Feature Channels: Agriculture

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To give the authorities a cross-sectoral view of a city’s nutrient sink status, the researchers identified and analysed a range of waste flows. Their approach distinguished four nested spatial levels: the urban area; the potential territorial recycling system; the country and the international level. Based on that analysis, the researchers focused on the origin and fate of those nutrient-containing waste flows.

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A new perspective piece in Science shows that abandoned lands could be both an opportunity and a threat for biodiversity, and highlights why abandoned lands are critical in the assessment of global restoration and conservation targets.

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There are more than 80,000 sheep and lambs living on over 2,000 farms in New York State. Their wool has many uses including clothing, carpets, furniture, bedding, insulators, fertilizers, and more. However, about 10-15% of wool is wasted during the sorting and cleaning processes. Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are aiming to turn that waste into a new profit source for farmers, and produce an eco-conscious, high-performance yarn in the process.

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FarmBox Foods has joined the International Phytobiomes Alliance as a sponsoring partner, both organizations announced today.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center stem cell and developmental biologists and colleagues have developed a method to produce bovine blastoids, a crucial step in replicating embryo formation in the lab that could lead to the development of new reproductive technologies for cattle breeding.

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The Cornell University-led Eastern Broccoli Project, which built a broccoli industry on the East Coast worth an estimated $120 million over the last 13 years, has produced a promising new broccoli variety in partnership with Bejo Seeds, a Geneva, New York-based seed company.

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The University of Minnesota Twin Cities received a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to lead a new research institute that will leverage artificial intelligence to help absorb and store carbon in farms and forests.

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For millions of Americans that suffer from seasonal allergies (pollen and mold), climate change is exacerbating an earlier, longer, and overall worse allergy season.

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Locusts are one of the main pests that damage crops and pasture areas, especially in their adult stage when they are able to fly and form swarms.

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Research led by Dmitri Nusinow, PhD, associate member, Danforth Plant Science Center, and former Nusinow graduate student Maria Sorkin, PhD, has identified a new protein complex in plants that regulates temperature response by the circadian clock.

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Spider mites avoid chemicals extracted from caterpillar traces; the repellent effect lasts for days. Butterfly and moth caterpillars then indiscriminately consume spider mite-infested and intact leaves along with dormant individuals or their eggs.

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Researchers at The Ohio State University have developed a framework for quantifying how well countries around the world are doing at providing adequate food, energy and water to their citizens without exceeding nature’s capacity to meet those needs.

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Cangliang Shen, a researcher with the West Virginia University Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design and WVU Extension, has studied the microbial safety of both local farmers market produce and mobile poultry processing units, revealing risks from bacteria like E. coli, listeria and salmonella.

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Beth Ford, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc., is the featured speaker at the May 8 Heuermann Lecture, part of the 2023 Water for Food Global Conference.

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In just six years since the 39 North Master Plan was unveiled, more than $120 million of private/public investment has been made to advance the goals outlined in the plan. To build on the momentum, seven institutions from the public/private sector have announced their commitment as anchor institutions and established 39 North AgTech Innovation District as a 501(c)3. The new organization will be responsible for elevating the innovation district to the next level of successful growth and economic impact.

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As Corn Belt states seek ways to curb nitrogen flow from farms into the Gulf of Mexico, new University of Illinois research adds evidence for winter cover crops as an important part of the solution. A simulation study published in Science of the Total Environment finds widespread planting of cereal rye in Illinois could reduce nitrate in the state’s tile drainage water by 30%.

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Researcher will discuss the study which involved a sleeping aid known as suvorexant that is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for insomnia, hints at the potential of sleep medications to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

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In 1876, when University of Illinois professor Manly Miles established the Morrow Plots, he couldn’t have imagined the plots would become the oldest continuous agricultural experiment in the Western Hemisphere. Nor could he imagine, more than a century before the dawn of the internet, that the plots’ data would be digitized and made available online to scientists, students, and educators around the world.

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Research published in Regional Environmental Change has shown that as climate zones shift toward hotter and drier conditions, ecological diversity will decline, posing a major threat to terrestrial ecosystems with far-reaching social and ecological impacts.

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What if, by adding a couple of cell layers inside a corn kernel, the grain could become significantly richer in essential nutrients like iron, zinc, and protein? Such an improvement could benefit people who rely on corn for a large portion of their diet, as in many parts of the global south. In a new study, University of Illinois scientists show it’s possible to increase iron up to 35% and zinc up to 15% compared to parent lines simply by adding cell layers in the bran.

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A panel of experts will hold a WCS media briefing on High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) that is currently wreaking havoc around the world and is the largest known outbreak since scientists have begun tracking the disease.

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UD1022, a patented beneficial bacteria, can protect alfalfa plants from fungal pathogens that cause plant disease. But plant growth-promoting bacteria like UD1022 can have a dark side and antagonize other beneficial bacteria present in soil.

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Green Bronx Machine, an impact driven, non-profit organization, has been named a Finalist in the 2023 Classy Awards.

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The Virginia Tech media relations office has the following experts available for interviews surrounding the environment, energy, and sustainability. To schedule an interview, please contact [email protected]. Rising seas threatens U.S. coastlines and cities A recently released report from the U.N. on climate change found that rising sea levels are "unavoidable for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and sea levels will remain elevated for thousands of years.

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The alnus ambrosia beetle Xylosandrus germanus, also known as the black stem borer, was accidentally introduced by humans from its native east Asia to North America and Europe around the beginning of the 20th century.

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The Bezos Earth Fund has awarded $9.9 million to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University to support a project developing low-cost virtual livestock fencing that would benefit farmers and animals, improve public health in developing countries and combat climate change.

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A University of Adelaide-led study will investigate if mixing a variety of compounds, including biserrula, into cow feed that contains seaweed, can reduce the amount of methane produced by livestock.

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Barath Raghavan, an associate professor of computer science at USC Viterbi, is rethinking traditional farming practices by developing computational tools to help farmers design, develop, and manage sustainable farming methods.

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A new study led by scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety suggests greater awareness of biopesticide market availability, efficacy and field application processes could help tackle locust outbreaks in China.

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Pests and diseases may reduce global wheat yields by over 20%. A study published April 11th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Sergio Latorre at University College London, UK and colleagues suggest that genomic surveillance may be an effective disease management tool with the ability to trace lineages of emerging crop diseases, and to identify genetic traits for breeding disease-resistant lines.

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Aerosols particles in the atmosphere are an important factor in the Earth’s climate, but researchers lack information on these aerosols’ molecular composition, especially for aerosols during the day and night above agricultural fields. In this research, scientists examined secondary organic aerosols over agricultural fields in the Southern Great Plains in Oklahoma. They found that the aerosols’ composition and structure differ from day to night and that some aerosols are ultimately from urban sources.

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Plants are capable of responding to people and have behaviors comparable to tameness, according to authors of new research that calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments.

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A pre-market regulatory status review conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has concluded that teff modified by genome editing to have a semi-dwarf stature is not subject to biotechnology regulation under USDA’s SECURE Rule.

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The key to insect success may be their wings. That’s what West Virginia University researcher Terry Gullion, professor of chemistry in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has learned by studying the chemical composition of insect wings — something that has not been examined in detail until now.

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“There’s no doubt we can produce enough food for the world’s population - humanity is strategic enough to achieve that. The question is whether - because of war and conflict and corruption and destabilization - we do,” said World Food Programme leader David Beasley in an interview with Time magazine earlier this year.

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More realistically representing crops and agricultural practices dramatically improves simulations of carbon and energy exchange.

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Researchers from the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) at the University of Illinois can detect soil tillage practices from space, weaving together data from ground images, airborne sensors, and satellites. Now, with a grant from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture, they will expand on that work to produce more accurate estimates of tillage effects on corn and soybean yield, greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen loss, and changes in soil organic carbon.

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The partnership will enable both organizations to engage in discussions and dialogue on key global issues related to animal science and phytobiomes research.

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The U.S. dairy industry operates a comprehensive data collection program that records herd production information from farmers nationwide. The program provides crucial input for cattle breeding and genetics, and its cooperative structure ensures benefits for producers and scientists alike. A new study from the University of Illinois explores the program’s century-old history, highlighting its relevance for modern agriculture and digital data collection.