Nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff into the Chesapeake Bay presents an ongoing environmental and economic concern for the bay's massive watershed. Pollution from fertilizer application feeds algal blooms that poison humans and marine life, and devastate fisheries.
Less than a month away from the kick-off the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, a team of scientists report in the journal Nature that three quarters of the world’s threatened species are imperiled because people are converting their habitat into agricultural lands and overharvesting their populations.
Hot dogs are the perfect summer fare. But knowing for sure what you're getting inside a bun can be difficult. Now scientists have devised a method that could help prevent frankfurter fraud, which is especially important for those who can't eat certain types of meats. They report their approach in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Research from a University of North Texas historian supports the idea that the nation and region of origin of your ancestors contributes to your risk of developing, or not developing, a growing list of medical conditions.
A new report from the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis offers a big picture look at the scale and impacts of nitrogen in California. According to the report, excess nitrogen in the state comes primarily from agriculture and fossil fuel combustion. For years, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists have been working with farmers throughout the state to refine fertilizer management, irrigation efficiency and other farming practices to manage nitrogen, and the work continues. The following are some examples of current UC ANR research and extension projects to manage nitrogen.
Rutgers Gardens, a treasured oasis that draws thousands for classes, weddings and walks in the woods, is about to receive a rare honor and is on the cusp of a major facelift as it celebrates its centennial.
At the grocery store, most foods — meats, breads, cheeses, snacks — come wrapped in plastic packaging. Not only does this create a lot of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable waste, but thin plastic films are not great at preventing spoilage. And some plastics are suspected of leaching potentially harmful compounds into food. To address these issues, scientists are now developing a packaging film made of milk proteins — and it is even edible.
Which organic fertilizer will produce the best green chile? A graduate student is researching three types of organic fertilizers: compost, processed chicken manure and compost tea. She is studying plant growth, fruit yield and quality of two hybrid long green chile varieties.
University of Adelaide researchers are rethinking plant breeding strategies to improve the development of new high-yielding, stress-tolerant cereal varieties.
Honeybees from chlorothalanil-treated hives showed the greatest change in gut microbiome.
Marine fisheries catches have been drastically under-reported in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, threatening the marine environment and livelihoods of the local community, reveals a recent study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
Scientists have tracked the flight paths of a group of bumblebees throughout their entire lives to find out how they explore their environment and search for food.
UF/IFAS researchers are looking for ways to thwart angular leaf spot, a pathogen that can destroy up to 10 percent of Florida’s $300 million-a-year strawberry crop in years with multiple freezes.
ORNL's PenDoc combines mass spectrometry with direct sampling to identify materials in seconds; ORNL study providing watershed-scale understanding of mercury in soils and sediments; Salt, ammonia key ingredients of high-efficiency heating system; ORNL taking closer look at microscopic soot particles, advanced combustion engines; Steel-concrete storage vessel may be ticket to clearing path for hydrogen-powered vehicles; Study examines climate change, power demands; ORNL gains better understanding of how defects in complex oxides alter behavior; Natural barrier stores carbon underground longer than previously thought.
Excess nitrogen from agricultural runoff can enter surface waters with devastating effects. Algal blooms and fish kills are a just a couple of possible consequences. But riparian buffer zones – areas of grasses, perennials, or trees – between farmlands and streams or rivers can help.
Scientists modeled runoff using two widely adopted methods. They found that the modeling choices result in differences that ultimately swing results in carbon cycle simulations—by as much as 20%.
As some Florida growers try to find new crops and the demand for biofuel stock increases globally, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researchers have found that sweet potato vines, usually thrown out during harvest, can serve well as livestock feed while the roots are an ideal source for biofuel.
University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago.
Autophagy (self eating) has long been considered a kind of indiscriminate Pac-man like process of waste disposal. Now scientists at Washington University have shown that apart from conditions of cell starvation, it is carefully regulated: both in plants and yeast and most likely in people. The finding is relevant to aggregation-prone pathologies, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
The soils in which we grow food needs to be fed—and fed the right nutrients! The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) August 1 Soils Matter blog post explains how soils change over time and use, and how precise soil nutrition can make a difference.
Scientists at the University of Georgia’s Marine Institute at Sapelo Island have found that the amount of vegetation along the Georgia coast has declined significantly in the last 30 years, spurring concerns about the overall health of marshland ecosystems in the area.
PNNL scientists have untangled a soil metagenome – all the genetic material recovered from a sample of soil – more fully than ever before, reconstructing portions of the genomes of 129 species of microbes. While it’s only a tiny proportion of the species in the sample, it’s a leap forward for scientists who have had only a fraction of that success to date.
The study revealed many other consumer preferences about mushrooms. For instance, consumers prefer fresh mushrooms over processed ones, but their choice to buy and eat mushrooms may also be a matter of taste, texture, price and nutritive values.
After more than 50 years of research, the tick-borne bacterium responsible for one of the most troubling and economically devastating cattle diseases in the Western United States has been named and genetically characterized by researchers at the University of California, Davis.
Robert Ferl, who researches how plants can grow in space, won the award. Specifically, Ferl was cited for conducting cutting-edge space biology research and for mentoring others in spaceflight research, pushing the boundaries of where biology can travel.
MADISON — Serotonin is best known for eliciting feelings of happiness in the human brain, but scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found the hormone plays a role in milk production in dairy cows — and may have health implications for breastfeeding women.
The precise mechanisms involved in tomato softening have remained a mystery until now. Research led by Graham Seymour, Professor of Plant Biotechnology in the School of Biosciences at The University of Nottingham, has identified a gene that encodes an enzyme which plays a crucial role in controlling softening of the tomato fruit.
When a monster beetle arrived in Hawaii and began chomping down palm trees, students with Wichita State University's Bug Lab took action.
Conducting the first large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from the Near East, an international team led by Harvard Medical School has illuminated the genetic identities and population dynamics of the world’s first farmers.
A UF/IFAS scientist has identified two areas of the sorghum genome that could boost the plant’s resistance to the anthracnose disease. Sorghum is a grain known to produce feed for livestock and biofuel.
A new “food-print” model that measures the per-person land requirements of different diets suggests that, with dietary changes, the U.S. could feed significantly more people from existing agricultural land.
Florida grows more zucchini squash than anywhere else in America – to the tune of $70 million a year. To help improve production, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are developing a method to keep squash pests at bay.
A new study shows to where and to what extent palm oil plantations could be expanded, while avoiding further deforestation in pristine and carbon-rich tropical forests.
Research comparing pastures with multiple types of plants to those with less variety shows surprising results in land productivity and soil health.
A group of South American ants has farmed fungi since shortly after the dinosaurs died out, according to an international research team including Smithsonian scientists. The genes of the ant farmers and their fungal crops reveal a surprisingly ancient history of mutual adaptations. This evolutionary give-and-take has led to some species--the leafcutter ants--developing industrial-scale farming that surpasses human agriculture in its efficiency.
The US DOE grants $2.5 million to Texas A&M AgriLife Research to turn biorefinery waste into new products. "It's said anything but money can be made of lignin. Yet, that is the majority of what's left in the biorefinery plants," said Dr. Joshua Yuan, project leader. "Until we resolve this problem, biorefinery is not going to become economically viable."
The Strawberry Advisory System, which tells growers when to spray fungicide, has been shown to save Florida strawberry growers $1.7 million a year. It is now being used in several other states, including Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina and California.
Shinsuke Agehara, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of horticultural sciences, thinks he can overcome the chill requirements of growing artichokes. Based at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm, Florida, Agehara recently received a nearly $90,000 federal grant to study how to establish an artichoke system for Florida growers.
Researchers begin collaboration on research as a result of 2013 Fukushima symposium
The 2016 Billion-Ton Report, jointly released by the U.S. Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, concludes that the United States has the potential to sustainably produce at least 1 billion dry tons of nonfood biomass resources annually by 2040.
Imagine rolling your eyes to help you see more clearly. Although it wouldn't work for humans, new research published today in Nature Communications has shown mantis shrimp use eye rotations to enhance their polarization vision.
Master Agreement will focus on improving agriculture with non-destructive imaging technology for root growth dynamics.
Researchers at UGA have crossed American sweetgums with their Chinese cousins, creating hybrid sweetgum trees that have a better growth rate and denser wood than natives, and can produce fiber year-round.
The subtropical weather in Cornwall means new exotic crops such as quinoa and Japanese persimmon are now more likely to succeed, according to a new technique developed by University of Exeter experts to monitor the climate.
Crops that could eventually be affected include tomatoes, squash, beans, watermelons and many other vegetables and ornamentals, said Lance Osborne, an entomology professor at UF/IFAS.
Alisa Garni, associate professor of sociology at Kansas State University, and her student team are conducting long-term, in-depth ethnographic research on Central American immigrants in Kansas.
Members of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) must do more to follow through on critical commitments to protect tuna and shark populations in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The IATTC, the world’s oldest regional fishery management organization (RFMO) for tuna, meets June 27 to July 1 in La Jolla, California.
Plant cell walls resist deconstruction. Pretreatment can loosen the structural integrity of cell walls, reducing their recalcitrance. This study offers insights into how pretreatment induces such cell wall modifications in different types of biomass.
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