Food systems

Beckles helps lead summer program for diverse students

This summer, four students from historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, came to UC Davis for seven immersive weeks of research, fieldwork, training and mentoring. The students worked with faculty studying plant, food and other sciences as part of the Plant Agricultural Biology Graduate Admissions Pathways program.

Teaching lands nourish hungry Aggies

Red, ripe cherries hide in small clusters amid long leaves in the UC Davis teaching orchard. They’re sweet, juicy, beautiful. In area grocery stores, such delights cost up to $8 a pound, but these would have gone to the birds. They must be harvested by hand, and at the price of labor, they’re too expensive to pick, said orchard manager Victor Serratos of the Department of Plant Sciences.