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| Professor Walter Leal (center) works with Brazilian exchange students Aline Guidolin (left) and Diogo Vidal. |
Diogo Vidal and Aline Guidolin, who arrived Sept. 14, will work three months with Leal, a chemical ecologist and professor of entomology, and several researchers in the lab. Vidal is working with pheromone binding proteins and isolation and identification of pheromones, and Guidolin, gene silencing of pheromone-binding proteins.
It's all part of the Sustainable Crop Protection in Agriculture program (SUSPROT), a federally funded program designed to promote scientific cooperation and collaborative education between academic and professional communities in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands) and the United States.
And now, Brazil.
"This year we've been able to extend SUSPROT into Brazil," said Brazilian-born Leal, who serves as the UC Davis coordinator of SUSPROT. The organization is headquartered at Pennsylvania State University.
All universities participating in SUSPROT were selected for their strong agricultural programs. "It's a global agricultural industry now, and we need to know how to research the problems and how to solve them," Leal said. "We need to learn from one another."
Vidal and Guidolin, both pursuing their bachelor of science degrees, will get university credit for their work here. Vidal, 22, is majoring in chemistry at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba; Guidolin, 23, is majoring in biological sciences at the University of Sao Paulo, Piracicaba.
"They are very enthusiastic," said Leal. "In fact, the same day they arrived, Aline wanted to start the experiments. And when I left the lab Wednesday night (Sept. 16), I thought I was the last one to leave the lab. I was wrong. They were both still here."
During their three-month stay, the young ag ambassadors are residing at the Davis home of scientist Linda Hall of the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Vidal and Guidolin, both fluent in English as well as their native Portuguese, are getting acquainted with the "international" Leal family. Both Walter and his wife Beatriz were born in Brazil and speak Portuguese and Japanese as well as English. Sons Augusto, 18 (now studying at Princeton), and Gabriel, 12, were born in Japan, and daughter Helena, 9, in the United States.
The Leals are already planning to host Vidal and Guidolin for Thanksgiving dinner. Other events are also planned. "And they're getting a chance to ride bikes," Leal said. "They can't ride bikes in the big cities. It's too dangerous with all the traffic."
As part of the SUSPROT exchange program, UC Davis and Penn State students will participate in a two-week program in Brazil in July, said Leal, who will accompany them. "We're having to coordinate it for two weeks because Penn State is on the semester system and UC Davis on the quarter system."
Leal will teach a special freshman seminar this winter at UC Davis and through a competitive process, will select "two or three students" to participate in the program in Brazil. "They won't necessarily be entomology students."
While they're in Brazil, the UC Davis and Penn State students "will be exposed to the agricultural or entomology side, the industrial side and the production side," said Leal. "We can learn a lot from Brazil. Brazil is known for its ethanol production and is the world's biofuel industry leader, while the U.S. is still in its infancy. Brazil is the leading soybean producer."
The SUSPROT project is financed by the Fund for Improvement of PostSecondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education and the European communities.
One of the UC Davis students who participated in SUSPROT in 2007 was UC Davis entomology major Amy Morice. She studied two weeks in France and one week in Belgium as part of a 16-member American contingent that included UC Davis entomology students Jacqueline Kishmirian and Katie Szulewski and coordinator Leal.
"I don't think we value agriculture the same way in America," Morice said on her return. "It was interesting to see how important it is to them to keep smaller farms rather than large corporate farms."
Countries differ in their agricultural practices, research and extension programs, Leal said, but "they share the commonality of getting food from the field to the table, while trying to resolve such issues as exotic pests, insect-plant interactions, disease outbreaks, food contamination and other global concerns."
Leal, a newly selected Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, is known for his groundbreaking and innovative research involving insect communication. He and his lab last year discovered the secret mode of the insect repellant DEET. In research published last August, the scientists found that DEET doesn't jam the senses of mosquitoes or mask the smell of the host. Mosquitoes smell the repellent and avoid it because "it smells bad."
More information on SUSPROT is available from the Penn State Web site.