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Touring East Farm from left to right are Ph.D. student Casey Johnson, South County Museum Assistant Director Christopher Cunningham, Professor Steve Alm, Faculty Emeriti Wayne Durfee, and Mary Parlange.

Englander used the crabapples in the Lester P. Nichols Crabapple Arboretum to evaluate scab resistant trees for the nursery industry. Brian Maynard, also a URI professor of plant sciences and entomology, supports the nursery industry by evaluating plants that eventually make their way to the URI Kingston campus. And natural resources science Professor Scott McWilliams has used the crabapples to study bird nutrition. Other flowering plants on the farm are meant for the bees. Blueberry bushes and pollinator meadows offer opportunities to study pollination biology. Students monitor the fields of pollinator habitat to identify plants preferred by bumble bees to pinpoint ways to conserve declining populations of native bees. Honey bee hives are maintained to study novel methods for controlling pests of honey bees.

What is now the University of Rhode Island began as the state’s agricultural research station.

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