicide Velum Prime getting a special-needs label for use in mint. He recently sent the mint industry preliminary data toward getting a special-needs label to use an additional nematicide, Salibro by Corteva Agriscience.

The mint industry has clearly taken notice of Hafez’s efforts on their behalf. In January, Hafez received the Service to the Industry Award from the Mint Industry Research Council in appreciation of his outstanding service to the North American mint industry. Hafez was also inducted into the Idaho Mint Hall of Fame in 2019.

Furthermore, the Idaho Mint Commission has pledged funds toward construction of a microbiology laboratory located within the new Idaho Center for Plant and Soil Health at the Parma Research and Extension Center. The Idaho Mint Commission will be granted naming rights for the microbiology laboratory.

The 9,600-square-foot center, which is scheduled to open in October and will be dedicated next February, will also house laboratory space for research related to nematology, pomology, plant pathology and hops quality.

Idaho’s mint industry started in the late 1940s. Idaho mint farmers now raise about 17,000 acres of mint annually, which produces 1.8 million pounds of mint oil. The state ranks No. 2 in U.S. peppermint production, with 1,000 acres, and No. 4 in U.S. spearmint production, with 16,000 acres.

“The mint industry has been very good to me and has supported me for all of these years,” Hafez said.

In 2017, James Woodhall, a UI Extension plant pathologist based in Parma, was the first to characterize a specific strain of the fungal pathogen Rhizoctonia solani in mint. A grower requested that Woodhall test mint from a stand that was in decline based on concerns that verticillium wilt was the culprit.

“That’s the good thing about testing at a university laboratory instead of a testing laboratory. They wouldn’t have gone on and characterized it, but we found the true cause,” Woodhall said.

The new facility will be far more spacious and will provide faculty with state-of-the-art technology. Idaho Mint Commission Chairman Tony Weitz, who farms in Caldwell, anticipates the new Parma facility will help U of I attract talented new faculty, who will continue conducting important research to aid mint producers.

“I’m happy to see they’re improving the facilities over there. We’ve had a lot of research done there and hope to continue that,” Weitz said.

Faces and Places

UI Extension Educator Lorie Dye retired Oct. 31 after 29 years of service. She joined U of I in 1994 as an FCS educator in Jefferson County.

The Soil Stewards Student Farm hosted a Fall on the Farm Festival on Oct. 7 which included U-pick pumpkins and tomatoes, a produce stand, photo booth and houseplants.

Shelley McGuire, director of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences and professor of nutrition, will represent the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences in the Power of Possibility (POP) Talks, scheduled for 3-4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1, in the Vandal Ballroom at the Bruce M. Pitman Center. The talks will also be shown live at U of I Live. The brief talks will “explore beyond the known world and unmask new features of the world we thought we understood.” At the end of the talks, two $1,000 scholarships will be awarded to attending students, and all attendees, both virtual and in person, will be invited to vote for their favorite talk. McGuire is a leading expert of maternal and infant nutrition whose primary focus is understanding the impact of maternal diet and nutritional status on human milk composition and health outcomes during breastfeeding. She is also Idaho's first member of the vaunted National Academy of Medicine.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded the University of Idaho Parma Research and Extension Center its Honored Institution Award Oct. 10 for collecting weather data for 100 years. Staff take physical readings each morning and record them in a logbook, also sharing the data with the National Weather Service for its records. Kent Wagoner, senior agricultural technician in Parma, has supervised weather data collections for more than 20 years. The U of I Aberdeen Research and Extension Center received the same award last year for its weather collections.

Aberdeen Research and Extension Center Operations Manager Chad Jackson and USDA Research Geneticist Rich Novy recently hosted 25 kids and 11 parents from Pocatello at the center, teaching them about potato breeding, potato seedling transplanting and letting them dig their own spuds.