Catching Up with CALS — Jan. 22, 2025

Dean's Message — Reflecting on Goals

I recently reviewed the job application I submitted in March 2015 when I first applied to be dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), feeling a bit nostalgic as I enter the final few months before my retirement. As I reflected upon the document, I keyed in on a paragraph in which I assessed challenges and priorities. The major concern I noted was the constant threat of budget cuts to higher education, intended to help relieve the burden on taxpayers. I argued the dean must effectively make the case that the college and the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station and University of Idaho Extension serve critical functions and warrant maintaining — and ideally increasing — investments of limited public funds. Fortunately, state lawmakers have recognized the value of what we do and have consistently approved college funding requests. In that paragraph, I also listed a few top priorities and goals: emphasizing cross-college collaboration; fundraising for facilities, endowed programs, endowed chairs and professorships and support for undergraduate and graduate students; continued recruitment of outstanding and diverse faculty; retaining qualified staff; maintaining high morale; committing to the mission of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station and University of Idaho Extension; and boosting the quality and reputation of CALS.

I have to smile when I reflect upon the amazing progress we’ve made throughout the past decade — and how ambitious, flexible and creative we’ve been in pursuing our goals. Under my watch, for example, we’ve leaned heavily on spousal accommodations as a tool to recruit world-class faculty, which has helped us land top candidates for positions while also benefiting other CALS departments and U of I colleges. In many cases, the spouses we’ve hired have gone on to become some of our most often cited and productive researchers. We’ve also emphasized being visible off campus — befitting our Extension mission — which has helped us make strides in growing relationships with industry partners, who have been generous both in offering guidance and funding. By pooling state, federal, industry and stakeholder dollars, we’ve succeeded with a string of capital campaigns toward building state-of-the-art facilities that will attract elite new faculty and will set the stage for us to secure more and larger research grants. Consequently, we’re becoming better equipped to respond to the challenges facing Idaho agriculture.

In Rupert, thanks to broad stakeholder support, we anticipate milking the first cows in early 2026 at the Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Idaho CAFE), which will include the nation’s largest research dairy. Industry helped us to open a new facility known as the Idaho Center for Plant and Soil Health in Parma. A National Science Foundation grant is funding construction of our Deep Soil Ecotron, which will enable researchers to study soil at greater depths than anywhere else in the world — and will no doubt be the vehicle for bringing in more grants to add graduate students, faculty and postdoctoral researchers in the future. The beef industry has been supportive of our ongoing efforts to build a new abattoir on campus to be called the Meat Science and Innovation Center Honoring Ron Richard. Industry has also recognized the tremendous return on investment of endowing CALS research positions. We now have seven endowed positions within CALS — including my position, now known as the J.R. Simplot Endowed Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. We also announced the Saad Hafez Presidential Endowed Chair in Nematology last fall and are currently seeking to fill that position.

CALS has accomplished feats even I would have deemed unattainable when I first arrived in Moscow. While CALS averaged roughly $15 million in annual external funding in 2015, we brought in $36 million in 2024, and our grant total peaked at $91 million in 2023, factoring in our $59 million Innovative Agriculture and Marketing Partnership for Idaho (IAMP) grant from USDA. Furthermore, in the recent rankings of the best U.S. colleges of agricultural sciences by niche.com, CALS was listed among true heavyweights as the No. 13 program. Looking ahead, I believe CALS and U of I can build upon recent momentum and see their successes snowball by hiring strategically and avoiding the urge to simply fill holes. Rather, invest in building programs through cluster hires involving several colleges, assigning faculty to tackle a specific topic of importance from different angles, essentially establishing new centers of excellence at U of I. I recognize that success breeds success. With that in mind, I’m confident the best is yet to come for both CALS and the university.

Michael P. Parrella

Dean
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

By the Numbers

The University of Idaho will host the 57th annual Idaho Potato Conference Jan. 22-23 at the Idaho State University Pond Student Union Building in Pocatello. The conference will include 3 concurrent sessions and more than 23 hours of presentations over 1.5 days on a variety of topics such as industry updates, pests and diseases, agronomy and irrigation. The event will feature 31 presenters — including 17 from U of I and 14 from industry, government and other universities. The event will also include 70 trade booths. The event draws 600-800 participants.

Our Stories

COVID-19 Vaccine Study

Breastfeeding mothers who have been inoculated against COVID-19 needn’t worry about any potential adverse effects of the coronavirus vaccine on their breastmilk, a recent study involving University of Idaho researchers concludes.

The findings are significant given that many new mothers have avoided getting vaccinated, worried their milk composition could change or that components of the vaccine might enter their milk and somehow harm their babies.

Results of the study, published in the December 2024 issue of The Journal of Nutrition, are based on laboratory testing of human milk samples from women who received the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines and women who were infected with the coronavirus.

The researchers found no evidence of any vaccine components entering human milk. They confirmed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines caused no significant changes in milk composition, with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine causing very subtle, short-lived changes. Furthermore, milk composition of women who contracted the coronavirus but not vaccinated was altered far more.

U of I researchers involved in the project include Shelley McGuire, a professor specializing in maternal and infant nutrition and director of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences; Mark McGuire, a university distinguished professor in the Department of Animal, Veterinary and Food Sciences (AVFS); and Janet Williams, a senior research scientist in AVFS.

“The bottom line is we found absolutely no vaccine components in the milk,” Shelley McGuire said. “We found some effects of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on milk composition, however there were more substantial changes when women actually got COVID-19.”

The senior author of the paper, Rebecca Powell, an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, supplied milk samples from vaccinated women who hadn’t contracted COVID-19. U of I provided milk samples from unvaccinated women who had contracted COVID-19.

Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington, which had federal COVID-19 research dollars available to fund the study and analyzed the samples, were also involved in the project. The researchers submitted the initial project proposal to PNNL in December of 2020, about the time that the vaccines were being made widely available.

The three U of I researchers were previously involved in separate research that allayed concerns that the coronavirus could be transmitted to newborns through breastmilk. In fact, they found the breastmilk of women who have contracted the coronavirus is an important source of COVID-19 antibodies.

“We went from one global panic in breastfeeding women to a new global panic in breastfeeding women,” Shelley McGuire said. “If women are worried about their milk composition changing, they should try to avoid getting COVID-19 rather than avoiding the vaccine.”

In October 2022, Shelley McGuire became the first faculty member inducted into the National Academy of Medicine while employed at an Idaho institution. She is also director of a National Institutes of Health Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) focused on furthering studies on nutrition and women’s health.

Ag Biz Podcasts

The Oma & Popies story traces back to 2014, when Gail “Oma” and Jan “Popie” Zarr tried some ho-hum hot wings at a Bowling Green, Kentucky, tavern and felt compelled to brag about their favorite Idaho wing sauce.

Intrigued, bar staff invited the Kuna couple to their kitchen, where the Zarrs attempted to replicate the Idaho sauce on the spot. The Zarrs’ unique take on the recipe was a hit, and they discovered a promising small-business niche as sauce makers.

The Zarrs shared their business origin story on episode No. 199 of the Meaningful Marketplace Podcast, which aired Sept. 18 with a special co-host, University of Idaho Extension food processing specialist Janna Verburg-Hamlett. Oma & Popies was among nine Idaho small food businesses featured on the podcast from Aug. 21 through Oct. 16, thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Northwest and Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center.

U of I is a center member, and Verburg-Hamlett serves on its Idaho Steering Committee, as well as its Building and Connecting Food Entrepreneurs Theme Team, which financed state-specific podcasts. Episodes were also funded for center member states Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming. USDA established its regional food business centers to support a more resilient, diverse and competitive food system, serving as a node for small and mid-tier food and farm businesses.

Recurring hosts of the podcast are Sarah Masoni, director of product and process development with the Oregon State University Food Innovation Center, and Sarah Marshall, founder of Marshall’s Haute Sauce. Episodes are 45 minutes long each and focus on creative approaches food entrepreneurs use to overcome challenges. Colette DePhelps, area UI Extension educator of community food systems, who is U of I’s principal investigator with the center, and Katie Baker, formerly with FARE Idaho, also each guest co-hosted an Idaho podcast.

“Our theme team decided to sponsor a year of the podcast, and every state was assigned two months,” Verburg-Hamlett said. “I found different Idaho food entrepreneurs that are in Idaho and we interviewed them on the podcast.

The theme team will sponsor additional state-specific episodes in 2025. Verburg-Hamlett will help record the Idaho episodes in July and August, and they will be released from September through October.

The theme team has also paid to send regional entrepreneurs to the Summer Fancy Foods Show in New York and the Winter Fancy Foods Show in Las Vegas, where small food business owners introduce their products to major retailers.

Participating in the Las Vegas show helped the Zarrs tap new markets in Texas. The Zarrs make and bottle their Oma & Popies products at the U of I Food Technology Center in Caldwell, which offers processing and educational assistance to aspiring food entrepreneurs who wish to produce packaged foods for resale.

“For us, it’s been a godsend. I don’t foresee us ever owning our own facility,” Jan Zarr said. “Having that facility, I only have to worry about what we’re doing, how we’re producing it and having that food plan. I don’t have to worry about the building itself and the equipment.”

The following Idaho businesses were featured in podcasts: Northern Latitude Foods, Ballard Cheese, Free Spirits Beverage Co., Roots Potato Chips, Oma & Popies, Snacktivist Foods, Hummuna Hummus, Dilly’s Pickled Veggies and Hillside Grain.

Predator Ecosystem Impacts

A University of Idaho study of Tasmanian devils concludes the loss of predators and scavengers from an ecosystem can impair plant and soil health, while potentially elevating greenhouse gas emissions.

Assistant Professor Laurel Lynch and Associate Professor Michael Strickland, both with the Department of Soil and Water Systems, and Professor Tara Hudiburg, with the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Fire Sciences, based their findings on a multi-year study on the ecological ripple effects of a transmissible cancer that has decimated the devil population.

Devils are the largest carnivorous marsupial species, found only on the island of Tasmania. In the late 1990s, devil numbers began to plumet following the confirmation of devil facial tumor disease (DFTD), spread by saliva when the small-dog-sized predators fight one another. About 70% of devils on the island have already perished, though scientists suspect the devil population is beginning to stabilize.

The U of I researchers are finishing the final year of a four-year, $677,575 National Science Foundation grant involving tree-core sampling and an analysis of herbivore carcass decomposition on the soil microbiome in Tasmania, as well as a laboratory experiment on campus.

“Tasmania offers a unique study system where you have a natural population decline of the top predator on the island and you can leverage that to ask these foundational questions in ecology,” Lynch said. “Being able to link changes in animal populations with forest ecology gives us a better understanding of how carbon is cycling not just in Tasmania, but in all systems worldwide.”

The decline of the island’s top predator due to DFTD has disturbed the balance of a previously efficient ecosystem. Mid-tier predators and scavengers that would otherwise be controlled by devils, including quolls, feral cats and possums, have taken over the island and are overfeeding on native marsupials, such as pademelons. Reductions in herbivore numbers have led to vegetation overgrowth. Diseases can also become more prevalent when population balances are skewed.

The researchers confirmed devils also play an important role in redistributing nutrients from animal carcasses by eating them and defecating over a broad area.

“If you knock one of those organisms out, you have this imbalanced, inefficient system,” Lynch said. “Preserving biodiversity is really important for preserving ecosystem function.”

The study entailed placing pademelon carcasses inside of cages with bars narrow enough to restrict devil access but wide enough for other scavengers to pass through in parts of the island where devil populations range from sparse to nearly normal. Additional carcasses were left unprotected near cages to allow access by all the island’s scavengers.

Devils are among the few species that consume every part of an animal, including the bone. Where they were present, unprotected carcasses essentially vanished overnight. Hudiburg and Lynch have taken tree core samples from throughout the island to study calcium levels in tree rings as a biomarker, helping them assess how nutrient distribution is affected when devil populations decline.

Secondary predators and scavengers consumed only portions of carcasses that were caged or placed in areas where few devils were present. The remainders of those carcasses were slowly broken down by invertebrates and microorganisms, and the researchers believe the leakage of nutrients directly below carcasses fueled the growth of fast-growing, but less efficient microorganisms.

Without devils to evenly distribute carcass nutrients through their scat, even the ability of soil to store carbon may be thrown out of kilter. In a Moscow laboratory, the researchers will conduct an experiment this spring evaluating the efficiency of microbial communities, comparing how they respond to nutrients from plant litter, carcasses and scat.

“The hypothesis is if you grow microorganisms really quickly, you are growing less efficiently,” Lynch said. “You have high metabolic costs, with a lot of carbon being recycled back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. It’s a very leaky system.”

Predator species are especially sensitive as human development continues encroaching upon wild lands, making it timely to understand the important role they play in a broader ecosystem.

“We tend to ignore how the presence of scavengers or predators within an ecosystem can shift or alter the trajectory of it,” Strickland said. “We are losing these organisms at a higher rate than any other organisms on the planet. They end up getting in direct conflict with humans, who are driving their numbers down. We are losing them at such a high rate that it’s hard to understand what their roles are, but in a place like Tasmania we can get at those roles, and we can understand the value of these organisms in the ecosystem context.”

Faces and Places

Congratulations to the 2024 CALS Alumni Award Recipients. Awards will be presented from 5:30-7 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 348 S. 13th St., Boise. Tickets are $25 per person in advance and $30 at the door, and admission includes heavy hors d’oevres and a no-host bar. Cole Lickley, ’19, will receive the Early Career Achievement Award. Jessica Lancaster, ’18, will receive the Alumni Achievement Award. Jack Blattner, ’89, ’93, and Theresa Golis, ’87, will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award. Darin Moon will receive the Distinguished Associate Alumni Award. Maurice Wiese will receive the Distinguished Retiree Award. Rick Naerebout, Pat Purdy, ’86, and Margie Watson, ’73, will receive the Dean’s Award.

University of Idaho Extension agricultural economist Brett Wilder is seeking farmers to participate in a survey to help him update the Idaho Custom Rates Guide, which summarizes rates farmers pay for custom work. Payment rates in the guide will be updated based on survey responses from custom operators, farmers who performed custom work and farmers who have hired custom work. Farmers use the data to determine if what they are paying or charging for custom work is in line with local rates. The previous survey was conducted in 2019. Wilder attempted to update the survey in 2023 but didn’t receive enough responses. His goal for the 2025 survey is to receive responses from five to 10 producers within every Idaho county. Those who complete the survey may elect to be entered into a raffle for two $50 Amazon gift cards. Surveys should be returned by Feb. 28. Participants who wish to receive a copy of the finished report should list their email address following the survey’s final question.

The Idaho Water Resources Research Institute (IWRRI) will host its 2025 Our Gem Speaker Series online on the last Tuesday of each month from January through April. To register for the talks and learn more about each speaker, visit uidaho.edu/OurGem. Preregistration is required. Talks will cover north Idaho’s water quality, metal and nutrient remediation, wetlands restoration, and supply reliability and conservation.

A dozen University of Idaho agricultural education students are spending this semester student teaching in high schools throughout the Northwest. The students include Ty Barnett, Meridian High School in Meridian; Amie Betzold, Madison High School in Rexburg; Alison Cizek, Jerome High School, Jerome; Makenna Dewitt, Hagerman High School, Hagerman; Kendel Dowers, Connell High School, Connell, Washington; Kristen Gilbert, Oakesdale High School, Oakesdale, Washington; Amy Heikkila, Rigby High School, Rigby; Saydee Henning, Middleton High School, Middleton; Cassie Moody, Imbler High School, Imbler, Oregon; Cassie Morey, Clarkston High School, Clarkston, Washington; Melissa Renfrow, Troy High School, Troy; and Rilee Wilson, Kuna High School, Kuna.

Abi Newland, of Idaho City, who is a senior studying career and technical education: family and consumer sciences within the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences, is student teaching this spring at Meridian High School in Meridian.

CALS members of the Collegiate Young Farmers and Ranchers Club recently attended the annual Idaho Farm Bureau Fusion Conference in Boise. Rachel Wandell and Madi Orem advanced to the final four round of the discussion meet competition in the adult and college divisions, respectfully. Also attending were Codi Cunningham, Phil Rusch, Tim Hebdon, Joseph Doumit and Owen Telecky.

The 2024-2026 cohort of North Idaho Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Scholars includes three students within the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences who are studying dietetics — Ashlee Bachman, Jessica Hall and Lydia Morris. AHEC Scholars is a nationally recognized, two-year program designed to enhance and broaden a student’s healthcare training.