New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station

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New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station The NHAES uses science to help overcome some of the biggest challenges across diverse communities.

The New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station (NHAES) has remained an elemental component of New Hampsire's land grant university heritage and mission, since before UNH was created here in Durham. The initial mandate to the novel system of state agricultural experiment stations was to undertake research of importance to agriculture for New Hampshire, New England, and the nation. With expanded statutory directives, and in response to the evolving needs of our many stakeholders, we now steward federal and state funding to provide unbiased and objective research concerning diverse aspects of sustainable agriculture, aquaculture, forest management, and related wildlife and natural resources.

that northern grapevines are under threat? 🍇While European w**e grape varieties such as Chardonnay and Merlot are wide...
10/13/2026

that northern grapevines are under threat? 🍇

While European w**e grape varieties such as Chardonnay and Merlot are widely known, conditions in New Hampshire and other northern states are too cold for European grapevines.

Instead, w**eries and vineyards grow cold-hardy hybrid grape varieties like Itasca and Marquette.

These new hybrid cultivars have helped the northern w**e industry flourish in recent years. However, UNH researchers Xiaochen Yuan and Suzanne Slack have studied an emerging threat to these previously robust vines: grapevine trunk diseases, caused by fungal infections.

Their research identified a key culprit, Fusarium, a fungus that also causes serious diseases affecting grain and cereal crops.

While studies confirmed that Fusarium can cause disease in both cold-hardy hybrid and European grape varieties, the disease is much more severe in the cold-hardy grapevines.

Now, supported by a new USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant, UNH is expanding to cover northern areas across the Northeast, Great Lakes, and Midwest. Their research and outreach team includes Extension specialists, USDA researchers, and grape growers, who will study Fusarium populations associated with this new grapevine trunk disease across the region.

The work will improve diagnostic approaches and investigate factors that influence disease development and management.

The goal is to provide grape growers with practical tools for earlier disease recognition and science-based management to reduce disease losses and protect vineyard productivity.

The results will be widely shared with growers and others in the industry through publications, regional outreach, and Extension programming.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire are studying New Hampshire’s 19,000 miles of rivers and streams, from the...
10/07/2026

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire are studying New Hampshire’s 19,000 miles of rivers and streams, from the Connecticut River in the west to the waters flowing to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, which shape the state’s lives, livelihoods, and landscapes.

The research team is taking advantage of three rare opportunities to study rivers and streams before and after significant changes to better understand how New Hampshire’s communities along a river’s path are impacted by changes in water quality.

“It’s unusual to be able to measure streams before and after significant restoration events,” says NHAES scientist Wilfred Wollheim, the Josephine A. Lamprey Professor in Climate and Sustainability and professor in the UNH department of natural resources and the environment at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture.

“The data we’re collecting before and after human-made dam removal, beaver dam construction, and our own restoration project will provide insights that are relevant throughout New Hampshire.”

While the expectation is that each change will help improve water quality, alter greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce the amount of nitrogen flowing downstream, the goal of each study is to test that hypothesis and quantify the size of those impacts.

Can the latest research tools and methods help to better understand how natural and planned landscape changes impact New Hampshire’s water quality now and in the future? Wollheim and his lab are working hard to find the answer to that vital question.

Read more at the link in comments!

UNH Research

What Happens When Permafrost Thaws? Jessica Ernakovich, associate professor and co-director of Soil BioME, is presenting...
09/29/2026

What Happens When Permafrost Thaws?

Jessica Ernakovich, associate professor and co-director of Soil BioME, is presenting “When Permafrost Thaws: Addressing complex problems through convergence and collaboration” as part of Aspen Global Change Institute’s prestigious public lecture series on Tuesday, October 6, at 4:00 pm.

Thawing permafrost has been identified as a driver of climate change through the release of heat trapping gases like CO2 and methane to the atmosphere. But the process is a complicated one, shaped by interactions between microbes, plants, minerals, hydrology, landscapes, and other factors across space and time.

Understanding a changing planet requires far more knowledge than is found within a single field of study. Ernakovich will discuss the need to work across scientific disciplines to move beyond the simple stories often told about climate change.

Scientists need to recognize the limits of their own expertise and learn to work across disciplines and ways of knowing, an approach that will be essential for preparing the next generation of polar researchers to understand and respond to a rapidly changing Arctic.

The online talk is available free of charge by registering at the link in comments!

UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture

09/18/2026

Check out the latest crop-harvesting equipment in action at University of New Hampshire ︱ UNH!

This self-propelled chopper harvests crops more quickly than previous models, yielding higher crop quality.

Unlike its predecessors, the new chopper also comes equipped with a near-infrared (NIR) sensor that uses near-infrared light to determine the chemical composition of the crops in real time during harvest.

According to Peter Davis, manager of farm services operations at UNH, that data is tied directly to field maps and is accessible electronically, improving accuracy and allowing researchers to know exactly what is in the crops and what is being fed to the livestock in their research programs.

Thank you to CNH and Champlain Valley for letting us demo the equipment!

Fall is loading...at the UNH Organic Dairy Research Farm. 🍂🍁
09/16/2026

Fall is loading...at the UNH Organic Dairy Research Farm. 🍂🍁

There’s a chill in the air first thing in the morning, and dusk descends earlier each evening. That can only mean one th...
09/10/2026

There’s a chill in the air first thing in the morning, and dusk descends earlier each evening. That can only mean one thing: Fall is coming! 🍂

And with it comes harvest, the end of the growing season, and a snowy winter of dormancy. Or does it?

UNH has a proud history of research into “protected” agriculture, using structures and growing methods to protect crops and lengthen growing seasons in the cold New England climate.

While greenhouses provide the most year-round protection, much less expensive alternatives such as the high tunnels pictured here and even simple row covers can expand options for New Hampshire growers.

Recent support from the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, Markets, and Food has expanded the high tunnel infrastructure at UNH. And additional support from the Agricultural Research Service is further expanding the research program.

Learn more at the link in comments!

UNH research delves into how a dietary staple may impact depressive symptoms. Depression is a complex disease that can b...
09/09/2026

UNH research delves into how a dietary staple may impact depressive symptoms.

Depression is a complex disease that can be difficult to identify. A wide variety of factors can underlie depression and depressive symptoms, but new research at UNH indicates that dairy products do not contribute to worse depressive symptoms in a group of people previously documented to be at a particularly high risk for depression. It further suggests that yogurt and butter in particular may be beneficial.

A study published in Nutrients and led by Sherman Bigornia, NHAES researcher and associate professor at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, looked at the association of total dairy consumption as well as individual dairy products with depressive symptoms in Hispanic/Latino adults over a six-year period. Evidence suggests Hispanic/Latino adults experience high rates of depression, and they also have a disproportionate burden of obesity and metabolic syndrome, both characterized by chronic inflammation that has been implicated in depression.

The team found that total dairy consumption was not significantly associated with depressive symptoms over the six-year period. While milk, cheese, and cream consumption were not significantly associated with the score, yogurt and butter consumption were both significantly associated with fewer depressive symptoms. The findings need cautious interpretation and further study, but both yogurt and butter have biological properties that make beneficial effects plausible.

Read full story at the link in comments.

Parasitic nematodes cause human diseases and damage more than $100 billion in crops annually, and they are spreading bee...
09/03/2026

Parasitic nematodes cause human diseases and damage more than $100 billion in crops annually, and they are spreading beech leaf disease, which is threatening New Hampshire forests.

Chemical-based approaches to controlling them are highly toxic, but researchers at the University of New Hampshire are now investigating a metabolic pathway that could provide a way to manage them in the Granite State and around the world with far lower environmental consequences.

NHAES scientists Rick Cote and Kranti Galande worked with C. elegans, a small nematode widely used in research.

They focused on inhibiting the activity of a family of proteins known as phosphodiesterases (PDEs). PDEs are vital for regulating the levels and activity of signaling molecules that nematodes need for proper function.

They were surprised to find that inhibiting or eliminating a single PDE had little effect, but the nematodes were killed or impaired when multiple PDEs were targeted.

"A ‘cocktail’ of PDE inhibitors targeting multiple PDEs may provide a very effective way to manage plant-parasitic nematodes and improve agricultural productivity,” says Cote.

Read full story at the link in the comments.

UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture UNH Research

“I love growing everything.” Most of the time, New Hampshire Agricultural Research Station researcher Rebecca (Becky) S...
08/28/2026

“I love growing everything.”

Most of the time, New Hampshire Agricultural Research Station researcher Rebecca (Becky) Sideman can be found outside at the University of New Hampshire’s research farms or in her home garden.

Sideman leads a wide-ranging academic research program and works with a variety of crops and growing systems. The Station scientist enjoys working with crops that are both frequently found across New England farms as well as those that she calls “unusual,” leading innovation within the industry.

What Sideman has learned and discovered in her research can be found not only in the pages of research journals, but in fields and on farms throughout New Hampshire and the Northeast. Including her own. Her lifelong passion for food production was an inspiration for her professional career and now transcends her work.

“I grew up on a farm, and gardening and food production have always been important parts of my life,” she says. “Now I love to work on my homestead farm. There, I can also try things on small scale that might be worth exploring from a research standpoint.”

Read more at the link in the comments!

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture

For nearly 80 years, UNH’s cucurbit breeding program has helped advance pumpkins, squash and melons. This summer, that e...
08/25/2026

For nearly 80 years, UNH’s cucurbit breeding program has helped advance pumpkins, squash and melons.

This summer, that expertise is reaching a senior living community just down the road from campus. 🎃

Chris Hernandez, who leads UNH’s long-running cucurbit breeding program, has been working with residents at Brookdale Spruce Wood, a senior living community in Durham, as they take on their first season growing giant pumpkins.

Long-time gardener Jim Cross connected with Hernandez at the Macfarlane Greenhouses Open House this spring. With Hernandez’s expertise, Cross and Daniel Reich, a mechanical engineering expert, have led the effort to water, fertilize and nurture the massive vines and pumpkins.

Cross and Reich now have five pumpkins growing at three sites across the Brookdale Spruce Wood property, with estimated weights ranging from 300 to 750 pounds by late August. Their largest pumpkin is currently almost 750 pounds and may reach 1,000 pounds before harvest.

Pictured: Jim Cross, Daniel Reich and Chris Hernandez (l-r) discuss the giant pumpkin growing project at Brookdale Spruce Wood.

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46 College Road
Durham, NH
03824

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Tuesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Friday 8:30am - 4:30pm

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