County developments were reviewed during the Geary Community Hospital Trustees meeting this week. Commissioner Charles Stimatze reported that the county commission will not seek to hold a special election to allow them to raise the property tax levy, but instead will work to try and hold the levy flat. The commissioners will continue budget preparation on Thursday.

Symphony in the Flint Hills officials will be paying sales tax on all sales from their June 10th event in Geary County, including ticket sales.

Troy Livingston is the new interim planning and zoning administrator. He is also GIS Director. Former Planning and Zoning Administrator David Yearout is no longer with the county. Yearout had been placed on administrative leave.

Travis Lilly has been appointed the interim county appraiser. The commission opted not to renew the contract of Della Rowley, which expires at the end of June.

Geary Community Hospital is a county owned facility so an elected commissioner attends each GCH Board of Trustees meeting and reports on county activities.

The daily inpatient average is about 18 beds per day in the 49-bed Geary Community Hospital.

Those numbers were confirmed by Hospital Administrator Dr. Joseph Stratton on Tuesday. He noted they would like to have more inpatients. “We do have some excess capacity but we’re trying to hold our own at this point in time. And inpatient days across the country and the state continue to decrease. That’s in part because the insurance companies, and Medicare and Medicaid really aren’t in favor of having folks in hospitals and paying very much. So it’s a struggle we’re all fighting.”

According to a report at the monthly hospital board of trustees meeting outpatient revenues at GCH for May totaled about $7 million dollars, while inpatient revenue were at $2.5 million.

 

ABILENE, June 26 – Great Plains Theatre, Kansas’s Premier Professional Theatre, is proud to present Gypsy June 30th through July 9th.

Gypsy tells the story of a girl named Louise who transformed into Gypsy Rose Lee, one of the most famous burlesque dancers in American history, with more than a little help from her mother. Though the story of Gypsy is built around Gypsy Rose Lee’s early life and experiences, it’s Mama Rose that audiences remember. With powerful songs such as “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Rose’s Turn” Mama Rose is a powerful woman to be reckoned with.

Featuring Rosemary Loar, a member of the original casts of Sunset Boulevard and Chess, as Mama Rose. Loar is no stranger to powerful roles, having been a critically acclaimed “Grizabella” on the National Tour of Cats, and is excited to bring her personal star power to the Great Plains Theatre stage.

As a bulwark of the theatrical arts in the Midwest, Great Plains Theatre is proud of the professional quality performances that such talented actors provide. After the wild success of the 2017 season opener Mamma Mia!, which packed the house night after night as amazed audience members spread the word of the joy of professional theatre, Gypsy promises to continue the excitement.

Seats for Gypsy are filling up quickly so call or click to reserve yours today! Tickets are available through the box office at 785-263-4574 or online at greatplainstheatre.com. Come and get starstruck in Abilene at Great Plains Theatre, bringing Broadway to your backyard!

MANHATTAN — A nationally funded project by Kansas State University wheat researchers could help determine more quickly which new candidate varieties of wheat will produce superior yields and baking quality.

A team of wheat breeders and geneticists at the university has received a nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA, and the Kansas Wheat Commission for “An Integrated Omics Approach to Accelerating Wheat Quality Improvement.”

“NIFA and the Kansas Wheat Commission, in response to the commodity board provision in the 2014 Farm Bill, are co-funding Kansas State University researchers to increase understanding of the genes responsible for wheat quality as well as improve selection strategies that will speed the delivery of superior varieties to wheat farmers,” said Justin Gilpin, CEO of the Kansas Wheat Commission. “Kansas wheat farmers, through the Kansas Wheat Commission, are proud to sponsor this important work along with NIFA to help enhance quality and add value to winter wheat in the southern Plains.”
The university’s team is led by Jesse Poland, associate professor of plant pathology and a wheat geneticist, and includes Allan Fritz, professor of agronomy; Guorong Zhang, associate professor of plant pathology at the university’s Agricultural Research Center in Hays; Eduard Akhunov, professor of plant pathology and wheat genomics; and Rebecca Miller, research associate professor of grain science and industry and director of the university’s Wheat Quality Lab. Fritz and Zhang are wheat breeders, while Akhunov is a wheat geneticist. Miller specializes in wheat and flour quality and in baking and cereal chemistry.

With the world’s population estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, more food — and more nutritious food — will be needed, making wheat even more important to feed a hungry world, according to Poland. But developing new wheat breeds is an expensive and time-consuming process that often produces candidate varieties that may be high-yielding but of poor quality. The new project aims to develop prediction models to better determine which new wheat breeds have the best potential for yield combined with good baking quality.

“New DNA sequencing technology has enabled the determination of genetic differences between candidate wheat varieties as well as the development of genomic prediction models for important traits such as milling and baking,” Poland said. “These prediction models can then be used for selection of superior candidate varieties.”

To speed up the process of determining which new varieties of winter wheat are best, Poland’s research team will take an integrated approach to develop profiles on each breed’s genomics and other “omics”: proteomics for proteins; metabolomics for metabolites; and ionomics for minerals. These factors will be evaluated as determinants of wheat quality, and the information will be combined to develop improved models for yield and quality.

“Such integrative genomics’ approaches hold great promise to identify genes and biological pathways that underlie complex agronomic traits in wheat and develop novel strategies for accelerating wheat improvement,” Akhunov said.

For the project, advanced breeding lines in Kansas State University’s wheat program will be profiled for milling and baking quality. Proteomic, metabolomic and ionomic profiles of the parental and advanced breeding lines, as well as genomic profiles of all breeding lines, will be generated. Then the researchers will develop, test and implement novel prediction models using the genomic profiles combined with the other “omics” data as predictor variables and phenotypes, or characteristics.

“We will test and implement the integrated models in new breeding lines to accelerate the wheat breeding process for improving quality,” Poland said. “Overall, this project will lead to an increased understanding of the genetic determinants of wheat quality as well as improved selection strategies that can result in accelerating the delivery of superior varieties to wheat farmers.”

The new project follows up on previous projects Poland’s lab has conducted involving high-throughput genotyping and work involving the wheat genome. Poland’s research has been honored with the National Association of Plant Breeders’ 2016 Early Career Scientist Award, which recognizes a young scientist who is active in the field of plant breeding.

Poland also serves as director of the university’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab in Applied Wheat Genomics. The lab, supported through the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative to reduce global hunger and improve food security, uses research, education and outreach to advance solutions to hunger, poverty and undernutrition in low-income countries. The lab is conducting research at Kansas State University and in Mexico and southern Asia.