MAFES Research Highlights

Due to the size of this publication, a portable document format for each article has been created and linked below.

Volume 65, Number 3
Summer 2002

On the Cover
MAFES research keeps Mississippi's $4.39 billion food and fiber industries competitive in a world economy. A sample of research areas includes, clockwise from top left, poultry, which accounts for nearly $1.7 billion; America's third highest sweetpotato production volume; a $270 million livestock industry; and pest control through breeding resistant plants for the state's nearly $1 billion row crop industries.

Table of Contents

From the Director

Finances
MAFES stretches its resources to climb to the number-five rank among U.S. agricultural research programs.

Partners
Commodity groups underwrite research with portions of their member farmers’ sales income.

Scholarship
Review a sample of MAFES research published worldwide.

Safer Food
Mississippi State University, long a leader in developing food products, revitalizes its Food Science Institute.

Beef Surveys
MAFES economists find Americans less picky about beef than their European counterparts.

Prohealth, Antiodor
Poultry, an enjoyable food and a profitable industry, brings environmental challenges that are being met by MAFES scientists studying chickens’ diets.

Chicken Heart Model May Help Humans
Scientists find that a bacterium shared by chickens and humans may provide a key to dealing with hypertension.

Composting Solves a Smelly Problem
A modified deep-litter compost system may solve solid waste disposal challenges and provide an additional income source for livestock producers.

Starving Fall Armyworms
MAFES and USDA scientists are breeding corn plants that cause their insect nemeses to starve.

Remote Sensing Takes on Sweetpotato Production
An unmanned aerial vehicle holds promise for monitoring the quality of sweetpotatoes to produce more U.S. No. 1-grade tubers.

Science Roadmap
A MAFES scientist joins national colleagues in identifying research needs for agriculture’s next two decades.

Back Cover
Mississippi’s trademark state flower is part of a $74 million horticultural industry.

Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station

Vance H. Watson, Director

J. Charles Lee, Interim President

Vance H. Watson, Interim Vice President
Mississippi State University

MAFES Research Highlights, a quarterly publication of the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, is available free to Mississippi residents upon request. Mention of a trademark or commercial product does not constitute nor imply endorsement of the product by the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station or approval over other products that also may be suitable.

Requests for this, other MAFES publications, or change-of-address notification should be addressed to:

HIGHLIGHTS
Office of Agricultural Communications
Box 9625
Mississippi State, MS 39762-9625

Mississippi State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or veteran status.