AMHERST — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Office announced that a team led by Dwayne Breger, extension professor at UMass Amherst, has been selected for a three-year, $1.8 million award to study the effects of co-locating solar-energy panels and agriculture operations at up to eight different farms across the Commonwealth. The work will be in partnership with landowners, state agencies, solar developers, and a nonprofit farmland organization.

“Our objective with this award is to have the opportunity to do robust research to address the dearth of data on the impact of this solar approach to agricultural productivity and farm viability,” said Breger, who is also director of UMass Clean Energy Extension. “We need data on how the agriculture will perform and how the project economics will affect individual farms and the state agricultural economy as a whole.

“Right now,” he went on, “many communities don’t have the necessary experience to understand and manage the solar development that is coming, and farmers don’t have science-based facts to fully assess the opportunities that developers are proposing to them. Our project will do the research to allow us to help farmers and communities make informed decisions about the solar opportunities that are coming their way.”

Breger points out that two state agencies, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and the Department of Energy Resources, are keenly interested in this project, as outcomes will provide the science to inform policy development.

Jody Jellison, director of the UMass Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment and UMass Extension, noted that “the dual use of land for farming and solar energy has gotten many people excited about its potential. Now, with this new project, we’ll be able to begin developing data to quantify the agronomic and economic effects on farming to determine whether that excitement is warranted or not.”

Breger and research colleagues at UMass Extension, the UMass Cranberry Station, the campus’s Department of Resource Economics, and the American Farmland Trust will study the economic and social impact of solar-agriculture co-location on farms by establishing site trials and assessing crop productivity, soil health, and micro-climatic conditions. Sites will grow a range of crops, including pumpkins, strawberries, greens, winter squash, cranberries, other vegetables and fruit, hay, and grazing.

Farm partners are in Grafton, Carver, Dighton, Plympton, Hadley, Colrain, and Charlemont. Solar-developer partners BlueWave Solar, Pine Gate Renewables, and Hyperion Systems are dedicating portions of their commercial dual-use solar installations at these farms for research site trials enabling a robust research scope over varied agricultural conditions. Most site trials will get underway in March 2021 in time for the first planting, Breger said.

He and colleagues will also study public acceptance of solar-agriculture co-location and develop practical co-location management guidelines for growers, solar developers, and other relevant stakeholders. The DOE says it is interested in “research and analysis that enable farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural enterprises to gain value from solar technologies while keeping land available for agricultural purposes.”

Breger noted that UMass Amherst’s Crop Animal Research and Education Center and farm in South Deerfield hosts one of the state’s first dual-use solar-agricultural installations, giving the campus valuable early experience in this research area.

AMHERST — Six campus researchers in the College of Natural Sciences (CNS) at UMass Amherst have been recognized among the world’s most highly cited researchers in 2020 by London-based Clarivate Analytics, owner of the Web of Science. They have consistently had high citation counts over a decade.

Now in its seventh year, the citation analysis identifies influential researchers as determined by their peers around the world. They are judged to be influential, and their citation records are seen as “a mark of exceptional impact,” the company says.

The six from UMass Amherst are environmental chemist Baoshan Xing in CNS’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture, Distinguished Professor of Food Science David Julian McClements and food scientist Hang Xiao, microbiologist Kelly Nevin Lovley, materials scientist Thomas Russell, and Vincent Rotello, the Charles A. Goessmann Professor of Chemistry and a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. All are repeat members of the list.

McClements is internationally known for his cutting-edge work in food design and nanotechnology, including encapsulating nutraceuticals in nanoparticles to preserve nutrients. Xiao’s lab focuses on molecular mechanisms and interactions of possible disease-preventing nutraceuticals to enhance nutrient bioavailability through food processing and nanotechnology, among other topics.

Nevin Lovley’s lab, part of the Geobacter Project, works to determine the electron transport chain in these bacteria with a goal to develop techniques to optimize the cells’ electrical production for better fuel-cell performance, among other goals. The Rotello lab takes a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing chemistry, biology, and biomedical engineering to tailor nanomaterials to develop new biological applications.

Russell, internationally known as an inventor, names his lab’s research interests in polymer phase transition, polymers’ surface and interfacial properties, directed self-assembly processes, and using polymers as scaffolds and templates to generate nanoscopic structures. Environmental scientist Xing’s lab focuses on protecting the environment by maintaining and improving soil and water quality. This includes investigating the behavior and agricultural application of engineered nanomaterials and using spectroscopic and analytical instruments to study interactions among organic compounds, natural organic matter, and mineral particles.

The highly cited list, announced from the company’s U.S. office in Philadelphia, names a total of about 3,400 highly cited researchers in science and social-science fields. The company says it focuses on contemporary research achievement, and only highly cited papers in science and social-science journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection during the most recent 11-year period are surveyed.

Two years ago, Highly Cited Researchers introduced a new cross-field category to identify researchers with substantial influence across several fields during the data census period. At UMass Amherst, Nevin Lovley and Rotello appear in this category for 2020.

“There is no unique or universally agreed concept of what constitutes extraordinary research performance and elite status in the sciences and social sciences,” the report’s editors point out. “Consequently, no quantitative indicators will reveal a list that satisfies all expectations or requirements. Moreover, a different basis or formula for selection would generate a different, though likely overlapping, list of names. Thus, the absence of a name on our list cannot be interpreted as inferior performance or stature in comparison to those selected.”