Backyard Orchard News
How to Make an Insect Collection
It's that time of year again. Teachers ask their students to make an insect collection. The...
Robber fly staring at the photographer. A robber fly is one of many insects that students use in "How to Make an Insect Collection." (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
To Kill a Monarch
It's a sin to kill a mockingbird, wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee in her classic...
A praying mantis nails a monarch butterfly on a butterfly bush. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey(
Close-up of the predator and the prey. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A monarch butterfly wing in the foreground; praying mantis in the background. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Sorghum research at the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Research & Extension Centers available to the public.
If you are interested in getting information regarding research on the use of sorghum as a multi-purpose low-input crop for California, please go to this link. Under the research link, there are some videos showing the harvest of experimental plots as well as the use of a drone to perform rapid, robotic phenotyping of sorghum for character traits such as plant height, leaf area, and biomass area--data points used to help search for genes that control mechanisms involved in both drought tolerance and salinity tolerance in sorghum. Research is currently being performed at Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Desert Research and Extension Center, and West Side Research and Extension Center.
Photograph of sorghum plants.
Privacy, Please!
Privacy, please! You're walking by a patch of lavender and Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) and you...
Two Gulf Fritillaries doing what comes naturally. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A butterfly passing by prompted this Gulf Frit male to react, by opening its wings.. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A honey bee "photobombs" the mating Gulf Fritillaries. The butterflies immediately flew away, still attached. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
ICE-ing on the Cake!
What a nice move! Especially since the United States is busily restoring diplomatic relations with...
Female mosquito, Aedes aegypti, also known as "the dengue mosquito," drawing a blood meal. (Photo by James Gathany. United States Department of Health and Human Services)