New Logan poisonous plants lab provides top research for USDA
Logan’s current Poisonous Plant Research Laboratory (PPRL) will be demolished Wednesday to make way for a new, permanent laboratory to be completed October 2004.
With help from Utah State University administrators and federal government officials, the new building will mark the first permanent location in the history of the laboratory.
Lynn James, research leader of the lab since 1972, said, “We have had marvelous relations with the university. We’re excited and appreciate the support.”
The laboratory is part of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Service. Groundbreaking for the laboratory was Oct. 18. Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, worked closely with the laboratory to provide funding from the federal government.
The mission of the laboratory is to study the effects of poisonous plants on livestock and devise strategies to prevent the effects of intoxication, he said.
The new laboratory will enable USU graduate students, research specialists throughout the United States and other experts to work on various projects.
“This is a renewal process, because we don’t want to remain stagnant. This will able us to take on many bright graduate students that will stir up the pot intellectually and ask questions we wouldn’t have thought of.”
The building, located at 1150 E. 1400 North, will cover 26,700 square feet.
Kip Panter, research scientist for PPRL, said, “The 11 acres that are used for the poisonous plant research will be more streamlined with the university.”
Teams of plant, animal and range scientists, veterinarians, nutritionists, chemists, toxicologists, pathologists and physiologists will provide an interdisciplinary approach of applied and basic research to develop solutions to intoxication, according to the PPRL information pamphlet.
The new building will enable the scientists to develop already existing projects that will benefit livestock producers around the nation and the medical community, as well.
The scientists are studying the effects of poisonous plants on livestock in four major areas: locoweeds, larkspurs, abortifacient plants and hepatotoxic plants.
In the past, thousands of sheep, cattle and wildlife have been poisoned by these plants, causing death or serious physical deformations. There are few catastrophic losses of livestock, James said, but there are many smaller losses.
The laboratory has been studying ways to prevent the neurological damage, skeletal malformations and wasting diseases caused by locoweeds. Other efforts are being made to prevent cleft palates, milk sicknesses, heart failure and liver damage caused by plants such as ponderosa pine, lupin, eupatorium urticaefolium and false hellebore.
Panter said, “We put together management programs to identify high-, medium- and low-risk pastures and the dates that are best to graze on them. This is a multidisciplinary approach to solving poisonous plant problems.”
Pharmaceutical laboratories and other medical facets have taken the models from these studies to create solutions to problems such as cleft palates and abortions.
Panter said, “This is an animal and spin-off method to benefit the medical community. The pharmaceutical industry has most of their basis from animal research.”
-mmackay@cc.usu.edu