Barlow’s Foods won the grand prize at the 2023 Flavor of Georgia food contest for their product Barlow’s Peach Cobbler Syrup. Barlow’s Foods is a packaged foods company located in Atlanta and founded by Tiffani Neal. The woman-owned business creates pancake mixes and assorted breakfast staples, including their winning syrup.

The University of Georgia has recognized three faculty members with the Russell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the university’s highest early career teaching honor for outstanding and innovative instruction. The 2023 Russell Award recipients are Gino D’Angelo in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Jillian Bohlen in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and Krista Capps in the Odum School of Ecology.

The University of Georgia Center for Food Safety is home to some of the world’s leading experts in food microbiology. This year, it celebrates 30 years of research that has helped to make the food supply safer for all. A linchpin of the center’s success is the relationship the center has built with public health officials and the food industry.

The University of Georgia’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences recently launched a virtual agrileadHER community platform to offer a welcoming space for women in farming and other agricultural professions. The new platform includes access to monthly webinars on a wide array of topics, from production to stress management, and an online community for women farmers from across the country to network.

As the backbone of Georgia’s No. 1 industry, farmers face insurmountable pressures that are often beyond their control. Increased input costs, market variability, environmental disasters and labor shortages are just a few of the challenges. The 2023 Farm Stress Summit, held at Mercer University this week, brought leaders from around the state to learn more about the unique stressors farm families experience and strategies for building a network of support.

The University of Georgia Rural Engagement Workshop for Academic Faculty enters its third year with 12 faculty members working in partnership with units of UGA Cooperative Extension and Public Service and Outreach for grants to help solve rural challenges. The workshop is designed to help drive community-engaged research in rural Georgia communities.

Georgia is the nation's leading pecan-producing state — and University of Georgia researchers intend to keep it that way. Working with an international team of experts, four faculty from the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences have received a U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture award for the second phase of a study to adapt one of Georgia’s top commodities, the pecan.

The University System of Georgia Board of Regents approved two University of Georgia professors as Regents’ Entrepreneurs at its Dec. 1 meeting. Professors Steven Stice and Biao He, from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and College of Veterinary Medicine, respectively, are the first two UGA selections for a designation that was adopted by the board in February 2022.

Judges tasted their way through 124 products entered by 82 Georgia businesses in the first round of judging for the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ annual Flavor of Georgia food product contest on March 10, selecting 36 finalists who will compete in the final round of competition on March 28.