November 11, 2017 | U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science A major bottleneck to producing cost-effective biofuels and many valuable chemicals is breaking down cellulose. Cellulose is an important structural component of plants. Scientists addressed this bottleneck by characterizing those molecular features that make cellulose resistant to degradation. The findings reveal—for the first time—structural […]
November 23, 2017 WSU Faculty member Dr. Melba Ruth Salazar-Gutierrez has published a pamphlet covering the Extension and Rural Education Subgroup – Land Grant University Colombia Consortium Read the pamphlet here
Biological Systems Engineering faculty members, Dr. Troy Peters, Dr. Bin Yang, and Dr. Lav Khot, recently traveled to China to collaborate with faculty, students, and scientists at the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Yangling, China. This is part of an international cooperation partnership that the Department of Biological Systems Engineering Department has with this […]
Oct 2017 | IFT Food Engineering Division Newsletter The department highlighted this month is the Department of Biological Systems Engineering (BSE), in the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at the Washington State University located in Pullman, WA. BSE offers the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Biological and Agricultural Engineering with four areas […]
Oct 2017 | CAHNRS NEWS Seven research teams at Washington State University will enhance the competitiveness of Northwest crops by fighting devastating diseases and advancing sustainable agriculture, thanks to more than $1.5 million in Specialty Crop Block Grant funds from the Washington State and the U.S. Departments of Agriculture. To support Washington’s $3 billion apple […]
Congratulations to Dr. Lav Khot. He was recently Elected as Chair of the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) Precision Horticulture Engineering Working Group for a four-year term starting 2017.
Sept 2017 | BIOFUELS JOURNAL Researchers at Washington State University Tri-Cities and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington have discovered that newly combined spectroscopy processes can reveal the differences between the inside and the outside of the molecular structure of cellulosic biomass. [ view pdf of article in Biofuels Journal] [ view digital magazine – requires Flash ]
Thanks to a changing climate, production of fruits and vegetables may be more challenging in some regions of the country in the future. To help ensure tomorrow’s fruits and vegetables, researchers with the WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources (CSANR) and Department of Biological Systems Engineering are on a four-year, $3.4 million research project to find more places to […]
State-of-the-art on Sensing Technologies for Plant Disease Detection Lav Khot, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering IAREC, Washington State University Brief description: Site-specific disease detection is one of the key aspects of effective crop (loss) management. Recent advances in detectors (optical, chemical) have improved feasibility of development and use of rapid non-contact/nondestructive sensing techniques […]
Nearly 50 graduate students and faculty members represented the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at the Annual International Meeting (AIM) of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), held July 16-19 in Spokane. Thirty-four BSE graduate students volunteered at the meeting, which was coordinated by Jonathan Lomber, BSE Scientific Laboratory Manager. Attended by more than 1,700 students and professionals, […]