The SBAR Education, Extension and Outreach Team is embracing virtual working sessions!

To support the SBAR Educators, SBAR Fellows, 4-H Volunteers, Students, and regional Agricultural Producers during the pandemic, we are safely engaging via online platforms. A virtual mini retreat was hosted for the Team in mid-October, which focused on finalizing plans to further develop the SBAR website to provide more interactive learning opportunities for our stakeholders.

Teacher Jaime Camero talks about how she used SBAR in her classroom at Walter Douglas Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona. Jamie shares her work with SBAR fellows to provide lessons that connect with SBAR themes and science standards. Jamie and her students explored these issues on the local, national, and worldwide levels. Subscribe to the Institute for Energy Solutions YouTube channel to watch SBAR related videos.

The 2020 SBAR Virtual Retreat was hosted online from 27-29 July. Updates from our industry partners along with SBAR-supported research was highlighted over the two day event. Much progress is being made toward achieving research goals, new methods for utilizing waste products from guayule and guar were showcased, and excellent examples were provided for how SBAR student fellows are incorporating science and SBAR curriculum into middle school classrooms.

As the SBAR Center of Excellence embarks on the 4th year of research, development, deployment, and community engagement, the team's accomplishments are highlighted in a new SBAR Accomplishments ArcGIS StoryMap available to the public. Some questions remain (and some new ones have been uncovered), but we are making progress toward achieving the mission to build a sustainable bioeconomy in arid regions of the Southwest! Explore the progress we've made and share the link with your colleagues!

The whole SBAR Team wants to heartily congratulate the many students who have completed their degrees since the inception of the SBAR Center of Excellence in September 2017. We are very proud to recognize these students for their hard work and efforts in helping us attain our goals. (Students are listed below alphabetically by year.)

A single-day, field trip was hosted in late January by SBAR researcher, Dr. Diaa El-Shikha, at the Maricopa Agriculture Center in central Arizona. Students from UArizona visited the SBAR guayule research fields to learn about the plant as a sustainable crop for arid environments, and the drone technology that is being used to evaluate crop production and soil moisture levels.

The New Mexico SBAR Education and Extension & Outreach Teams have created a series of workshops to share the science of SBAR with New Mexican youth. Two of these workshops were hosted in January and February 2020. Thirty-two senior, eight middle-school students, four 4-H adult leaders, and parents participated in the workshops.

A single-day, New Mexico Alternative Crops Conference co-hosted by the SBAR Center and NM Cooperative Extension Service was held on March 10th in Portales, NM. This conference brought together 50 participants ranging from farmers, crop processors, Extension educators, agricultural support professionals, students and other stakeholders in New Mexico, and featured presentations and discussions focused on different crops that can be grown to boost the regional bioeconomy.The conference highlighted several alternative crops that could fit into existing cropping systems of the Southern High Plains of eastern New Mexico.

As a legume, guar has the capability of forming a symbiotic relationship with Rhizobia (a nitrogen-fixing bacteria that is common in the soil) to fix their own nitrogen. This decreases the amount of nitrogen fertilizer necessary for growing crops, and improves the fertility of the soil for the next crop. This symbiosis occurs within nodules attach to the legume’s roots, so the presence of nodules is an indication of a healthy legume crop. The symbiosis is specific to a particular location and a particular combination of plants and microorganisms. Understanding the symbioses that develop with guar in New Mexico can help agronomists make recommendations about planting conditions and the potential need for inoculation (fertilizer application) to help new plants start well.

Melissa Wilburn and Arisbeth Ibarra Nieblas are a teacher/fellow pair bringing SBAR topics into the classroom. In their lesson on polymers, Arisbeth asked the 6th Grade class at Quail Run Elementary, “Where do we get rubber?”
“Guayule!” some of the students called out.