It’s common wisdom that one rotten apple in a barrel spoils all the other apples, and that an apple ripens a green banana if they are put together in a paper bag. Ways to ripen, or spoil, fruit have been known for thousands of years—as the Bible can attest—but now the genes underlying these phenomena of nature have been revealed.
A new study from researchers at the USDA Agricultural Research Service provides information about runoff under different management practices and can help farmers choose the practice that is best for them.
A now patented animal feed technology improves the health, growth and reproductive functions of livestock.
An international team of scientists use advanced space-borne radar to reveal how water flowed through the Sinai Desert five to ten thousand years ago, opening the possibility of capturing water from seasonal downpours for sustainable agriculture.
What if you could save farmers money, protect the quality of the water in a watershed, help keep invasive plants out of waterways, protect biodiversity and prevent potential oxygen-depletion mass fish kills all with one predictive tool?
University of Arkansas researchers conducted a life-cycle analysis of fluid milk that will provide guidance for producers, processors and others throughout the dairy supply chain.
A University of Florida scientist is part of team working toward an insecticide that would target malaria-carrying mosquitoes but do no harm to other organisms.
A pioneering genomics technique developed at Cornell University to improve corn can now be used to improve the quality of milk and meat, according to research published May 17 in the online journal PLOS ONE.
A resistant strain of wheat can reduce nematode numbers in the soil and protect the next rotation of tomato plants.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Bowman v. Monsanto holds that farmers who lawfully obtain Monsanto’s patented, genetically modified soybeans do not have a right to plant those soybeans and grow a new crop of soybeans without Monsanto’s permission. “The Court closed a potential loophole in Monsanto’s long-standing business model, prevents Monsanto’s customers from setting up ‘farm-factories’ for producing soybeans that could be sold in competition with Monsanto’s soybeans, and it enables Monsanto to continue to earn a reasonable profit on its patented technology,” says Kevin Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis
Less oxygen = shorter time between molts = shorter life-span = fewer hungry grasshoppers. And for farmers, that’s very good news. A recent study conducted by Scott Kirkton, associate professor of biology at Union College, offers insight into the relationship between respiratory function and molting that could help farmers save more of their crops.
Chickens likely raised with arsenic-based drugs result in chicken meat that has higher levels of inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Harsh Bais and Janine Sherrier of the University of Delaware’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences are studying whether a naturally occurring soil bacterium, referred to as UD1023 because it was first characterized at the University, can create an iron barrier in rice roots that reduces arsenic uptake.
North America isn’t known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity, yet a new inventory has uncovered nearly 4,600 wild relatives of crop plants in the United States, including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower, bean, sweet potato, and strawberry.
In a Kansas study, 50 years of inorganic fertilization increased soil organic carbon stocks but failed to enhance soil aggregate stability—a key indicator of soil structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and the soil’s resistance to erosion.
Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, is an expert on issues affecting immigrant labor. An advisor to the White House, Dudley comments on renewed efforts in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration law reform.
Urban heat islands raise the temperature of residential lawns, and hotter temperatures lead to more carbon dioxide efflux as compared to agricultural corn fields.
The area of the contiguous United States in moderate drought or worse fell below 50 percent for the first time since last June, according to the latest edition of the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Researchers illustrate how changes to farming could dramatically increase future costs of conservation.
A new study of climate change and wine grapes published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paints a dire picture for wine grapes and wildlife. Two Cornell University experts urge lovers of both not to panic. With some thoughtful adaptation, there’s still a plenty of room and resources for everyone.
The American Society of Agronomy, Soil Science Society of America, and Crop Science Society of America applaud the President’s support of food, agriculture, and natural resources research in his just-released budget proposal.
In the battle against thrips, Cornell breeder Martha Mutschler-Chu has developed a new weapon: a tomato that packs a powerful one-two punch to deter the pests and counter the killer viruses they transmit.
The most serious ongoing water pollution problem in the Gulf of Mexico originates not from oil rigs, as many people believe, but rainstorms and fields of corn and soybeans a thousand miles away in the Midwest. An expert on that problem — the infamous Gulf of Mexico “Dead Zone” — today called for greater awareness of the connections between rainfall and agriculture in the Midwest and the increasingly severe water quality problems in the gulf.
Kansas State University agronomy researcher Mary Beth Kirkham found that elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere have an upside -- a reduced need for moisture in some important crops.
Rendering some of the world’s toxic soils far less unfriendly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research and Cornell researchers are learning to grow stress-tolerant crops on formerly non-farmable land.
Farmers face unique challenges when severe weather strikes. That is why a University of Kentucky professor wants to get the word out about what they, and everyone living in rural areas can do ahead of time to protect themselves from severe storms.
Conversion of large swaths of Brazilian land for sugar plantations will help the country meet its needs for producing cane-derived ethanol, but it also could lead to important regional climate effects, according to a team of researchers from Arizona State University, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science.
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified patterns of epigenomic diversity that not only allow plants to adapt to various environments, but could also benefit crop production and the study of human diseases.
Thanks to wheat breeding programs like the one at Kansas State University, producers have ever-improving options of wheat varieties to plant. Whether it’s improved resistance or increased yields, wheat breeders are creating varieties that meet producers’ changing needs. Wheat breeding is partially responsible for yields more than doubling since the first Kansas wheat crop was planted in Johnson County in 1839. Kansas State University has released 42 wheat varieties, each a step forward in some capacity over previous varieties. The newest variety, ‘1863’ honors the founding of the university.
Learn how Kansas State University researchers are using spectral analysis to increase the efficiency of the soybean breeding line selection process. Spectral analysis, a method of analyzing the electromagnetic radiation coming from plants and other objects, is being used in the K-State Agronomy Department to determine the level of photosynthetic activity of vegetation in many different situations.
A shift away from traditional coffee-growing techniques may be increasing the severity of an outbreak of 'coffee rust' fungus that has swept through plantations in Central America and Mexico, according to a University of Michigan ecologist who studies the disease.
Faced with an increasingly hungry world and limited supplies of water for food production, how do we ensure water security for future generations? That's the central question being addressed at a AAAS symposium on Sunday, Feb. 17.
A team of researchers from Michigan are characterizing simple, cheap measurements of labile soil organic matter that could predict the performance of corn crops and help farmers optimize their cropping systems.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign find that Bt corn has higher yields and uses nitrogen more efficiently than non-Bt corn.
Researchers from Oklahoma State University use soil water deficits to create a "calendar" of seasonal drought patterns.
Ecologists at the University of Toronto and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) have found that, given time, invading exotic plants will likely eliminate native plants growing in the wild despite recent reports to the contrary. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports that recent statements that invasive plants are not problematic are often based on incomplete information, with insufficient time having passed to observe the full effect of invasions on native biodiversity.
Beef production in the United States is expected to decrease 4.8 percent in 2013, the second largest year-over-year decrease in 35 years. Many analysts expect the 2013 numbers to be followed by a 2014 decrease of 4.5 percent or more.
For many years, cheap grain meant almost anything that enhanced grain use and feedlot measures of technical efficiency were consistent with beef industry efficiency. This is no longer true.
Chefs and home cooks in the eastern U.S. could soon have easier access to a homegrown “super food,” thanks to a Cornell-led team of researchers working to expand broccoli's availability at farms, farmer's markets and grocery stores from Maine to Florida.
Researchers in China investigate corn's ability to act as a trap crop and control sunflower broomrape.
Climate change poses a major challenge to humanity’s ability to feed its growing population. But a new study of sorghum, led by Stephen Kresovich and Geoff Morris of the University of South Carolina, promises to make this crop an invaluable asset in facing that challenge.
In the rain forests of the Congo, where mammals and birds are hunted to near-extinction, an impenetrable sound of buzzing insects blankets the atmosphere.
The future landscape of the American Midwest could look a lot like the past—covered in native grasslands rather than agricultural crops. This is not a return to the past, however, but a future that could depend on grasslands for biofuels, grazing systems, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services. A major threat to this ecosystem is an old one—weeds and their influence on the soil.
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