Reading Time: 5 minutes This story was published in collaboration with KVPR. LE GRAND, Calif. — It was a torrid summer morning on a Merced County agave farm, and UC Merced doctoral student Calysta Ownby bored into the dirt with a drill. “Maybe not its original intended use,” Ownby said, chuckling about the tool. She collected a core of dry and hard-packed soil in between the rows of agave. Ownby, her professor, and a research assistant have sp…
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