The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education. In these circumstances, technology aided learning by providing new ways of teaching and communicating with students. In this work, we report the online activities carried out in the Basic Organic Chemistry virtual course of the Chemistry Department at UNS (Argentina) for first-year students of the…

International Extension experiences can provide valuable outcomes to clientele. Careful planning is necessary to maximize the benefits to participants and the potential impacts of the tour. International agricultural sciences students can benefit from participating in these tours and greatly add to their success. In this article, we describe the…

Allison B. Wallace describes a seminar in organic horticulture she created and teaches as part of an honors curriculum. She answers the question of how gardening is appropriate for high-ability college students by saying that she believes efforts to raise plants by relatively non violent means teaches and disciplines students in an ethical way to…

Hypoxic and anoxic stresses on mesophytes cause a waste of plant productivity. Many phenotypic responses of roots to hypoxia have long been known, and now genotypic and biochemical responses are being elucidated. Hypoxia causes activation of dozens of specific genes that help the plant to survive hypoxia. It is now clear that mesophytes actively…

Arbuscular mycorrhizae fungi (AMF) play a large role in the current understanding of the soil ecosystem. They increase nutrient and water uptake, improve soil structure, and form complex hyphal networks that transfer nutrients between plants within an ecosystem. Factors such as species present, the physiological balance between the plants in the…

Universities develop strategic planning documents, and as part of that planning process, logic models are developed for specific programs within the university. This article examines the long-standing pecan program at New Mexico State University and the deficiencies and successes in the evolution of its logic model. The university's agricultural…

Fostering the cognitive skills to analyse environmental "commons dilemmas" is an urgent task of environmental education globally. Commons dilemmas are characterised by structural incentives to overexploit a natural resource; their solution is particularly pressing in threatened biodiversity "hotspot" areas. Solutions to these…

Copper fungicides and bactericides are often used in tomato cultivation and can cause toxic Cu levels in soils. In order to combat this, organic matter can be applied to induce chelation reactions and form a soluble complex by which much of the Cu can leach out of the soil profile or be taken up safely by plants. Organic acids such as citric,…

The decline of enrollments in agronomy programs across the United States has been a concern for more than a decade. In an effort to reverse this trend, the Agronomy Department at Iowa State University (ISU) launched the "I'm An Agronomist" marketing campaign in 2006. This article reports on these efforts and the change in the…

Two land-grant institutions, Michigan State University (MSU) and Texas A&M University (TAMU) used funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to partner with the National University of Rwanda (NUR) to support the agriculture faculty in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. In addition, the three institutions…

Soil quality, soil health, and soil sustainability are concepts that are being widely used but are difficult to define and illustrate, especially to a non-technical audience. The objectives of this manuscript were to develop simple and inexpensive methodologies to both qualitatively and quantitatively estimate water infiltration rates (IR),…

Nowadays, there is a growing conviction (at least in rhetoric) that sustainability is an idea whose time has come with education being a critical component in the transition towards a sustainable future. In the field of higher agricultural education, systemic approaches have, among others, triggered a lively dialogue. Topics include the challenge…

This issue of "Legislative Review" takes a look at the news in higher education from February 21 to 25, 2011. This Legislative Review reports that: (1) HB 1003, the University System budget bill, was approved February 23 as amended by the House Appropriations, Education and Environment Division on a vote of 64-29; (2) Sponsored by…

Enrollment by students in degree programs other than traditional horticulture, agronomy, and soil science has increased in basic plant and soil science courses. In order to broaden the appeal of these courses to students from majors other than agriculture, we developed a hands-on laboratory exercise relating the basic concepts of a soil energy…

This book presents essential learning approaches. It introduces educational and training activities, as well as various innovative methods aiming at the development of practical skills, in order to strengthen the continuous process of environmental education, and in particular the education for sustainable development (ESD). In doing so, it…