Message from the Director

Greetings from the Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri as we began our 21st year as a big "C" Center at MU. When we began 2018, our former Center Director, Dr. Shibu Jose, had settled into his second year as Director of the MU School of Natural Resources (SNR). As we closed out 2018, Dr. Jose announced (effective Jan. 1, 2019) that he had been chosen to serve as the Interim Dean of Research and Ag. Experiment Station Director in CAFNR (our College). We congratulate Dr. Jose and look forward to his future success in our College. In less than two years he made a huge and positive impact on SNR and remains a genuine supporter of our Center.

In addition, we initiated our search for the future Center Director in the fall of 2018 and will announce new, exciting leadership later in 2019 (stay tuned!). The University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry is one of the premier centers of its kind in the world dedicated to agroforestry research, education, outreach and economic development. Our strength lies in the success of our dedicated and productive core Center faculty and staff, our active collaborative efforts, over 50 associated faculty, staff and external collaborators, and our graduate students and postdoctoral research associates who define, design and carry out dozens of research and outreach projects (http://www.centerforagroforestry.org/personnel). We also find strength in the diversity of our stakeholders and friends who believe in agroforestry as a major form of global land use in the coming decades.

Our Center has been unusually blessed with long-term continuity in all of our endeavors. These long-term efforts are now "bearing fruit" on multiple fronts (research, education, outreach, economic development). The impacts of our research, education, outreach and economic developments activities are profound and positively impact landowners in Missouri, regionally, nationally and also have a strong global impact.

As we head into our 21st year, 2019, I want to provide you with a status update on our Center and highlight a few outstanding 2018 accomplishments:

• A three year Missouri NRCS agroforestry training grant was awarded (2018-2021). This grant will enable the Center to create and offer outreach/training workshops to Missouri NRCS staff and other conservation professionals in order to increase their knowledge and technical assistance capacity on sustainable land use practices focused on agroforestry and specialty crops.

• In 2018, the Center completed its' 6th Annual Agroforestry Academy as a crash course to train educators and landowners in agroforestry. Over 6 years, the weeklong Agroforestry Academy has trained 150 future agroforesters. A combined qualitative/ quantitative outcomes assessment of the impact of the Agroforestry Academy is now underway to help inform the Center's future education and training programs.

• Currently, there are 47 graduate students, on campus and online, enrolled and/or funded whole or in part by the Center. This includes 18 M.S. / Ph.D. students on campus.

• Multi-Enzyme Platform Production of Specialty Chemicals, Biofuels, and Blood Type Conversion. Chung-Ho Lin, Hsin-Yeh Hsieh, George Stewart, Mason Schellenberg, Sagar Gupta, Shibu Jose, Ronald Wood and Kattesh V. Katti. 2018. (Provisional Patent granted)

• The first commercial product, PONCHO/ VOTiVO 2.0*, based on the invention jointly developed by scientists Dr. Chung-Ho Lin at MU Center for Agroforestry, Dr. George Stewart at MU Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and Dr. Brian Thompson at Elemental Enzymes, was launched by Bayer in 2018.

Working closely with our many partners, our collective efforts are and will continue to help to realize agroforestry's potential. On behalf of UMCA, we look forward to an exciting and productive year in 2019.