Current issues in land-grant research and presentations from award-winning researchers in the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture will highlight the 2009 Celebration of Land-Grant Research.

Hosted by the college's research office, the celebration is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 10 in the Gluck Equine Research Center Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

College of Agriculture Dean Scott Smith will present opening remarks, which will include his thoughts on the future of the land-grant university in light of the creation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute for Food and Agriculture. Created by the U.S. Congress through the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, the institute replaced the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service. As chair of the Budget and Advocacy Committee for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities' Board on Agriculture Assembly, Smith has been involved in many discussions at the national level throughout the transitioning process.

Following Smith, the 2009 recipients of the Bobby Pass Excellence in Grantsmanship Award, Research/Extension Impact Award and the Prestigious Research Paper Award will give brief presentations related to their award-winning research.

This year's award recipients include:

• Bobby Pass Excellence in Grantsmanship Award- S. Reddy Palli. The entomology professor won for his outstanding record of peer-reviewed funding for research on hormonal regulation of insect development and reproduction.
• Research/Extension Impact Award- Wuyang Hu and Timothy Woods. The agricultural economists received this honor as a result of their program on Kentucky food systems, consumers and marketing.
• Prestigious Research Paper Award- Ernest Bailey, Teri Lear and James MacLeod. The veterinary science professors were honored for their contributions to the paper that reported the first sequencing and assembly of the horse genome. The paper, "Genome Sequence, Comparative Analysis, and Population Genetics of the Domestic Horse," was published Nov. 6 in Science.