College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University

10/08/2026

Whether you’re looking for a moment of quiet in nature, a chance to reflect, or simply an opportunity to pause during a stressful time, we welcome you to join us for Let’s Meditate, a free guided mindfulness meditation series held every Friday from 3:30 to 4 p.m. at the Cornell Botanic Gardens Summer House. Led by a licensed social worker and in partnership with Cornell Botanic Gardens and the Nature Rx Initiative, this longstanding Cornell Health program is open to all members of the Cornell community and requires no prior meditation experience.

The Summer House is located behind the Nevin Welcome Center, a five-minute walk from Mann Library. In inclement and winter weather, the meditation moves inside the light-filled welcome center.

Check out the full schedule of Let’s Meditate offerings at health.cornell.edu/meditate

09/22/2026

How do you get a community to care about a bird they may know little about?

Angelina Tang ’28, a communication and animal science student in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, spent her summer as a Cornell Cooperative Extension summer intern at the Cornell Biological Field Station near Syracuse, helping more people discover the common terns of Oneida Lake.

Angelina created educational resources, visited schools and summer camps, connected with local businesses and helped launch “A Tern in Every Town” — a scavenger hunt featuring 3-D printed tern figurines placed around the lake.

Through her outreach, Angelina reached more than 15,000 people, building awareness of a species whose numbers have declined dramatically and whose nesting habitat continues to shrink. Along the way, she found inspiration in the terns themselves and their determination to keep trying, even after storms destroyed many of their nests.

Thank you to Angelina for her work this summer and for her contributions to common tern conservation!

Learn more about her CCE summer internship experience:

The common tern is a sweet little waterbird, with white wings like an angel’s and a distinctive kee-er cry. They are fierce protectors of their families, fearlessly chasing down eagles and tirelessly building up their ground nests, which they make on islands and shorelines, as waves threaten to wa...

09/21/2026

📍Where to find us at Climate Week NYC 2026

From AI and climate finance to energy, critical minerals, circularity and more, we are convening Cornell University researchers and partners at events across New York City September 20-27.

📌 Browse the full Cornell at Climate Week NYC agenda:
https://atkinson.cornell.edu/projects/nyc-climate-week/
📌 Learn more about our delegation and line-up: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/09/cornellians-address-ai-ny-energy-future-climate-week-nyc

09/16/2026

HyperBird, a cutting-edge imaging platform for observing microscopic traits in plants, can detect grape diseases – such as powdery and downy mildews, which cost vineyard owners billions in annual losses globally – days before physical symptoms become visible.

The advancement will potentially allow plant breeders to speed the development of disease-resistant grape varieties, cue growers to target fungicide use early in a disease’s progression, and provide vineyard workers with better and earlier information for crop management.

While regular cameras record three bands of wavelengths (red, blue, and green) within the visible light spectrum, hyperspectral imaging records hundreds of narrow bands. With this hyperspectral power, the researchers created a high-throughput phenotyping microscope – meaning it can process hundreds of leaf samples within a few hours for observable traits related to disease resistance.

This capability lets it detect changes inside a leaf before they are visible on the surface.

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/index%2Ephp/stories/2026/09/hyperbird-spots-grape-diseases-theyre-visible.

09/14/2026

Fruits and veggies aren’t the only things growing at Dilmun Hill Student Farm! 🫐🥦

Since 1996, Cornell’s 12-acre student-led farm has been a living laboratory for experiential learning. Here, students can cultivate their passions in sustainable agriculture and food systems as they work together to plant, harvest and provide fresh produce to the Cornell community. Members are encouraged to pursue their own interests through independent projects at the farm and explore agricultural practices such as agroforestry.

Dilmun Hill is also home to student clubs, research projects and classes, and hosts community events and farm tours.

Come celebrate Dilmun Hill’s 30th anniversary during its Open Farm Day on Sept. 18 from 3 to 6 p.m. https://cals.cornell.edu/events/dilmun-hill-30th-anniversary-open-farm-day

09/10/2026

We were honored to welcome USDA Undersecretary Richard Fordyce and Clark Putman, New York State Executive Director of the USDA Farm Service Agency, for a visit across Cornell CALS yesterday.

The visit explored how our Land-Grant mission comes to life through research, extension and innovation that support New York's farm and food sectors.

We're grateful for our partnership with the USDA, which helps drive meaningful impact for farmers, food producers and communities across New York and beyond.

09/09/2026

Fifteen years ago, labor accounted for about 30% of total costs at the Washington Fruit and Produce Co. Today, it’s over 60%.

“Our costs have just been skyrocketing, largely around labor, but everything else as well – meanwhile, apples sell for the same price they did 20 years ago,” said Gilbert Plath, technology director for the Yakima, Washington-based orchard, which grows apples and cherries on 10,000 acres.

“Who gets squeezed at that point? It’s not the warehouse, and it’s not the grocery store. It’s the farmers. We need to find ways to do more with less.”

Plath’s fourth-generation family of growers is one of nine organizations nationwide collaborating on a Cornell-led research project to develop robots that can perform labor-intensive orchard operations such as pollinating flowers, thinning fruits, harvesting apples and weeding between rows. The project is supported by a newly announced four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Research Initiative. The grant will establish a Center of Excellence for Orchard Robotics in Cornell’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering.

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/09/cornell-leads-project-putting-robots-work-us-orchards.

09/04/2026

A winged workforce is helping keep your favorite fruits and vegetables on the menu. Chances are, you pass by these tiny unsung heroes every day without noticing.

Amara Dunn-Silver, biocontrol specialist with Cornell Integrated Pest Management, explains some of the pollinator characters you're likely to encounter if you take a closer look.

09/03/2026

What happens when research spaces are designed to bring scientists together? Newly renovated research labs in Kinzelberg Hall are creating more opportunities for collaboration across the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS)

With more than 12,000 square feet of renovated space, researchers have greater access to specialized equipment, flexible lab spaces and shared resources, including dedicated cell culture facilities, designed to bring faculty, graduate students and other researchers together.

For Tolunay Beker Aydemir, associate professor of molecular nutrition, the new infrastructure can also expand the kinds of scientific questions researchers pursue.

“We have access to multiple devices that we wouldn’t have as individual groups,” Aydemir said. “It allows us to diversify our research and think more about how interdisciplinary work could be done, which is very important for us, especially in nutrition.”

The impact is also evident in the everyday interactions happening across the renovated labs. Ph.D. candidate Savita Sastry says having researchers with different areas of expertise working nearby has made it easier to troubleshoot problems, exchange knowledge and build connections beyond her own lab.

The renovated spaces reflect a broader vision for the future of collaborative research, said Sander Kersten, director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences and the Schleifer Family Professor.

“You’re an expert in one thing. Somebody else is an expert in something else, and then you work together,” Kersten said. “That has been the success story of science, and it will also be in the future.”

DNS is shared by Cornell Human Ecology and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University.

Read more about the renovated spaces and the researchers using them: https://human.cornell.edu/news-profiles/new-spaces-shared-science-kinzelberg-hall

Photo Credit: Galib Braschler/Provided

09/01/2026

Fifty years of sweet tradition continued last month at the Dyce Lab for Honey Bee Studies, where community members gathered for the lab's annual honey extraction event, getting a firsthand look at how honey goes from hive to jar.