Tag: agriculture

Enhancing Protection for Nebraska Livestock

When farmers or ranchers discover scores of sick animals – as happened when porcine epidemic diarrhea virus decimated swine herds a few years ago – they need answers fast. Nebraska’s Veterinary Diagnostic Center stands on the front line of disease outbreaks in the state’s animal populations, from livestock and poultry to pets and wildlife. Early […]

Targeting E.coli‘s Threat to Food Safety

The U.S. beef industry – and the public – are benefiting from a major Nebraska-led effort to improve food safety. The multi-institutional research and outreach project, launched in 2012, is reducing the public’s risk from Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC, in the nation’s beef supply. The broad-ranging project has produced detection, intervention and food […]

Food for Health Center Focuses on Gut Microbes

When you reach for that box of cereal in the morning, you’re feeding not just yourself, but the 100 trillion microbes living in your gut. This complex gut microbiome – the collection of microorganisms residing in the digestive system – significantly influences your health, from supporting the immune system to contributing to diseases, such as […]

Foiling Rice-Spoiling Fungus

Rice blast spoils between 10 and 30 percent of annual rice yields worldwide — enough to feed as many as 60 million people. Recent outbreaks of the disease, which also strikes wheat and grass crops, have ranged from Brazil to Bangladesh. Plant pathologists at Nebraska have revealed how the fungus behind blast disease can evade […]