NSF, NASA Researcher Speaking at Bumpers College Global Food Opportunities Seminar

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Fred Davies, Regents Professor and Research Faculty Fellow in plant physiology at Texas A&M University

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Fred Davies, a plant physiologist who has earned research funding from the National Science Foundation and NASA, is the guest speaker for an upcoming Global Food Opportunities seminar hosted by the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

Davies, a member of the faculty at Texas A&M University, is speaking to students, faculty and staff from 12:30 to 1:50 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26, in the AFLS Building’s Hembree Auditorium (Room E107). The Global Food Opportunities series, which is also open to the public, exposes students to international experiences and opportunities to expand career and academic options. Davies’ visit is co-sponsored by the Bumpers College International Programs Office and the Horticulture Department. His presentation is “Agriculture and Food Security: Can We Feed the World?”

Davies has worked on space station plant production and the Mission to Mars program. A Fulbright Senior Fellow to Mexico and Peru, a Guggenheim Fellow and past president of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences, he is a Regents Professor and Research Faculty Fellow at TAMU, where he has served on the faculty since 1979.

He earned his bachelor’s in history and biological sciences, and his master’s in horticulture and plant physiology from Rutgers University in 1971 and 1975, respectively. He earned his doctorate in horticulture, plant physiology and tropical agriculture from the University of Florida in 1978.

Davies has served as a visiting scientist at the USDA Horticultural Crops Laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon; as visiting associate professor at Oregon State University; as visiting scientist at the CINVESTAV Plant Biology Institute in Irapuato, Mexico; visiting professor at Monterrey Technological University in Queretaro, Mexico; and as visiting professor at National Agrarian University La Molina and visiting scientist at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru.

His research areas include ornamental nursery crop physiology, low-pressure controlled production environments for NASA, mycorrhizal fungi and international agriculture.

Davies received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Nursery Crops from the American Society of Horticultural Sciences in 1989, the L.M. Ware Distinguished Research Award in 1995 and was named ASHS Fellow in 2003.

Previous speakers in the Global Food Opportunities seminar series include Jose Carreia de Simas, who leads the product development team in the research and development area of Elanco Animal Health; Glenn Shinn, a senior partner at Global Consulting Solutions and Borlaug Senior Scientist in international agricultural development; Robert Zeigler, a plant pathologist and director general of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines; and Zehava Uni, professor of poultry nutrition, physiology and embryology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.