Land-grant faculty, staff earn honors at annual Ag Awards

By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Outstanding land-grant faculty and staff were honored Friday during the annual Agriculture Awards, held at the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences.

AG AWARDS — Amanda McWhirt, associate professor and extension specialist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture,  spoke on behalf of the Expanding the Fresh-Market Blackberry Industry Team, which won the John W. White Outstanding Team Award. (U of A System Division of Ag photo.)

The event recognizes the achievements of those from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, representing the extension, research and teaching missions of the nation’s land-grant system in Arkansas.

“These awards do more than recognize the excellence in our ranks. Since our winners are nominated by their colleagues, these awards are an acknowledgement of the esteem in which their peers hold them,” said Deacue Fields, vice president-agriculture for the University of Arkansas System. “Nothing could be more gratifying for our professionals and our organization.” 

The following were honored with John W. White Awards, which commemorate the first head of the Division of Agriculture.

• John W. White Outstanding Research Award – Kristen Gibson, professor of food safety and microbiology, who joined the Division of Agriculture in 2010 as a postdoctoral research associate in the Center for Food Safety.

• John W. White Outstanding Teaching Award – Nathan Kemper, an associate professor of community and rural economic development and the director of undergraduate and online programs in the department of agricultural economics and agribusiness.

• John W. White Outstanding Extension State Faculty Award – Laura Hendrix, professor, department of family and consumer sciences.

• John W. White Outstanding County Extension Educator Award – Brad McGinley, Grant County extension staff chair.

• John W. White Outstanding Team Award – Expanding the Fresh-Market Blackberry Industry Team: Aaron Cato, extension specialist-horticulture integrated pest management; Amanda McWhirt, extension specialist-horticulture crops, Jackie Lee, director of the Fruit Research Station, and Margaret Worthington, fruit breeder, all of the department of horticulture; and Renee Threlfall, associate professor, department of food science.

The following were honored with Outstanding Support Personnel Awards.

Program Area Awards

• Daniel McCarty – Rice breeding program associate based at the Rice Research and Extension Center.

• Julian Abram – Program technician in the biological and agricultural engineering department.

 Support Function Awards

• Dwain Ober – Farm foreman, Fruit Research Station.

• Karen DiCicco – Assistant director of information technology, Cooperative Extension Service.

Support Staff Awards 

• Genean Butler – Associate for administration for agriculture and natural resources.

• Tonya Foster – Administrative manager for the department of agricultural economics and agribusiness

EXTENSION — John Anderson, director of the Cooperative Extension Service and senior associate vice president-extension for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, speaks at the 2024 Agriculture Awards. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Mary Hightower)

John Anderson, head of the Cooperative Extension Service, said that “our Agriculture Awards give us an annual reminder of the exceptional work being done in the Division of Agriculture and in Bumpers College across all or our land-grant mission areas. 

“This year’s awardees are all highly deserving of recognition for the quality and the impact of their work. Our Extension winners – both individually and in their contribution to interdisciplinary teams – have clearly earned the respect of their colleagues,” he said. “Their work in linking the UA System directly to our stakeholders with practical, relevant, and impactful programming deserves to be recognized and celebrated. These awards give us an opportunity to do just that.”

“The faculty and staff we recognize this year are a testament to the level of achievement we aim for as an institution. They reflect our values and our mission to innovate and improve people’s lives,” said Jean-François Meullenet, director of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station. “I am grateful for how these awardees set the standard for excellence with their impactful work.”

The following were honored with Bumpers College Awards:

• Outstanding Honors Thesis Mentor Award – Gisela Erf, an immunologist and holder of the Tyson Endowed Professorship in Avian Immunology in the department of poultry science and with the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science.

• Alumni Society Outstanding Advising – Stephanie Hubert, a senior instructor of apparel merchandising and product development in Bumpers College’s School of Human Environmental Sciences.

• Jack G. Justus Teaching – Christopher Estepp, associate professor in the department of agricultural education, communications and technology.

• Dean’s Award of Excellence for Professional Staff – Kristin Seals, associate director of facilities and special events with the Bumpers College dean’s office.

• Spitze Land Grant University Faculty Award for Excellence – Walter Bottje, professor in the department of poultry science.

BUMPERS COLLEGE — Jeff Edwards, dean of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, speaks at the 2024 Agriculture Awards. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Mary Hightower)

Jeff Edwards, dean of Bumpers College, offered his “congratulations to everyone who is receiving an award. It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge members of the college faculty and staff who are being honored.

“We have the best faculty and staff on campus and these awards are a small way of recognizing all that they do,” Edwards said. “Their dedication to serving students, and others, stands out and I’m proud to have them representing Bumpers College as recipients of their respective awards.”

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. 

Unique chicken line advances research on autoimmune disease that affects humans

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A unique chicken breed is helping researchers better understand vitiligo, an autoimmune disease that affects 1-2 percent of the world’s population.

VITILIGO RESEARCH — Gisela Erf, professor of immunology, holds a Smyth line rooster whose white feathers are the result of vitiligo. The Smyth line, and its parental Brown line, are used to study the autoimmune disease that affects humans. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Paden Johnson)

In vitiligo (pronounced vit-ih-LIE-go) the immune system attacks cells called melanocytes, causing skin pigment to disappear.

The effects are more than skin deep.

“Autoimmune diseases are multifactorial and non-communicable, and one is often associated with other autoimmune disorders. They call it the kaleidoscope of autoimmunity,” Gisela Erf, professor of immunology with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, said. “Vitiligo in humans, is strongly associated with autoimmune thyroiditis where the thyroid gland becomes attacked by the immune system, and that’s in our vitiligo birds, too.”

Why chickens?

Erf studies the disease using a rare vitiligo-prone chicken breed called the Smyth line, the only animal model for vitiligo that shares all the characteristics of the human condition. These include the spontaneous loss of melanocytes, interactions between genetic, environmental, and immunological factors that drive disease expression, and associations with other autoimmune diseases.

Research with the Smyth line helps scientists observe immune responses that are relatable to humans. Erf recently published a study in Frontiers in Immunology titled “Spontaneous immunological activities in the target tissue of vitiligo-prone Smyth and vitiligo-susceptible Brown lines of chicken,” which was co-authored by Erf’s former graduate students, Daniel M. Falcon and Kristen A. Byrne, and program associate Marites A. Sales.

The study identified the immune mechanisms behind the onset of vitiligo, which could one day inform the development of effective preventative and therapeutic measures for humans.

Erf conducts research through the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station as a faculty member of the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science. She holds the Tyson Endowed Professorship in Avian Immunology and teaches classes through the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas. The experiment station is the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Finding answers in feathers

Erf’s study compared the immune responses in the Smyth line to its parental Brown line, which is susceptible to vitiligo but much less likely to develop the disease. A unique feature of this animal model is that the melanocyte-containing target tissue — the “pulp” of small growing feathers — is easily accessible. Scientists can sample it many times before and during the onset and progression of the disease without harming the bird, Erf said.

In fact, based on studying the autoimmune response in the feather pulp, Erf developed this tissue as a skin test-site — a “living test-tube,” she calls it — and a minimally invasive procedure to study immune responses to injected vaccines and other antigens. She has since patented this method.  

“The method came out of these vitiligo studies, and it has been an incredibly successful technique, in my opinion, to study these very complex inflammatory responses where the cells get recruited from the blood to the site of infection or injection,” Erf said.

Examining growing feathers from the Brown line also revealed immune cells entering the pulp, but these cells exhibited anti-inflammatory immune activities, which may be responsible for preventing vitiligo development in these chickens, Erf explained.

The researchers also detected positive correlations that indicate an immune response with regulatory T cells, which stop vitiligo development and killing of the melanocytes.

In the Smyth line, approximately one month before vitiligo becomes visible, an increase in the expression of specific immune regulatory genes was observed. The study states that this early immune activity might play a role in triggering the disease. Overall, their findings align with observations in human studies, with the added benefit of new insights into events before the onset of the disease, Erf added.

This latest study suggests the different responses in Smyth and Brown line chickens could lead to new ways of understanding how the immune system decides between attacking or tolerating melanocytes, Erf said. And that could lead to significant advancements in treatment of autoimmune diseases like vitiligo.

The Smyth chicken was first identified by J. Robert Smyth in 1977 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Erf, who knew Smyth, has worked with the Smyth line since 1989 and maintains the only known research breeding flock in the world.

To learn more about the Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website. Follow us on X at @ArkAgResearch, subscribe to the Food, Farms and Forests podcast and sign up for our monthly newsletter, the Arkansas Agricultural Research Report. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit uada.edu. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.