In the last few years, growers have witnessed two agricultural setbacks.

Bee populations in the United States are under extreme stress, potentially threatening the crops that need them to produce fruit. At the same time, a hopeful surge in growing industrial hemp — banned in this country since the 1930s, but revived in the 2018 Farm Bill as a possible high-value niche crop to boost small farmers’ bottom lines — has waned. 

But out of two setbacks may come one solution: Could hemp represent salvation for bees?

Recent work by CAES research professor Beatrice Dingha, Ph.D., suggests that pollen from industrial hemp provides nutritional benefits that bees need to thrive, and bees attracted to hemp can help increase yields of crops that depend on pollinators.

Dingha, who earned her doctorate in entomology from Auburn University, said bees are critical to food production in the United States.

“When we talk about bees, we’re talking about food security for us and the bees,” said Dingha, who has been on the faculty of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design since 2010.

“Without bees, we might not find certain foods that depend on pollinators in the grocery store. And if plants are not able to provide bees with the pollen and nectar they need, then the health and survival of bees are threatened.”

There’s no denying it: Bees are in trouble. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that managed honey bee colonies in the United States number about half what they were in the 1940s. To keep bee populations constant, commercial beekeepers must replace roughly a third of their hives each year. Populations of wild bees have declined as well. By some estimates, more than 40% of the wild bee species native to the U.S. are at risk of extinction. 

Wild and domesticated bees face similar perils: arthropod pests, pesticides, pathogens and habitat loss due to development and climate change. These hazards represent a profound threat to American agriculture because roughly a third of the food we eat — almonds, apples, melons, pumpkins, squash, strawberries, watermelon and many other nuts, fruits and vegetables — depends on pollinators such as bees. 

Dingha saw research opportunities with the return of industrial hemp when Congress legalized commercial growing of hemp in this country in 2018. When she and her colleagues surveyed organic farmers across North Carolina, they discovered significant interest in growing hemp.

Dingha in 2019 was awarded a USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant of nearly $230,000 over three years to support a project designed to develop a sustainable cropping system for industrial hemp production.

For her first objective, Dingha measured bee activity and chemical composition of pollen on four varieties of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) grown on the N.C. A&T University Farm. Not only did the hemp plants attract significant bee activity, these pollinators also showed high preference for the Joey variety. The results of this research were published this summer in the journal Insects.

It’s unclear why bees showed such preference. But Dingha came away from the project with a conviction: “At the end of the day,” she said, “hemp is a crop that will contribute to food security and enhance bee health.”

Next, Dingha turned to intercropping, the practice of simultaneously planting two or more crops in close proximity — that is, in rows, strips or even adjacent fields. For this objective, Dingha intercropped three plants: the Joey variety of industrial hemp, cowpeas (a legume better known as black-eyed peas) and squash, a pollinator-dependent plant. The pollen produced by hemp and the nectar generated by cowpeas attracted an abundance of bees, which led to a higher-than-normal increase in the squash yield.

Those findings, which Dingha is currently writing for publication, are important in at least two ways. They reinforce earlier research that suggests that intercropping can attract more pollinators and increase crop yields. And they give farmers a new reason to grow hemp.

Once industrial hemp became legal, there was a rush to plant a potentially high-value crop that produced fiber, oilseed and cannabidiol, better known as CBD, which some believe has health benefits. But Dingha noted that hemp is a delicate plant that by law must be destroyed if its tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, content exceeds 0.3%. (THC is the compound responsible for the high associated with marijuana.) 

Because the demand for hemp was less than U.S. growers anticipated and the regulatory environment around CBD products remains uncertain, farmers have largely turned away from hemp. According to the USDA, U.S. hemp acreage in 2022 had fallen by nearly 50% from the previous year while the value of hemp production dropped by more than 70%. 

Dingha has this message for growers: Don’t give up on hemp. Bees and other pollinators need hemp pollen, and intercropping can help growers see a bigger return on their investment.

“Growers should still have hope because hemp can be a very lucrative crop,” Dingha said. “Other countries are doing well with hemp. Why can’t we?”

Consider the humble farm pond. It’s used to water crops and livestock. It attracts birds and other wildlife and can be stocked with fish. In a pinch, farm pond water can be used to put out fires.

But farm ponds, filled by rainfall and runoff from nearby fields, can collect numerous harmful substances, from pesticides and herbicides to traces of veterinary medicine, hormones and antibiotics found in animal manure. When water from farm ponds is used to irrigate fields, it can post a risk to food safety and ultimately human health.

Consider the humble farm pond. It’s used to water crops and livestock. It attracts birds and other wildlife and can be stocked with fish. In a pinch, farm pond water can be used to put out fires.

But farm ponds, filled by rainfall and runoff from nearby fields, can collect numerous harmful substances, from pesticides and herbicides to traces of veterinary medicine, hormones and antibiotics found in animal manure. When water from farm ponds is used to irrigate fields, it can post a risk to food safety and ultimately human health.

CAES professor Niroj Aryal, Ph.D., is seeking ecologically engineered solutions to nonpoint source pollution, which is runoff from precipitation that carries a wide range of contaminants into groundwater, bodies of water and, yes, farm ponds. His ongoing research points to several low-cost and sustainable approaches that could improve water quality in agricultural settings.

On the glove of Niroj Aryal, Ph.D., is what he calls “the worker in the wetlands,” duckweed.

“Farm pond water quality can be impacted by so many different kinds of pollutants.

My goal is to evaluate ecological engineering techniques to see how effective they are at removing these pollutants and finding innovative ways to improve these techniques,” said Aryal, an associate professor of biological engineering in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design.

“We want to improve the quality of water in those farm ponds so when we use it for irrigation we can lessen the impacts on us,” he added. “Water quality and food safety — they’re connected.”

Aryal joined the CAES faculty in 2017 after earning his doctorate in biosystems engineering and environmental engineering from Michigan State University and working for two and a half years as a postdoctoral researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Arkansas. In 2023, North Carolina A&T State University promoted him to associate professor and granted him tenure. He is currently serving as interim chairman of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design.

Aryal is aligned with an emerging scientific discipline known as ecological engineering, which seeks to design natural and sustainable solutions to restore ecosystems and address environmental challenges. Nature has the capacity to solve many of its own problems, he said, but sometimes it needs some human assistance.

To design ecological engineering solutions to agricultural problems, “we try to use as many natural materials as possible — no chemicals, no fertilizers, no pumps,” Aryal said. “We’re looking for low-cost, natural and passive techniques that can work in the fields and be deployed by farmers. If it’s expensive, it’s not going to be adopted.”

In his latest research endeavor, Aryal is seeking ways to improve the water quality in farm ponds by removing pollutants from water runoff. His project is funded by a USDA Evans-Allen capacity grant, which supports agricultural research at 1890 land-grant universities, of approximately $600,000 over four years.

Aryal is experimenting with two methods: woodchip bioreactors and constructed wetlands. Woodchip bioreactors — simple trenches dug out and filled with cheap and available wood chips — have been proven to be extremely effective at converting nitrates found in water flowing through agricultural tile drainage networks into harmless nitrogen gas. Wetlands also are highly efficient at improving water quality.

Aryal noted that much research on biofilters has focused on their ability to remove nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from groundwater. But scientists have paid relatively little attention to their effectiveness at eliminating common farm pollutants such as agrochemicals, pathogens and even antibiotic resistant bacteria.

In a greenhouse laboratory at the N.C. A&T University Farm, Aryal and his research team designed and built multiple versions of these bioreactors — solely with wood chips, with wood chips and various metals, and wetlands that incorporated peat moss and biochar, a charcoal-like substance that remains after organic materials are burned.

Aryal said he has found designs that removed significant amounts of lambda cyhalothrin and cypermethrin, two pyrethroids widely used in commercial insecticides. Other designs have been effective at lowering levels of glyphosate, a widely used herbicide, and E. coli bacteria.

Aryal already has published one paper on his current work in the journal Sustainability. A second paper has been accepted for publication, and a third is being written. He hopes his findings will spur other researchers to investigate what other pollutants and pathogens might be removed by biofilters so they can engineer more effective methods of improving water quality on farms and even urban environments.

Better water quality, he said, holds promise for solving water shortages that threaten so much of the planet.

“A good solution for our water quantity problem is to collect more runoff, but at the same time we need to improve our water quality,” Aryal said. “Ultimately, the goal is to have access to safe and abundant water for diverse uses by improving methods of conservation, protection and treatment.”

In the lab of ruminant nutrition professor Uchenna Anele, Ph.D. lies a quest to find the “fish with the golden coin” –  the essential oil or oils that can improve digestion and reduce greenhouse gases in cattle.

Through batch culture studies, simulated rumen techniques and “big data” analysis, Anele and his students are on the hunt for the best essential oils and plant nutraceuticals that will cut down on methane emissions in cattle and improve the animal’s gut health during digestion.

“A healthy gut is a healthy animal, and a healthy animal is a productive animal,” said Anele. “The farmers that we are interested in helping with our research are small, limited resource and disadvantaged farmers. We would like to commercialize our results and we’re looking at inputs that will not be so expensive.”

In 2017, Food and Drug Administration policies restricted the use of antibiotics in growth production for food animals, specifically to facilitate the increase of an animal’s rate of weight gain and feed efficiency.

“Before then, we had been using antibiotics at sub-therapeutic levels to improve animal performance,” said Anele. “That was phased out. From there on, we looked at how we could continue improving gut health without using antibiotics. That led to using regenerative plant nutraceuticals.”

Nutraceuticals, defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as any substance that is a food, or part of a food, that has medical or health benefits, can be single nutrients, like Vitamin C, that help prevent or treat disease. Unlike pharmaceutical supplements, which are usually pills or tablets that contain an isolated nutrient, nutraceutical supplements are nutritionally-rich whole foods.

Green tea, cod liver oil, Echinacea and ginseng, for example, are all nutraceuticals.

Anele’s Evans-Allen funded project, begun in 2020, aims to utilize plant nutraceuticals – the parts of the plant that has medical or health benefits – in a multidisciplinary approach that farmers can use to maintain a healthy gut in their ruminant livestock.

“The plant nutraceuticals have medicinal value,” said Anele. “But they also don’t have a broad spectrum of action as antibiotics. They have limitations, but we know that there’s something there. So, locating the right nutraceuticals is like finding the needle in the haystack. It is there; we just have to pinpoint it.”

Research laboratory technician Lydia Olagunju, Ph.D., doctoral student Joel Alabi, and Anele with the lab’s RUSITEC, a device that replicates the cattle’s digestive habits.

At the same time, Anele knows that the industry needed ways to reduce ruminants’ methane emissions during feeding. And so, his research is looking into that aspect of the ruminant-feed issue as well, by searching for the perfect, plant-based food additive that will both maintain an animal’s gut health and control its methane emissions.

“My research is also focused on reducing greenhouse gases from a producer’s perspective,” said Anele. “Up to 12 percent of the total gross energy (the amount of energy in animal feed) given to the ruminants and the livestock can be lost as methane. That’s a significant loss from a producer’s perspective, because that energy and those nutritional benefits are lost, and the producer spends more money feeding the animal.”

In addition, Anele said, the methane emission from the animal is an environmental issue; as a greenhouse gas, its presence is more than 25 percent more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, affecting the earth’s temperature and climate system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The study begins with a batch culture, a closed culture system that contains limited amounts of nutrients, which screens numerous plant nutraceuticals, medicinal plants, essential oils, and prebiotics.

“We have three orbital shakers in a reach-in incubator,” said Anele. “Each orbital shaker can contain up to 88 serum bottles. If we pack it very well, it can contain 250 bottles and each bottle represents an animal. This setup has helped us to evaluate thousands of samples. It’s like mimicking what goes on inside the ruminant. That is always the first step in our screening process, because you don’t know which one will give you the best results. Instead of using a hook, we use a net, because you don’t know which fish has the golden coin.”

The batch culture study alone, Anele said, has been so extensive that he has graduated three master’s degree students in the process.

After samples have been screened, a handful are selected and tested to see if they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions without affecting the animal’s ability to digest dry matter and, as an incentive, if they can increase total volatile fatty acids and microbial mass.

At N.C. A&T’s University Farm, Anele and his students collect samples from six cattle each week.

“We repeat these and move on to the second stage of the study, but often repeat the batch culture to make sure we are consistent,” said Anele.

That second stage, for the samples selected and tested, involves replicating the animal’s digestive system through RUSITEC, or “rumen simulation technique.” In Anele’s lab, he and his students run samples through a device that mimics the cattle’s feeding and digestive habits, and collects gaseous material in a gas bag.

Anele prepares to collect dry matter samples from the rumen of that week’s cattle at the University Farm.

“The gas bag demonstrates the way the animals expel gases,” Anele said. “The digested material is then collected. You have a container that has artificial saliva, simulating the production of saliva in animals, and it’s being infused into 1-liter vessels, representing the rumen of the animals and breaking down the feed.”

Through this process, Anele and his students can look at the products used from the initial batch culture and, by comparison, analyze their effects on breaking down dry matter.

“Are the oils and nutraceuticals reducing greenhouse gases? By how much? Are the animals producing a lot of microbial mass? Are the products increasing the amount of total volatile fatty acids? These are some of the major variables that happen in the live animal,” Anele said. “Ruminants, when they eat anything, produce volatile fatty acids and microbial mass in the rumen, the more volatile fatty acids and microbial mass are produced, the better, which means less gas that the animal will pass into the environment. That gives us the idea of the project we are doing.”

A major component of Anele’s research is “big data” and how the results and information from the batch culture and RUSITEC studies could provide long-term benefits outside the scope of this project. For example, this project is primarily focused on beef and dairy cattle, but with further study, the same results can be potentially used to help the digestion of smaller ruminants, like sheep and goats.

“What are the products like when digested?” said Anele. “Metabolites check everything produced from amino acids. We generate tons of data that we could analyze.”

The research has yielded results that can potentially reduce greenhouse gases, Anele said, but the project is ongoing.

“I’m not satisfied yet,” said Anele. “We are trying to optimize the right nutraceuticals that will reduce greenhouse gases without affecting dry-matter digestibility. Even if the product doesn’t significantly improve dry-matter digestibility, if it doesn’t negatively affect it, that’s a win.”

Imagine whipping up a few eggs for breakfast in the morning and that’s your medicine for the day.

Granted, these are no ordinary eggs. These eggs are the creation of Shengmin Sang and his research team at N.C. A&T’s Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.

These eggs — rich in polyphenols known to be strong antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents — come from laying hens at the N.C. A&T University Farm that have been fed a special diet containing apple and orange peels.

Eggs like these could help prevent the development of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, even age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s.

And, if Sang has his way, eggs like these could one day be available at your neighborhood grocery store.

“The research focus of my lab is to provide scientific evidence to support food as medicine, which is a cost-effective strategy to reduce the health-care burden,” said Sang, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of functional foods and human health. “We focus on gut health and the prevention of metabolic diseases.

Research Associate Shuwei Zhang runs tests as part of his role in the creation of eggs that are rich in polyphenols, which contain strong antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents.

“Our goal is to use a ‘precision nutrition’ approach to identify the right food for the right populations at the right time. Whether we are healthy or ill, whether we are young or old, our nutritional needs vary, and precision nutrition can help address these unique requirements.”

Sang, a prolific researcher who holds several patents, began studying herbal medicine 20 years ago in China, where he received his doctorate in organic chemistry from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then completed his postdoctoral training studying food bioactives at  Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“I was trained as a natural product chemist to identify bioactive compounds in herbal medicines. We’ve used these medicines in China for thousands of years to treat different diseases, before we got Western medicine,” he said.

“At Rutgers, I started to look at active compounds in foods. We call them ‘functional foods’ because they serve the function of providing some health benefit, beyond the basic nutrients.”

Sang embarked on his current project —”Using special feeding techniques to develop polyphenol-rich functional eggs” — after achieving promising results in a pilot study that added different doses of gingerol-rich ginger extract to the feed of laying hens. Sang’s team, managed by Research Associate Shuwei Zhang, Ph.D., collected eggs daily for four weeks and developed methods to quantify the concentrations of gingerols, shogaols and their major metabolites in the egg whites and yokes.

Shengmin Sang, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of functional foods and human health, seated, and his team (from left, Xiaolin Liu, research technician; Shuwei Zhang, research associate; and Sara De la Cruz, a master’s student in Food & Nutritional Sciences at N.C. A&T,) are researching the creation of eggs that are rich in strong antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents.

“We were able to detect these active compounds in the egg. That proved our idea is feasible,” Sang explained. The results also suggested that the bioavailability of polyphenols is a critical factor for developing polyphenol-rich functional eggs.

With a three-year, $800,000 USDA grant from the Evans Allen Research Program, Sang is now studying whether other major dietary polyphenols are bioavailable in eggs, and whether the special feed actually may improve the performance of the laying hens and egg quality.

“We may also be able to reduce the cholesterol level in the eggs, because polyphenols can reduce cholesterol levels in humans,” Sang said.

Co-PI Y ewande Fasina, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at A&T, is assisting with the laying hen trials. Co-PI Jianmei Yu, Ph.D., a food and nutrition researcher in A&T’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, is overseeing sensory testing of the eggs.

Sang applied for a provisional patent for his functional egg idea and plans to submit a full patent application. Patented or not, his long-term goal is to make polyphenol-rich eggs commercially available in the future.

“We are looking for an industry partner who has the same interest so we can commercialize. The goal would be to make the polyphenol eggs available in the supermarket. We don’t want to make the egg like gold — too expensive. By using industry waste, our goal also is for you to get the eggs at an affordable price.”

So are Sang’s eggs as yummy as those found on the market today? So far, so good on that front, too.

Sara De la Cruz, a master’s student in food and nutritional sciences at A&T who works in Sang’s lab, helped oversee sensory testing on the first batch of eggs in April. Sixty panelists judged the hard-boiled eggs for color, taste, texture, smell and overall liking. The preliminary results are promising, she said.

“It was fun. People were trying to guess which were the samples treated with apple and orange peels, and which were the control samples,” she said. “Basically we didn’t see any statistical differences, which is good.”

Sang, who hopes to have initial results on his functional eggs by the end of this year, views his quest to enhance one of America’s favorite breakfast foods as a common-sense approach to improving the current health-care system.

“As we know, most drugs have side effects. They can cause damage to your body, plus many are quite expensive. Additionally, many chronic diseases are preventable, as they take time to develop,” he said. “Eggs are a staple food. And eggs are a big market. Using food as medicine to prevent disease instead of treating disease is a perfect strategy.” 

The postgraduate human lactation program at North Carolina A&T State University is only four years old, but already it’s diversifying a profession, operating a community clinic and graduating new professionals dedicated to improving the health of mothers and their newborn children. Earlier this year, the program hosted a national breastfeeding conference — a first for a Historically Black College and University.

Most important of all, according to its director, this pioneering program is transforming lives.

Cierra Murphy-Higgs. who will join A&T’s lactation program this fall as didactic coordinator, speaks during the Uplifting Black and Brown Lactation Success Conference, held this fall. Organizer Janiya Mitnaul Williams described the conference as the first to be held at a Historically Black College and University. An estimated 180 lactation professionals, maternal health practitioners and others involved in the breastfeeding, doula and childbirth education communities across the United States attended.

“I want our graduates to say this was the most transformative year of their lives,” said Janiya Mitnaul Williams, director of the N.C. A&T Human Lactation Program. “My ultimate goal is to diversify the lactation profession. And if I can help maternal and child health care practitioners improve how they talk to people, this program can make the world a better place by making better humans.”

Launched in 2020, this accredited two-semester postgraduate program prepares students to become International Board Certified Lactation Consultants who specialize in the clinical management of breastfeeding. N.C. A&T is one of three institutions in North Carolina — and one of two HBCUs in the country — to offer the formal Pathway 2 academic program. It’s housed in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences within the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.

The program has graduated 41 students — making N.C. A&T the nation’s largest producer of Black lactation consultants since 2020 — and achieved a pass rate of 83% on the international certification exam. Nine students in the program’s fifth cohort began their studies in August. While most graduates become lactation consultants, some have used the program as a springboard into master’s and doctoral programs.

“We push our students to think beyond utilizing their certification in hospital settings,” said Williams, who got her bachelor’s degree from N.C. A&T and later earned a master’s degree in maternal and child health. “We encourage our graduates to get into research and larger areas of public health so they are responsible for developing the procedures and protocols that ultimately affect Black and brown babies.”

Emma Burress, clinical director of the Human Lactation Pathway 2 Certificate program at N.C. A&T, shares some laughs with attendees as she keeps up with Cierra Higgs-Murphy’s child during the Uplifting Black and Brown Lactation Success Conference.

The program was created in part to produce more skilled and culturally humble lactation professionals from historically underrepresented communities. The largest percentage of certified lactation consultants in the U.S. identify as white. The relative lack of Black lactation consultants has contributed to Black mothers breastfeeding their babies at much lower rates than other demographic groups despite its significant health benefits for both mothers and children.

“I call it the mirror-mirror effect,” Williams said. “So many Black people don’t have culturally relevant access to lactation assistance. Because of the history of breastfeeding and the mistrust of the health care system in this county, most Black women who are often already not seen or heard in health care settings don’t feel comfortable receiving information about breastfeeding from people who don’t look like them.”

The program’s impact is being felt far beyond the classroom. Williams is a co-principal investigator on a project, funded by a $2.3 million American Heart Association grant shared by N.C. A&T and UNC-Chapel Hill, to decrease Black and brown maternal deaths. The project has produced a new curriculum, augmented by virtual reality modules, to help health care professionals improve their communication skills so they can provide better care. The training will begin this fall at two UNC Health locations and at Cone Health sites in Greensboro and Alamance County.

With a $450,000 grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, the program is operating a no-cost clinic to provide lactation support to new mothers. Located in the General Classroom Building on campus, the clinic is open two days a week for in-person and virtual appointments for N.C. A&T employees, students and community members. The clinic is funded through 2024, and Williams said she is seeking additional funding to keep the clinic open beyond.

In August, the program hosted the two-day Uplifting Black and Brown Lactation Success Conference that brought together 180 people involved in the breastfeeding and birthworker communities across the country. Williams said conference attendees left “energized” because they had a rare opportunity to connect with other professionals with similar backgrounds and experiences.

When Jessica Aytch enrolled in the lactation program in 2022, she was a community-based full spectrum doula who enjoyed serving families and posting informational videos on TikTok. Today, she’s an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant who coordinates N.C. A&T’s community outpatient lactation clinic and runs the lactation program’s social media and digital marketing efforts.

“This program has helped me and others discover our own natural gifts and talents and use those strengths to become a positive impact on this field and beyond,” Aytch said. “Everyone leaves the program with a better sense of self and how they will use this credential to serve. That’s a huge thing.”

Not too long ago, schools, businesses and public gathering places closed as people huddled in their homes to avoid a new and deadly virus called COVID-19.

The pandemic of 2020 and 2021 is history, although the disease persists and still kills. Communities that faced isolation, the deaths of loved ones, job loss, a lack of community services and other effects have endured, including the minority, low-income and rural communities that reportedly suffered the most from the disease, the lockdown, and its economic and social fallout.

Jennifer Beasley, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, thinks there is much to be learned from the experiences of people in these communities, not by focusing on what they lacked and how they suffered from COVID-19 but on how they faced challenges and built resilience.

“There is a critical need to understand the impact that COVID-19 has had on diverse families and their children, including racially, ethnically, linguistically, culturally and developmentally diverse families and their children,” she said. “We are doing that utilizing a strengths-based, or resilience-based, perspective rather than a deficit-based perspective. We want to look at what diverse families, particularly those with young children, experienced when life got turned upside down and we want to understand how they dealt with challenge after challenge after challenge.”

Beasley is principal investigator on a project called Families Flourish: A COVID-19 Resiliency Study, a three-year effort to examine the pandemic experiences of North Carolina families that, because of different socioeconomic or educational levels, mistrust or isolation, usually don’t participate in research projects. By bringing together focus groups to discuss their experiences during quarantine, the researchers hope to unearth what happened during the pandemic and how those experiences continue to affect families and communities today. They also hope the focus groups provide an outlet and support system for people whose voices are often not heard.

“Our idea has been to make sure that we’re letting families lift their voices to share their experiences from that time of quarantine,” said Beasley. “So many of these families already have been through quite a bit and they have developed quite excellent coping strategies. We want to make sure we create a space to capture that as well.”

Families Flourish is funded by an Evans-Allen capacity grant, a program through the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture that supports research at 1890 land-grant universities. Beasley has three co-PIs on the project: Jeff Wolfgang, Ph.D., and Maylee Vazquez, Ph.D., both assistant professors in the College of Education’s counseling department; and Valerie Jarvis McMillan, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences.

The team has been very intentional about recruiting diverse families for focus groups and developing focus group questions that are culturally specific, strengths-based, and inclusive of diverse families.

The team defines diverse families as those who are racially, ethnically, linguistically, culturally, economically and developmentally different than the middle-class, Caucasian families typically cited in research literature. Although most of the focus has been on families in rural areas, about a quarter of the families Beasley hopes to talk to reside in underserved areas of Greensboro and other North Carolina cities. All study participants have children age 5 and younger. Many are Spanish-speaking families in isolated rural communities and in minority and underserved urban neighborhoods

Building Bridges, Earning Trust

To recruit families, the research team depends on partnerships with community members they’ve dubbed Master Bridge Builders, (MBBs), who are trusted community members actively involved in local issues as teachers, church leaders, healthcare professionals, activists, small business owners, etc. These community members serve as liaisons, or bridges, to potential focus group members who might otherwise be wary of university research teams.

“We’ve been able to leverage those kinds of community relationships to help us create that bridge,” said Beasley, who added that some of the MBBs have been colleagues she has worked with in early childhood education and intervention programs. “If someone can say ‘This is my friend, Dr. Beasley, and she wants to talk to you about your experiences with COVID,’ it’s kind of saying that this professional, this person, is trustworthy,” she said.

Jennifer Beasley, Ph.D., right, an assistant professor in the Dept. of Family and Consumer Sciences, has been conducting research on how families faced COVID-19 during the pandemic. Beasley has collected data from families like Larissa, left, and Houston Gilmer, whose son Houston II, is a student in the N.C. A&T’s Child Development Lab.

MBBs ensure the Families Flourish project is not a top down effort. The builders are partners who give advice on what questions and approaches should work well with a particular set of focus group individuals. They help the researchers understand culturally specific focus group logistics, such as whether in-person or Zoom-based group meetings are most appropriate, the best times of day to hold a meeting and whether childcare will be needed.

“If someone can say, ‘This is my friend, Dr. Beasley, and she wants to talk to you about your experiences with COVID,’ it’s kind of saying that this professional, this person, is trustworthy.”

— Jennifer Beasley, Ph.D.

So far, Families Flourish has conducted four focus groups and talked to 17 families, including nine Spanish-speaking families. Preliminary findings suggest these families coped with many challenges during the pandemic, including job loss, isolation, and a lack of services for themselves and their children. Beasley said several mothers talked about being pregnant during the pandemic and unable to access prenatal care from an overburdened healthcare system. Fathers faced challenges too, from being laid off and put into a different role within the family to working overtime or multiple jobs to make ends meet.

“For many families, you could see the emotion on their faces (during the focus groups),” said Beasley. “Access to prenatal care and child wellness care was difficult; the system was overwhelmed. And many of these families have a kind of guilt that they still carry with them although we all know it’s not their fault.”

Despite the traumas, the pandemic had a bit of a silver lining, even for families with the most critical needs. Beasley said giving families the chance to talk with other families about their experiences seems to help them deal with feelings of trauma and isolation they’ve carried with them since the quarantine.

“We’re also hearing from families that in addition to some of the more challenging memories, they have recalled positive experiences from that time that they now associate with resiliency and empowerment,” she said. Many parents reported spending more quality time with their children during the quarantine, and some started new family traditions of getting out of the house to walk, play games, or dance to music.

“One of the biggest positives that families reported is the realization that all these things they’ve been told are good – more time with their kids, playing with their kids, dancing and so forth – really helped them throughout the pandemic and even now with their overall well-being. Some said these are the kinds of things they continue to do and prioritize,” said Beasley.

Families Flourish wraps up in September 2025. By then Beasley hopes the team has talked to approximately 30 families from diverse backgrounds and learned about their pandemic experiences, their lasting traumas or concerns that stem from the pandemic, how their family dynamics have changed since the pandemic, and the different strategies they’ve used to survive, thrive, and give their very young children a positive start to life.

“We want to understand how they experienced it, and then how it has shifted or changed their lives now, particularly within the family system and particularly with parent-child interactions,” said Beasley. “We know that in early childhood, specifically within the 0-5-year-old age group, quality parent-child interactions among other things are critical to setting the foundation for school and life.”

Kathleen Liang, Ph.D. Kellogg Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Applied Economics and Agriscience Education

Kathleen Liang, Ph.D., has a message for educators: Agriculture is much more than farming. In fact, aspects of agriculture are embedded in biology, mathematics, environmental sciences, and even history and language arts.

“A lot of K-12 teachers are curious about what the whole agriculture domain involves,” said Liang, Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Agriculture in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems.

“Agriculture includes multiple disciplines and different types of skills, knowledge and practices. First, I want to expose teachers to the multiple aspects of farming and agriculture. Then, I want to get them on board with using agriculture as examples in any course they teach.”

Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Liang is spreading the word about the ubiquitousness of agriculture. The three-year grant will allow Liang to work with more than 60 North Carolina K-12 educators, who teach a wide range of subjects and grade levels. The one-week, hands-on program introduces teachers to the many aspects of agriculture and how agriculture can be integrated into diverse classroom learning environments. In 2024, three groups of about 20 teachers met for the intensive week of training at Cherry Research Farm in Goldsboro. Liang will convene more teacher trainings during summer 2025 and 2026 before wrapping up the program. The grant provides a stipend for teachers to cover travel and living expenses for the week in Goldsboro.

Although much of the focus is practical – for example, sharing ideas for teaching math by looking at price differences at a farmers market – Liang also aims to expose teachers and students to the depth and breadth of modern agriculture and encourage students to learn more about agriculture and apply their skills in the field.

Swann Middle School students sample a variety of organic, inorganic, processed and unprocessed foods during their day at the farm, integrating agriculture into their English class.

“Most of the time, when people think about agriculture, they think about farming,” said Liang. “Actually, today’s agriculture is very much about technology, environment, climate, and health. There are sensors and monitors that use AI to grow better crops and give animals a healthier environment. Environmental science, engineering, mechanics, food science, design, even physical education are all part of agriculture. The younger generation needs to understand that agriculture will be part of their lives no matter what career path they choose.”

The teacher training program includes talks by experts in agriculture, horticulture, sustainability, food and nutrition, business and marketing, and other topics. The teachers also do some hands-on farm work, such as weeding and planting, and have chances to develop and share curriculum ideas with their peers. The teachers leave the training with at least two lesson plans based on the topics covered each day. For example, math lessons can be focused on calculating prices in the marketplace, farm animal care can help teach biology, and students can learn about health and nutrition by studying the nutritional value of different foods and deciphering food labels.

The program is open to any North Carolina educator, but recruitment focuses on educators who teach in underserved Tier 1 counties, which are the most economically distressed in the state.

“Our priority is to reach people in underserved Tier 1 counties and underserved urban areas because those teachers are more likely to face challenges,” said Liang. “They are more likely to have limited resources and limited connections to higher education.”

Felicia Freeman attended the program in summer 2024 with the intention of gaining knowledge and curriculum ideas for a school she is opening in 2025 called Jesus Reigns STEMSSORI Academy. She plans to develop a small garden at the school and use it to teach science and nutrition, give students access to fresh healthy food, and combat the poor nutrition that often plagues underserved communities. She learned that growing foods can be used to teach students about different cultures and that discarded plastic bottles make perfect containers for hydroponic gardening. She also learned from the other teachers at the training.

“There were teachers from all over the state who shared a wealth of knowledge from beekeeping to their ideas for developing aspects of the program into their educational environments,” she said. “As a result, I have notes from what they shared as well. I would strongly encourage teachers who teach students from disenfranchised populations to seek an opportunity to participate in this program.”

Leatrecia Kinsey, an elementary school teacher at N.C. A&T State University’s Aggie Academy in Greensboro attended the summer 2024 program and said she learned much about modern agricultural techniques, the importance of sustainability, and how to apply her new knowledge in an educational setting.

“I was surprised by how much technology is now integrated into farming, from precision agriculture to data-driven crop management,” said Kinsey. “I’m planning to incorporate what I’ve learned by integrating hands-on agricultural projects into the classroom, using real-world examples of sustainable practices, and leveraging technology to teach students about modern farming techniques.”

Leonese M. Cole, a special education teacher at Aggie Academy, said she attended the program to get ideas on integrating agriculture into hands-on learning in broader curriculum areas. She plans to use what she learned to teach her students where food comes from, and to include an agriculture/food production perspective when teaching subjects such as environmental science and technology.

Dominic Minee, a fifth grader at N.C. A&T State University’s Aggie Academy, chalks out his drawing of a sun to accompany a flower as part of his assignment from his teacher, Leatrecia Kinsey, to illustrate photosynthesis through art play. Kinsey was among many teachers across the state who attended Liang’s intensive training program designed introduce teachers to the many facets of agriculture, and how they can be integrated into diverse classroom learning environments.

“By providing engaging, hands-on learning experiences tailored to diverse needs and abilities, I am able to incorporate agriculture into special education,” she said. “This helps me create meaningful and inclusive learning experiences that enhance my students’ skills in an understanding and supportive environment.”

In addition to learning and gaining new ideas for the classroom, Liang hopes the teachers who attend the sessions will stay in touch and build a network of educators who support each other and share curriculum ideas. The teachers who attended the summer trainings will meet via Zoom in the late fall for a “checkpoint,” where they can share what they’ve done to integrate agriculture into their classrooms, what they’ve learned from the experiences, and their plans for future projects.

“Each semester we will have a tool checkpoint, where people check in and see how it’s going, check out the tools available, share what they’ve done, what they’ve learned, and what else they’d like to do,” said Liang. “The intention is to continue to provide some support for these teachers and then let them form a support network among each other.”

The cohorts who have completed the program so far include veteran teachers, new teachers, and a home schooler. They teach subjects ranging from culinary arts to history to literature to general science, and Liang said agriculture can play a role in all these subjects and provide students with more life choices as they grow older.

“The environmental scientist, the economist, the computer scientist who builds robots, the electrical, mechanical, and civil engineers, all of these fields can apply to agriculture,” she said. “Kids should understand it doesn’t matter what they study in college, they can always apply their skills in agriculture. I think that’s amazing.”

Animal science major Madison Petersen cares about animals and sees how supporting their health and autonomy can better help humans. In her two experiments as an Undergraduate Research Scholar, she tried to improve dairy cows’ health – and learned the value of being flexible in her research. 

“Since I was a young girl, I wanted to work with animals and always wanted to be a veterinarian,” said Petersen. “I think animal science is important because animals can’t speak for themselves – they have to rely on humans to advocate for them. Also, as the population grows, we’ll need animals to feed all the humans. Learning about animals and knowing how to take care of them can also be rewarding for humans.” 

Petersen chose to come to N.C. A&T both for “the HBCU aspect” and because of its animal science program and University Farm.  

“As someone who wants to attend veterinary school, those things really enticed me,” she said. 

She enrolled in 2021, and during her four years, was named a Lewis and Elizabeth Dowdy Scholar and a CAES 1890 Scholar, and had internships through Purdue University, University of California Davis, and the Duke Lemur Center. 

She began work in the lab of ruminant nutrition professor Uchenna Anele, Ph.D. as one of his research assistants during her freshman year. 

“I’ve been very, very fortunate to work with exceptional undergraduate students, and Madison is one of them,” said Anele. “She’s always committed, always doing things, and she’s an intelligent, dedicated hard worker. It’s been an incredible journey.” 

On Anele’s recommendation, Petersen applied and was accepted into the college’s Undergraduate Research Scholars Program in her junior year. She decided to focus on the effects of red seaweed and algae on mitigating cattle emissions. 

“Seaweed is something that we think of when we go to the beach, but it’s been proven on numerous occasions to really mitigate and lessen the levels of methane and greenhouse gas that dairy cattle produce,” said Petersen. “My project was going to be focused on finding another way to insert red seaweed and algae into the cows’ feed and see how well it does. We also wanted to experiment with different modifications, such as freeze-drying the algae versus keeping it normal to see if that had any effect on those methane levels.” 

Petersen planned to feed the seaweed and algae to dairy cattle that had been canulated, or surgically opened in their rumen, a specialized organ found in cud-chewing animals. Then, she and Anele would collect fluid from the rumen opening and run it through a simulated digestion system in Anele’s lab, looking for decreased levels of methane and recording any levels of gas that may have been produced in the simulation. 

However, as the project was moving toward completion, the team hit a project-ending speed bump. 

“We couldn’t obtain fresh red seaweed from a reliable source,” said Petersen. “We wanted material that we were confident would be safe for the dairy cattle.” 

Undeterred, Petersen and Anele decided to switch gears and move towards another project to improve livestock health: using essential oils as an alternative to antibacterials. 

“Sometimes you plan and it doesn’t work out,” said Anele. “But fortunately, this project is moving much faster than the previous one. Madison is moving into microbiology and molecular biology and using 24-hour containment, as opposed to batch culture, which would ordinarily take weeks or months. Within this new time frame, she will finish everything this fall, unlike the previous one which would spill into spring.” 

For this new experiment, Petersen will expose a specific blend of essential oils, based on a previous study from one of Anele’s Ph.D. students, to different concentrations of E. coli bacteria during a 24-hour period, then extract RNA from the E. coli samples for sequencing to study how the essential oils mitigate their bacterial growth and reduce the potential risk of infection.  

As her new project gathers momentum, Petersen praised Anele for his guidance and help in refocusing her energy. 

“When I started this project, he made it very clear that he was going to let me take the reins and if I ever need any help or answers, he’s just an email or a phone call away,” said Petersen. “I appreciate that because he’s really allowed me to have creative freedom.” 

Makenzie Harrison had plans to travel a straight path to veterinary school when she enrolled in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences’ animal science program in 2021. But, during her four years as an undergraduate, her attention shifted, thanks in part to the Undergraduate Research Scholar Program and a unique breed of sheep. 

“Originally, I came to N.C. A&T thinking that I would want to go to vet school right after,” Harrison said. “However, through my classes, my mentor and my advisors, I was exposed to the wide world of agriculture, animal science and research – and I found that research was what I wanted to do instead. 

“I was already working under Dr. Estrada Reyes in her lab and with her sheep at the farm when I landed on this project,” she said. 

Harrison’s mentor, Zaira Estrada Reyes, Ph.D., assistant professor of animal genomics, invited Harrison to her lab in 2022 and recommended that she apply to the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program to give her an opportunity to deepen her research skills. Harrison was accepted in spring 2023 and began collaborating on a new project focused on the effects of heat stress on Florida Cracker Sheep. 

One of the oldest sheep breeds in North America, Florida Cracker sheep may have first been brought to Florida by Spanish conquistadors, and are uniquely adapted to hot and humid tropical conditions. However, the breed is also critically endangered, according to The Livestock Conservancy; once popular, it became overlooked as markets shifted to larger breeds with more wool and meat in the 1940s. 

Now, its resistance to parasites and ability to tolerate humid conditions are putting the breed back on the radar, particularly as many livestock breeds struggle with hotter temperatures in the face of climate change.

“Heat stress reduces an animal’s feed intake and digestive capacity, which compromises its nutrient absorption and metabolism,” Harrison said. “Additionally, their respiration rate increases and induces oxidative stress. It’s a major concern for sustainable sheep production in the Southern U.S. due to comparatively warmer climates.

Makenzie Harrison, right, and her mentor, Zaira Estrada-Reyes, are working to mitigate heat stress in sheep. The Florida Cracker Sheep that they are holding have an unusually high tolerance to heat and parasites, making them one of the hardiest breeds.

“Through this project, we’re hoping to find a strategy to mitigate heat stress for more sustainable sheep production so farmers in the Southern U.S. will be able to better know how to care for their sheep and avoid many of the problems that come with heat stress, such as daily weight gain and reproductive issues.”

In summer 2023, the student and professor tested 14 ewes for six weeks in heat and cooling conditions. Seven of the sheep were exposed to regular, ambient temperatures, while the remaining seven were placed in a pen with an evaporative cooling fan. Each week, Harrison and Reyes took respiration rates, rectal temperatures, blood samples, and thermal imaging from both groups.

“Our findings showed that short-term heat stress alters the hematologic (overall blood health) and metabolomic profile (the study of small molecules within cells, tissues, biofluids and organisms) of the sheep,” said Harrison. “Heat stress weakens their immune system. However, further research is needed to compare Florida Cracker to other sheep breeds.”

The results of Harrison’s project were published in two articles in Oxford Academic’s Journal of Animal Science in Sept., 2024. Reyes said she wasn’t surprised.

“Since she’s been in my lab, she has not stopped working,” said Reyes.  “I’m really happy with her performance, and I’m very happy with her working with my graduate students as well. She’s hard-working, responsible, and one of the best Undergrad Research students that I’ve had under my supervision.

“Having two articles published as an undergraduate student is a huge accomplishment.”

Harrison’s her time at N.C. A&T has been a “comfortable journey.”

“Everyone in my department has been very welcoming and encouraging,” said Harrison. “The highlight so far has been being able to come out to the University Farm and work with animals, and to work with Dr. Reyes in her lab.”