08/18/08 Protection from sun and heat; for plants and animals that is

Washington Ag August 18, 2008 The heat has been on and if your are outside a lot, hopefully you are splashing on the sunscreen. Maybe even on your crops. That's right. David Cope is the CEO of Purfresh which has developed the equivalent of a sunscreen for fruits and vegetables. He says think of it as an SPF 45 for crops. Cope: "It comes as a wet concentrate that you apply just like you would any other pre-harvest treatment. You can tank mix it with other pre-harvest treatments. It applies a microscopic layer of prisms or mirrors around the plant and its fruits or vegetables or grain. And it's preferential in its ability to affect just the damaging wave lengths of light." Now, how about keeping cattle cool. Well, USDA Agricultural Research Service Scientists have discovered a slick gene, as they call it, that could help breeders develop cattle with shorter, slick hair that helps keep them cool in subtropical heat. Studies done by the ARS in Florida have shown slick-haired animals have internal temperatures about one degree Fahrenheit lower during the summer than other cattle with normal coats. I'm Bob Hoff.