Current issues in land-grant research and recognition of award-winning researchers in the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment took center stage at the 2013 Celebration of Land-Grant Research.

Hosted by its research office, the college welcomed Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James R. Comer to the Cameron Williams Lecture Hall in the UK Plant Sciences Building to give his perspective on the land-grant system. His own farm is a 950-acre beef cattle operation with timber and hay in Monroe County. He also co-owns Comer Land & Cattle Co., a family farming operation with his father and brother.

After Comer’s keynote, the winners of the 2013 Bobby Pass Excellence in Grantsmanship Award, Research/Extension Impact Award and the Prestigious Research Paper Award were announced.

The Bobby Pass Excellence in Grantsmanship award is annually given in memory of former UK Department of Entomology chair Bobby Pass. The 2013 recipient is Peter Nagy, faculty member in the UK Department of Plant Pathology. Over the past five years, Nagy has received competitive federal grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation totaling more than $2.5 million. He also received a competitive Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation award of $90,000.

The Research/Extension Impact award is annually given to faculty in the college whose research program has resulted in a fully developed Extension program. The 2013 recipient is Alison Davis, faculty member in the UK Department of Agricultural Economics. Davis recently researched the economic impact of agriculture on the Fayette County economy, the economic impact of forest industries on Kentucky’s economy and the economic impact of equine industries on Kentucky’s economy.

The Prestigious Research Paper award is annually given to faculty in the college based on research papers published between 2008 and 2013. The 2013 recipient is Subba Reddy Palli, a faculty member in the UK Department of Entomology. Palli’s paper, “A brain-specific cytochrome P450 responsible for the majority of deltamethrin resistance in the QTC279 strain of Tribolium castaneum” was published in the 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. This paper provided a comprehensively documented example of insecticide resistance caused by overexpression of a P450 gene in the red flour beetle.

The recipient of each category received $1,000.