Eating a moderate amount of almonds each day may enrich the diets of adults and their young children. In the study, when parents and children were eating almonds, their Healthy Eating Index increased for total protein foods, seafood and plant proteins and fatty acids, while they ate fewer empty calories.
This finding may help growers protect the environment because they could reduce pesticides to keep the pest – known as thrips -- at bay. Growers may also save money because they may cut chemical use on their crop. In fact, because this thrips preys on many vegetable crops, the finding could save millions of dollars in pesticide use.
Joint hiring initiative between Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and University of Missouri to strengthen regional plant science and education
The Citrus Research and Development Foundation, Inc., Box Tax Advisory Council voted unanimously in June to recommend continuation of the citrus box tax at the current assessment rate of $.03 (3 cents) per harvested box for the last year of the current referendum, fiscal year 2015-16.
New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of 'multi-crop' agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say 'forgotten' millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today's food security debate.
New research suggests that feeding our food waste, or swill, to pigs (currently banned under EU law) could save 1.8 million hectares of global agricultural land – an area roughly half the size of Germany, including hundreds of thousands of acres of South America’s biodiverse forests and savannahs – and provide a use for the 100 million tonnes of food wasted in the EU each year.
Every city has abandoned industrial sites. Encouraging life to return to these barren areas is a challenge. It requires a healthy topsoil for plants and animals to flourish. Cities, with their heavily compacted and often contaminated soils, often struggle to restore blighted spaces. Quality soil is necessary—but not abundant in cities. Enter biosolids.
A team of researchers at Kansas State University, the University of Missouri and global agricultural biotechnology company Genus plc has developed pigs that are resistant to the most devastating disease in the swine industry.
For Tori Bradley, learning about cold weather may turn into cold hard cash for Florida blueberry growers. Bradley, a University of Florida College of Agricultural and Life Sciences graduate student, interned with faculty to develop cold-weather protection strategies so blueberry growers can save money. By using the precision method, growers can save an average of $44 per acre per season on irrigation pumping costs, depending on their location in Florida.
The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in collaboration with IBERS, has sequenced and assembled the DNA of red clover to help breeders improve the beneficial traits of this important forage crop. The genome is published in Scientific Reports, a journal from the Nature publishing group.
A new test developed by Kansas State University researchers helps millers assure wheat flour purity.
Learning to distinguish the color red means jumping spiders can stay alive longer and eat pests ranging from caterpillars to beetles to flies, many of which damage agricultural products, said Lisa Taylor, an assistant research scientist in entomology at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Jumping spiders are fairly ubiquitous: More than 5,000 species are found on every continent except Antarctica.
A pestivirus affecting swine has been discovered by Kansas State University researchers, who also have developed diagnostic tests to identify it.
The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture announced today that it would award 1.5 million Euros to a project aimed at providing a reference sequence for two wheat chromosomes, part of the international effort to decipher the bread wheat genome, led by the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC).
The sweet, juicy peaches we love today might have been a popular snack long before modern humans arrived on the scene. Scientists have found eight well-preserved fossilized peach endocarps, or pits, in southwest China dating back more than two and a half million years. Despite their age, the fossils appear nearly identical to modern peach pits.
A long-term project aimed at improving photosynthesis in rice is entering its third stage, marking another step on the road to significantly increased crop yields that will help meet the food needs of billions of people across the developing world.
University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researchers have found an irrigation method that uses 50 percent less water than traditional systems to grow potatoes – an important finding for the $131 million-a-year Florida crop.
Soil gives us artistic beauty and cultural richness
Researchers with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have developed genetically modified citrus trees that show enhanced resistance to greening, and have the potential to resist canker and black spot, as well. However, the commercial availability of those trees is still several years away.
If Pleistocene megafauna -- mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths and others -- had not become extinct, humans might not be eating pumpkin pie and squash for the holidays, according to an international team of anthropologists.
A study published in the journal, Nature, adds to growing evidence that the people of Europe’s DNA underwent widespread changes, altering their height, digestion, immune system and skin color with the spread of agriculture.
University of Florida College of Agricultural and Life Sciences students are learning how to breed better peppers under the guidance of Professor Bala Rathinasabapathi. And by “better,” we mean a more savory taste, among other characteristics. Florida produces $207 million worth of bell peppers annually, according to the Florida Department Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS). In fact, as of 2012, Florida ranked second nationally in the value of bell peppers. Improving traits may help the Florida pepper industry grow even larger.
After a decade of battling the highly destructive citrus greening bacterium, researchers with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have developed genetically modified citrus trees that show enhanced resistance to greening, and have the potential to resist canker and black spot, as well. However, the commercial availability of those trees is still several years away.
When corn prices increase farmers reap higher yields by making changes. According to a recent University of Illinois study, about one-third of the yield increase derives from more intensive management practices and two-thirds from cropping additional acreage. Agricultural economist Madhu Khanna says the findings dampen the ongoing debate about the food price and land use changes due to corn ethanol.
Results of new University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences research may help control some dangerous species of fungi, known as phytophthora -- or water molds -- that can cause millions of dollars in damage annually to ornamental plants and some fruit trees.
University of Florida researchers have found an algorithm to help them detect laurel wilt, the deadly pathogen that threatens Florida’s $100 million-a-year avocado industry.
A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) warns that the widespread practice of giving antibiotics to livestock for growth promotion and the prevention of disease among animals in agriculture is making the drugs ineffective when they are needed to treat infections in people.
More than 40 gardeners currently have plots in the church’s raised-beds on four acres of land that was once a pasture.
A new Kansas State University study finds that the over-tapping of the High Plains Aquifer's groundwater beyond the aquifer's recharge rate peaked in 2006. Its use is projected to decrease by roughly 50 percent in the next 100 years.
University of Florida researchers have found an algorithm to help them detect laurel wilt, the deadly pathogen that threatens Florida’s $100 million-a-year avocado industry.
Soils can store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere
Coffee rust has ravaged Latin American plantations for several years, leading to reductions in annual coffee production of up to 30 percent in some countries and threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers in the region.
A recently published study from two Iowa State University scientists shows that a gene found only in a single plant species can increase protein content when introduced into staple crops.
Urbanization is known to degrade the quality of soil. Researchers compared the soil under residential prairie gardens to the soil under the adjacent lawns to see if there were any differences.
UF/IFAS Extension and Bok Tower Gardens are offering programs to empower local communities to lead healthier lives and ensure responsible environmental stewardship.
To better compete with Mexico, Florida strawberry growers must produce more fruit earlier in the growing season -- in November and December – to keep a competitive advantage in the global market, UF/IFAS researchers found. Florida and California combine to produce 99 percent of the United States’ strawberries, and Florida ranks as the biggest producer of winter strawberries, with a value of $366 million annually.
Kansas State University researchers are discovering more about how adding amino acids to swine feed helps the animal grow safely while reducing producer's costs and a farm's environmental impact.
A product that helped stop a 100-year-old battle with a cotton disease in Texas has been proven effective in stopping the same fungus from devastating vineyards, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant pathologist.
Manure management is serious business for a meat-hungry world. A single cow, depending on its size, can generate between 43 and 120 pounds of manure a day. Cow manure can be a low-cost fertilizer for farmers’ crops. But manure can also host antimicrobial resistant bacteria. Researchers have been testing creative ways to target antimicrobial resistance genes in manure.
The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) announced today that it has started a new project to speed up gene discovery in bread wheat. It will provide plant breeders around the world with essential resources to accelerate their breeding programs and develop more sustainable wheat varieties with increased tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses.
The Asian Citrus Psyllid is loathed by orange farmers because they spread an even more pernicious foe: the bacteria Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, which cause a disease called citrus greening that turns the trees' leaves a sickly yellow and makes the fruit bitter and stunted. There is no cure, and the infected trees usually die within a few years. To halt the spread of the disease, researchers are developing vibration traps that hijack psyllid mating calls to locally bring their populations under control.
More than 70 vendors sell at the Saturday morning market.
A web-based irrigation system developed by researchers at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences saved 21 percent in water use without reducing growth of container-grown landscape plants, a new study shows.
High school students will have an opportunity to combine science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) principles with their interest in horses at the first Horse Science Academy at Oklahoma State University.
New Mexico State University’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences’ Forage Team strives to help farmers meet the state’s forage needs.
Piled Higher and Deeper - an analogy for PhD
In the recent sci-fi hit, The Martian, the main character, astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon), manages to grow potatoes on the planet with a mix of ingenuity, science, and a bit of Hollywood make-believe. Could it work?
Soils help moderate global temperatures, store carbon
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