New Mexico Department of Agriculture employees hit the road to inspect fresh and processed chile products as part of New Mexico Chile Advertising Act

New Mexico Department of Agriculture employees hit the road to inspect fresh and processed chile products as part of New Mexico Chile Advertising Act

Las Cruces, New Mexico – It’s that “chile” time of year, and the New Mexico Department of Agriculture Standards and Consumer Services inspectors will be out in full force conducting a “chile blitz” around the state. The purpose is to ensure processed and fresh chile products are in compliance under the New Mexico Chile Advertising Act and NMAC 21.16.7.

The Act stipulates that it is unlawful for a person to:

·       Knowingly advertise, describe, label or offer for sale chile peppers as New Mexico chile, or to advertise, describe, label or offer for sale a product as containing New Mexico chile, unless the chile peppers or chile peppers in the product were grown in New Mexico

·       Knowingly advertise, describe, label or offer for sale chile peppers, or a product containing chile peppers, using the name of any city, town, county, village, pueblo, mountain, river or other geographic feature or features located in New Mexico in a misleading or deceptive manner that states or reasonably implies that the chile peppers are, or the product contains, New Mexico chile unless the chile peppers or chile peppers in the product were grown in New Mexico

You may find the New Mexico Chile Advertising Act, NMAC 21.16.7 New Mexico Chile Verification and Record requirements, and the verification/registration forms at http://www.nmda.nmsu.edu/scs/licenseregistration/new-mexico-chile-labeling-registration/.

If you are growing or selling fresh chile and advertising it as New Mexico chile, you must register with the NMDA Standards and Consumer services division by completing a verification/registration form. The verification form for New Mexico fresh chile must accompany each load of chile and be followed through with the chile to the point of sale.

If you are producing or selling processed chile products and advertising it as New Mexico chile, you must register with the NMDA Standards and Consumer services division by completing a verification/registration form. You are only required to complete the form once for each product.

A list of registered vendors and products may be found at http://www.nmda.nmsu.edu/helpfaq/new-mexico-chile-verified/.

Questions? Contact Raymond Johnson at 575-646-1616 or rjohnson@nmda.nmsu.edu

PESTICIDE TRAINING PROGRAM OFFERED

PESTICIDE TRAINING PROGRAM OFFERED

Eddy County Extension Service will be conducting pesticide applicator training on October 18, November 15 and December 13 from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm.  Cost is $10 per person. This class is good for 5 CEU’s.  No exams will be given all exams must be arranged with NMDA 575-646-3007.  The information presented may help you prepare for the exams.    The classes will not be the same.  The October 18 class has a section on Weed ID and Herbicide use.  The November class has a section on Farm Worker Protection Standards and how to comply.  The December class has a section on Range Brush Control, what, why and when.  These will be in Carlsbad at the Eddy County Extension Office.   There is limited space so if you wish to pre-register or if you are in need of special assistance due to a disability please contact the Eddy County Extension Office 887-6595 at least 7 days before the class.   This and all programs are available to everyone regardless of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, or veteran status.   New Mexico State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Eddy County Government Cooperating “to put knowledge to work”.  Subscribe to Eddy County Ag news at: http://nmsueddyag.blogspot.com/  Eddy County Extension Service, New Mexico State University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and educator.  All programs are available to everyone regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, handicap, or national origin.  New Mexico State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Eddy County Government Cooperating.

NMSU researchers strive to create transportation fuels from algae

NMSU researchers strive to create transportation fuels from algae
DATE: 07/30/2018
WRITER: Tiffany Acosta, 575-646-3929, tfrank@nmsu.edu
CONTACT: Catherine Brewer, 575-646-8637, cbrewer@nmsu.edu
Three years ago Catherine Brewer was asked to join a university collaboration on bioalgal energy. The assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at New Mexico State University, who specializes in biomass processing, accepted the new challenge.

Brewer and her research group replaced Shuguang Deng on NMSU’s team of the National Science Foundation New Mexico EPSCoR project, Energize New Mexico: Bioalgal Energy. The collaboration includes teams from the University of New Mexico and Eastern New Mexico University, as well as NMSU’s Departments of Civil Engineering, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Fishery and Wildlife Sciences and Biology.

“The biggest impact of this research is the ability to get energy out of wastewater treatment rather than only put energy in,” Brewer said.

One of the project goals is to create transportation fuels, ideally jet fuels, from materials such as algae. Brewer’s group is tasked with cooking algae via a process called hydrothermal liquefaction through a high-temperature and high-pressure reactor at conditions near the critical point of water: 290-350 degrees Celsius (550-660 degrees Fahrenheit) and 100-200 atmospheres of pressure.

“My group’s job has been to take different algae strains grown under slightly different conditions and see how much bio-crude oil we can get out of the biomass,” Brewer said. “We want to recover as much energy as we can. We could just burn plain algae: dry it up and burn it, but liquid fuels are a lot harder to do than solid fuels.

“The tightness of specifications around jet fuels has made it more difficult to get renewable fuels into that space,” she said. “It has to be just the right molecules with just the right properties.”

Since 2015, Brewer’s team has been working on different reactor configurations: 100 mL and 2L batch reactors, and the redesign of a pilot-scale continuous flow reactor. The continuous flow reactor was a goal of the EPSCoR project because it represents the next step of scaling up the process toward commercial applications.

Among the new features in the reactor redesign are special self-cleaning filters to remove solids while they are hot (and prevent heavy oils from condensing on the chars and clogging the reactor), and upgrades for system safety.

“Our reactors are pretty hardcore,” Brewer said. “The conditions are not easy, but that’s how we cook the algae.

“The reason these reactor designs take so long is you want to make sure you do it right so when there are failures, it’s a matter of cleaning and not a matter of injuries or permanent damage,” she added.

In addition to a multiple-university collaboration, the project is a multiple-department effort for NMSU.

Additional researchers on the project include Omar Holguin, Plant and Environmental Science associate professor and project lead at NMSU, Nirmala Khandan, Civil Engineering professor, Wiebke Boeing, Fishery and Wildlife Sciences professor, Wayne Van Voohries, Biology professor emeritus, and Umakanta Jena, Chemical and Materials assistant professor.

“With the combination of biologists, civil engineers, chemical engineers, chemists, we can cover the entire supply chain and make sure improving one area doesn’t hurt another area – that we improve the supply chain all the way around,” Brewer said.

“One of the reasons I love working on these research projects is that you have to work together. I don’t grow algae. I should never be depended on to keep anything alive. There’s a reason I cook dead plants, because they die on me, even cacti. I work with people who grow and study the algae,” she said.