Daniel Mwalwayo has spent most of his professional career working to ensure a safe food supply in his home country of Malawi.

Vegan marshmallows, dairy-free cheese crackers and locally sourced baked treats — the highlights of Georgia 4-H’s 2017 Food Product Development Contest read like a list of top food trends of 2017. Inspired by the dietary needs and interests of their friends and neighbors, three teams of Georgia 4-H’ers met at the University of Georgia Department of Food Science and Technology in Athens, Georgia, last week to showcase their newly developed food products.

Aggrey Gama, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Griffin campus, is crafting a drink that would deliver the nutrition and tastiness of peanuts to consumers in his home country of Malawi.

University of Georgia food microbiologist Xiangyu Deng’s work in the emerging field of bioinformatics led to his selection as a Creative Research Medal winner for 2017.

The paloverde trees at the Coastal Botanical Gardens are completely covered in blossoms. The flowers have five yellow petals, but one petal has a honey gland and turns an orange-red, giving the blooms a distinctive bicolored look. The flowers are swarming with pollinators of all types.

Since April 6, when lightning started a wildfire in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, thousands of area families have evacuated their homes to protect themselves from the fire.

Citrus fruit cultivars recently released by University of Georgia scientist Wayne Hanna are part of a new citrus grove planted in Camilla, Georgia. The grove will serve as an education site and provide homegrown fruit for the inmates who will care for the grove. 

Once a devastating presence in Georgia’s soybean fields and a major nuisance to homeowners, the kudzu bug population has diminished over the past three years.

April brought plentiful spring showers to north Georgia but little rainfall to the southern half of the state, resulting in moderate drought conditions, delayed planting, and conditions conducive to wildfires near the Okefenokee Swamp.