(Distributed 03/28/14) BATON ROUGE, La. – Louisiana’s wetlands are places to work, visit and enjoy. They are also places to learn. During the week of April 21-25, the LSU AgCenter’s Youth Wetlands program will be recognizing these diverse environments statewide through a variety of classroom lessons and wetlands activities.

(Distributed 03/28/14) ST. GABRIEL, La. – Louisiana sugar producers may one day have a stake in the U.S. plastics industr, with the help of LSU AgCenter researchers.

(Distributed 03/27/14) BATON ROUGE, La. – Only three billion of the seven billion people in the world are well-nourished, according to Lindsay Allen, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service Western Human Nutrition Research Center. She said this is a problem in both wealthy and poor countries.

(Distributed 03/26/14) BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU AgCenter and the Louisiana State University Library recently completed digitizing approximately 20,000 pages of the “Sugar Bulletin,” the monthly publication of the American Sugar Cane League.

(Distributed 03/26/14) CROWLEY, La. – Dustin Harrell, LSU AgCenter agronomist at the Rice Research Station near Crowley, is participating in a multi-state study on arsenic in rice to determine if levels of the element are higher in different varieties and to see if varied flooding methods affect arsenic content

(Distributed 03/25/14) BATON ROUGE, La. – Appreciating the cultural diversity of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico region could aid in understanding how the oil industry has affected society, says sociologist Mark Schafer.He is studying how various demographic groups in the region have changed over the years.

(Distributed 03/24/14) BATON ROUGE, La. – For the second year in a row, Louisiana farmers had record-breaking values for many of their commodities, which led to a new high value of $11.8 billion for the agriculture sector of the Louisiana economy in 2013 – up 3.8 percent from 2012.

(Distributed 03/21/14) A Louisiana Super Plant to consider for this spring is the Bandana lantana.

(Distributed 03/21/14) BATON ROUGE, La. – Unusually cold temperatures in north Louisiana parishes are expected to have killed 90 percent of the salvinia weevils used to combat the invasive aquatic plant giant salvinia, which is clogging waterways across Louisiana, according to LSU AgCenter weed scientist Dearl Sanders.

(Distributed 03/21/14) HAMMOND, La. – Six bedding plants have been named national All-America Selection winners for the 2014 gardening season. They include Serenita Pink angelonia, Florific Sweet Orange New Guinea impatiens, Sparkle White gaura, NuMex Easter ornamental pepper, Akila Daisy White osteospermum and African Sunset petunia.