The mississippi agricultural and forestry experiment station (mafes) uses its allocation of hatch multistate capacity funds to support joint research activities with other agricultural experiment…

The mississippi agricultural and forestry experiment station (mafes) uses its allocation of hatch multistate capacity funds to support joint research activities with other agricultural experiment stations, USDA, and other educational institutions. Areas of focus for approved projects include soil and water conservation; plant and animal production, protection, and health; processing, distribution, safety, marketing, and utilization of food and agricultural products; forestry; aquaculture; home economics and family life; human nutrition; rural and community development; sustainable agriculture; molecular biology; and biotechnology. Our goal is to provide safe, nutritious, and accessible food and fiber products and processes for consumers, and to assure that businesses that comprise mississippi have the information required to remain competitive in a global marketplace. On campus, mafes has ten discipline?specific departments & centers and institutes. Off?campus, there are four regional research and extension (r & e) centers strategically located across the state that serve as research hubs. Each r & e center also has satellite stations where scientists conduct research specific to each region as well as research that is part of coordinated statewide programs. The locations of these stations allow US to research areas with different soil types, climates, regional interests and challenges, and to perform trials that encompass these differences for comparison and optimization of salient agricultural production enterprises. Our beneficiaries include individual producers, allied industry partners, state agencies and cooperators, federal agencies, and other regional and national strategic collaborators on research of a regional or national nature. Mafes research supports four critical issues, shared with nifa: enhancing the viability and sustainability of diverse agriculture to ensure food security, safety, and quality; growing vibrant, successful, and sustainable communities and businesses; strengthening and sustaining families to facilitate healthy outcomes and well?being; and sustaining natural resources and environment and promoting sustainable energy. Increased production; best management practices; conservation; disease control, treatment, and prevention; technology development and many other targets are common elements of our research focus. Commodities currently being researched include animals (e.g., beef, dairy, swine, small ruminants, catfish and other aquaculture systems, poultry, seafood, and bees), row? And root?crops (e.g., cotton, soybeans, corn, rice, wheat, grain sorghum, peanuts, sweet potatoes, etc.), and horticulture crops (e.g., greenhouse vegetables and fruit/nut trees, turf grass, floriculture, ornamental nurseries, etc.). Research that relates to human nutrition, health promotion, disease and illness, agritourism and the recreation economy, agricultural and extension education and leadership, landscape design in agricultural or rural communities, and the interface between agricultural and environmental systems are also a focus of initiatives within the state and regionally. Multistate capacity research funds support producers and affiliated communities, research within the southern region, industry, and affiliated state and federal agencies. The most common deliverables are publications and presentations of shared research results with constituents (citizens, industry, collaborators, the scientific community, federal sponsors) both in print (bulletins, professional publications, conference posters) and electronically on the web and via social media outlets. Among anticipated research outcomes are increased plant and animal production or efficiency; greater conservation of water, soil; reduction of inputs to crop production/management; health impacts that contribute to enhanced quality of life; and innovative ideas that provide for economic gains for our state constituents.