Forestry, Food Science Students Win Scholarship Awards
Contact: Nick Houtman, Dept. of Public Affairs, 207-581-3777, houtman@maine.edu
ORONO– Two University of Maine graduate students, Kristi Crowe of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Keith Kanoti of Atkinson, Maine, have received awards for their research from the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station. They both won the George F. Dow and Fred Griffee awards, and Crowe also won the Norris Charles Clements award.
The awards are given annually for dissertation research that is related to experiment station goals. Each award includes scholarship assistance to help pay tuition expenses.
Crowe, a Ph.D. student in the Dept. of Food Science and Human Nutrition is evaluating methods to protect the quality of wild blueberries after harvest. She has focused on microbes and chemical residues.
With financial support from the Maine Wild Blueberry Commission, she has measured the effectiveness of several post-harvest treatments including ultra-violet light (UV), hydrogen peroxide and combinations of hydrogen peroxide and UV. She found that a combination of dilute hydrogen peroxide solution and UV achieved the highest reductions in microbes. Her work also demonstrated that the treatment did not produce toxic pesticide by-products as a result of contact with phosmet residues on wild blueberries.
This work is beneficial to the Maine blueberry industry’s efforts to move away from the use of chlorine in post-harvest processing facilities.
After graduation, Crowe aims to work in a university specializing in post-harvest agricultural research and food safety. She also hopes to promote educational initiatives to inform the public about the effect of food and nutrition on health. She is currently working on legislative proposals with Maine State Senator Sean Faircloth.
Kanoti is a former USDA Forest Service employee and a master’s student in the Dept. of Forest Ecosystem Science. He is studying the influence of climate and growing conditions on seedling germination in laboratory and field studies. “With the possibility of a changing climate it will be important to predict how new temperature and precipitation patterns may influence the distributions of tree species in our forests,” he has written.
His goal is to understand influences on early growth of tree species such as balsam fir, red spruce, eastern white pine and white birch. After finishing his degree in May, he plans to remain in Atkinson and work in the forestry profession. “By remaining in the state and being an involved member of the community I hope to help to ensure that forestry remains a viable industry in the state of Maine,” he says.